YMMV / Plan 9 from Outer Space

• Accidental Innuendo: The co-pilot asks the stewardess if she would like to "ball it up" in Albuquerque. Even in The '50s, "balling" meant something other than going to a dance ball.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: While most view Eros' behavior as that of a ridiculous manchild, there are a few who interpret it as him losing his mind from having to deal with the colossally idiotic human characters. It's worth noting that his infamous "your stupid minds" moment was in response to one of them questioning why a device that would wipe out the entire universe was a bad thing, because it would make them "even a stronger nation than now", a sentence that Too Dumb to Live doesn't even begin to describe.
• Common Knowledge:
  • The flying saucers are actual toy flying saucers, rather than the pie tins and paper plates that they are often mocked as.
  • Plan 9 is the ninth attempt at stopping Earth from developing the Solaranite. At best it's the third: Attempt #1- Direct communication, that doesn't work because of "Atmospheric conditions in outer space". Attempt #2- The destruction of a small town. Attempt #3- Plan 9. It's called "Plan 9" because the aliens have several different plans on hand.
• Complete Monster: In the 2015 remake Plan 9, Eros is portrayed as a genocidal alien invader with none of the original version's pretense of good intentions. A horrendous bigot who takes one human's attempt to utilize Solaranite as a challenge to his species' superiority, Eros sets out to destroy the human race, starting in the small town of Nilbog. Using his mothership to raise the dead, Eros has his zombie drones murder every person they come across, intending to blanket the world with rays that will bring the countless dead under his control, until the entirety of Earthling civilization is extinguished. Personally murdering Chief Simpson, as well as several soldiers sent to end the invasion, Eros manages to capture the heroine Lucy, taking sadistic pleasure in revealing her own role in the deaths of her fellow citizens, before attempting to take her back to his home planet, where he plans to torture her for the secrets of Solaranite. A calculating, brutal mass-murderer who doesn't even bat an eye at the deaths of his own people, Eros is driven by nothing more than a malignant loathing for the human race.
• Cult Classic: Thanks to its So Bad, It's Good nature.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Ruler, thanks to Bunny Brickenridge’s “I’m so done with this shit” performance. He somehow manages to look like the most apathetic and competent person onscreen.
  • Old Man/Ghoul Man both for being a hilarious Fake Shemp, but also because in the scant few moments where Bela Lugosi is actually onscreen, he gives a legitimately good performance, making the most of his final film.
  • Inspector Clay and Vampire Girl are well remembered for their sluggish movements and blank stares. The former also has Tor Johnson’s unintelligible accent going for him. The latter gets points for Vampira being the only cast member who was wise enough to reject the lines.
  • Criswell is also one of the more entertaining parts due to his hamtastic performance and dialogue.
  • Lt. Harper gets constant laughs for his Reckless Gun Usage and being a contender for the film’s biggest Captain Obvious.
• Fight Scene Failure: The fight between Eros and Jeff in the finale mostly consists of the two just shoving each other around and throwing laughably unconvincing punches, while random explosions happen around them. On top of that, the start of the fight ends up being flubbed, creating the impression that Jeff for some reason decided he wanted to beat Eros up instead of the fight starting as the result of Eros trying to break free.
• Ham and Cheese: Dudley Manlove as Eros. Criswell counts too.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In real life, Criswell had a speech impediment, and couldn't pronounce certain words. He had to write all of the narration himself, because only he knew what he could enunciate properly. This is why he delivers his dialogue so oddly.
  • The Reality Subtext of Bela Lugosi's death makes some of the opening narration less funny. The part about how death is a shock even when we know it is coming, is very likely a reflection of Ed Wood's reaction to losing his friend. It is particularly poignant in the clip of the Old Man smelling the flowers outside his house, and leaving "never to return again."
  • Ed Wood's cameo as a drunken bum, which is pretty much what he would become in his later years.
  • The multiple scenes of the "professional" pilots not even looking ahead while driving goes from hilarious to awkward when it cuts to a plane flying right over the Pentagon.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The aliens do the Wakanda salute.
  • The plot revolves around hyper-advanced aliens trying to destroy humanity for fear they'll develop an energy source that'll destroy the universe. One wonders why the heroes never thought to use drills against them.
• Inferred Holocaust: Humans learn nothing from this ordeal, and it is implied that they will do exactly what the aliens feared, hence Criswell's warning at the end. Plan 9 is to stop humanity building a "solaranite bomb" and destroying the universe. Yet Plan 9 fails. What does this mean for the universe? Given that it is the Plan 9 Universe, total destruction may be merciful.
• Love to Hate: Eros is our main villain, and proves quite entertaining, thanks to being dumb even by this movie's standards and Dudley Manlove Chewing the Scenery in contrast with the other actors' Dull Surprise. In another film, his Smug Snake attitude may have been annoying, but here, it only adds to our enjoyment as we see him utterly failing in his mission.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Ruler is the dignified and enigmatic leader of the aliens, who wishes to prevent mankind from destroying the universe. When attempts to negotiate with Earth fail, the Ruler endorses Plan 9, having his subordinate Eros bring several humans back from the dead and dispose of any witnesses. As a show of power, he has Eros send one of the dead recruits to attack a house, then hit him with a beam that will vaporize him, planning to use this distraction to raise an army of the dead to march on Earth's capitals. Always keeping his cool, the Ruler is quick to adapt to setbacks, and correctly anticipates that Plan 9 will fail due to Eros's incompetence. Taking command of Eros's other ships and keeping them in reserve to ensure minimal losses, the Ruler ends the film still at large and able to proceed with his plans.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Future events such as these will affect you in the future" and several other Department of Redundancy Department lines.
  • "You see? YOU SEE? Your stupid minds! Stupid! STUPID!"
  • Tor Johnson's damn blank-angry face when he becomes a zombie has achieved this status, even becoming a mask!
  • "Visits? Well, that would indicate visitors!"
  • "Ball it up in Albuquerque?"
• Misblamed: Of all the mistakes in the movie, one that you can't lay at Ed Wood's feet is the boom mic shadow and visible script in the airplane cockpit, which were cropped out in the original widescreen release as Wood intended.
• Narm: It would be charitable to list only the most obvious example: One of the zombies is constantly covering its face.
• Nightmare Retardant: The ghouls really aren't very scary. Clay's keeps the same half-angry, half-emotionless look on his face the whole film and the ghoul man covering up his face the entire time ruins any suspense involved in their scenes. Vampira fares a bit better than those two, but that's not saying much, as her stiff movements and blank stare are still quite hilariously awkward as well.
• Older Than They Think: Criswell's opening line — "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives" — is often held up as one of Wood's classically clunky lines. In actual fact, Criswell used that as the intro line for his TV show for several years before Plan 9 was filmed (and continued to do so afterward), though he usually gave it a much wryer delivery than he does in Plan 9 — witness it in action in his appearance on the Johnny Carson New Year's Special in 1966. In fact, all of the narration was written by Criswell himself.
• So Bad, It's Good: Time has been very kind to the movie, and its longstanding status as "worst movie ever made" is usually given in jest by cinemaphiles, as while it's certainly not a good film, any fan of shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Best of the Worst can readily vouch that there are far, far worse movies out there than Plan 9 that aren't even a fraction as amusing or watchable. VideoHound's Cult Flicks and Trash Pics describes Plan 9 as a movie "that has become so famous for its own badness that it's now beyond criticism."
• Special Effect Failure: The tombstones wobble when people hit them. Also, the flying saucers which are square when they land and are visibly suspended from strings.
• Spiritual Successor: Hilariously, this film, the legendary bad fifties sci-fi movie, has almost exactly the same plot as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), one of the quintessential sci-fi films of the era, just without the budget, script, talent, production values, etc.
• Strawman Has a Point: If, and only if, such a device that could blow up not only the world but the universe were plausible — then these visiting aliens would have a good point in trying to prevent it from being built. They really need to work on their methods though. It's actually said that they had attempted more sensible methods, but the humans would not cooperate. Hence why this was Plan 9 rather than Plan 1.
• Woolseyism:
  • The fact that some subtitled and dubbed versions have better writing than the actual movie is less of a show of the translators' skills and more damning evidence of the movie's own ineptitude. Just being able to truncate the redundant dialogue and make some phrases sound much more natural is an improvement already.
  • The Hungarian dub tried to avoid improving the film by having random people working for the DVD publishing company perform the voices rather than professional actors. It's usually agreed that this was a bad example of Woolseyism, as making the dub suck on purpose took away from the film's charmingly inept sincerity.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The alien ruler is, for whatever reason, wearing what appears to be a Renaissance fair tunic with a crest of a halberd on it, the exact opposite of what a highly-advanced alien would wear. Makes you wonder if they just went with whatever outfits were lying around.

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