PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE (1958) PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE (1958)


Okay, pals and gals--the first resident in our cinema cemetary is none other than Edward D. Wood's masterpiece (?) "Plan Nine From Outer Space", universally recognized as being the worst movie of all time (or is it? Try sitting through "Reptilicus" or "Manos: The Hands of Fate" sometime...). For the benefit of those who've lived in a cave without a VCR the last few dozen or so years, here's the scoop on Ed Wood's magnum opus...

Before we get to the story in "Plan Nine" (or rather, what passes for one...), we are introduced by the reknowned quack-mystic Criswell, who intones: "Greetings, my friends! We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives! And remember my friends...future events, such as these, will affect YOU, in the future!" (This was how he introduced his television program. No lie.) He eventually warms to the topic: "Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friends...can your heart stand the shocking truth behind GRAVE ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE?" (Wood's original--and preferred--title.) With such a build-up like that, we can surely expect a story of truly bizarre proportions. You bet.

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Our Story begins at a funeral for Bela Lugosi's wife; it must be a silent ceremony, since the minister delivering the services (he's reading from his bible) isn't moving his lips. Shortly following the services, a flying saucer (played by a hubcap) lands at that cemetary and, wouldn't you know, revives Bela's recently-buried wife,(played by Vampira, a TV horror-movie hostess and the Elvira of her day) who then scares her grave-diggers to death...or something.

Meanwhile, Bela Lugosi is still mourning the death of his thin-as-a-toothpick wife; blinded by grief, he walks offscreen and is conveniently hit by a car (offscreen, of course...) Soon, he's buried inside a crypt that is way too small for anyone to be buried in, let alone the four mourners who squeeze out (maybe it's like a TARDIS...). One of the mourners discovers the corpses of the two gravediggers from early on; why they weren't re-animated is still a mystery to me...

The police (led by 400-lb. former wrestler Tor Johnson) rush to the scene of the crime. In spite of the victims' death by fright Lieutenant Harper (Duke Moore), in a deduction worthy of Hercule Poirot, observes that "it looks like a bobcat tore into 'em!" Inspector Clay (Tor) tells his officers that he's going to "loog aroundt a while" in search of clues (or donuts--you know how cops are...) As Inspector Clay is looging aroundt, Mrs. Bela is joined once more by Mr. Bela--sort of. Actually, the "Ghoul Man" who emerges from Bela's crypt is in fact another actor (Mrs. Wood's chiropractor) who is filling in for the real Bela (who actually died a couple years earlier--the footage of Lugosi in this movie is home-movie material Wood shot with Lugosi). The fact that the ersatz Bela is about a foot taller and keeps his face covered at all times with his cape matters not a whit; soon he and Vampira surround Inspector Clay, who shoots them before they actually do anything. Our re-animated couple do-in the portly policeman, but fear not, he is revived soon afterwards (in possibly the movie's only truly effective scene)...

 Meanwhile, at the home of airline pilot Jeff Trent (his house just happens to be next-door to the cemetary--you can bet his neighbors don't throw loud parties late night...), Jeff relates to his wife Paula (Mona McKinnon) about something that happened earlier today: on a routine flight, Jeff and co-pilot Danny saw...you guessed it...a flying saucer! "Saucers?" Paula inquires. "You mean the kind from up there?" "Yeah," Jeff replies, "or its counterpart!" Jeff then tells Paula that after landing his flight, he was persuaded by "big Army brass" to keep his mouth shut about the incident. (Could THIS have inspired Chris Carter? Hmmm...) Just then, saucers zoom over the Trent house. Coincidence, or sloppy screenwriting? You decide.

Soon, out on a space-station that resembles a Tootsie-Pop minus the stick, we are introduced to the waspishly-effeminate Ruler (John Breckinridge), who has been spearheading the saucers' activities. He then sends in Eros (Dudley Manlove) and Tanna (Joanna Lee), the aliens who've been stirring up trouble at the nearby cemetary; it turns out they've stumbled at eight previous times to contact us earth-folk, and have now resorted to using the dreaded Plan 9. "Ah yes," The Ruler replies. "Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long-distant (sic) electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary glands of recent dead..." They are instructed to return to earth using only the three revived corpses and only one saucer; with this kind of planning, it's easy to see why the other eight plans bombed so badly...

Before long, the aliens send the pseudo-Bela out to spook the Trent residence. Lt. Harper (the poor-man's Dick Tracy) and Army Colonel Tom Edwards (Tom Keene)are also there to get the low-down on what's been going down at the nearby boneyard. When the not-quite-Bela shuffles in--with his cape over his face, natch--Eros and Tanna fire their "decomposure-ray" at The Ghoul Man, reducing him to a skeleton clad in an opera cape. Before long, Jeff, Lt. Harper, and Col. Edwards decide to get to the bottom of things at the cemetary. Harper puts his top-cop, Patrolman Kelton (Paul Marco), in charge of guarding Mrs. Trent. Kelton is the prerequisite bumbling "comic relief" in this movie; needless to say, he makes Barney Fife look like Sherlock Holmes. Soon, while Jeff, Harper and Edwards are gone, Kelton is overcome by his late superior, Inspector Clay, who then kidnaps Mrs. Trent.

"Highly advanced beings from another planet?" I don't think sooooo...

Soon, our intrepid trio of saucer-hunters stumble upon Eros' ship. When the Earthmen meet our two would-be invaders, Eros gives our heroes the scoop on why he and Tanna have been monkeying around in the graveyard: to save us from destroying ourselves (after reviving three corpses and having destroyed a town earlier, his claim sort of rings a bit false). It turns out the human race is in the process of discovering the ultimate weapon, the Solaranite bomb. When asked just what the hairy-heck a Solaranite bomb is, Eros attempts to explain:

 Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.

(A quick aside: Eros--or more likely, Ed Wood--apparently has the concepts of "universe" and "solar-system" mixed up here, as well as the fact that sunlight is composed of waves, rather than particles. But I'm not here to belabor scientific accuracy in an Ed Wood movie, and neither are you for that matter, so let's just continue...)

But Earthmen being Earthmen, Eros' lecture goes over the heads of Trent and his comrades (and, it must be admitted, some of the audience)...

Jeff Trent: So what if we do develop this Solaranite bomb? We'd be even a stronger nation than now.

Eros: "Stronger." You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid! (Jeff then bitch-slaps Eros into next week...well, not really into next week, but you get the idea...)

Ah, but the aliens have the upper hand: Eros shows Trent that his wife has been abducted by Inspector Clay--he's right outside the ship, in fact. Before long, though, Clay is incapacitated by Patrolmen Kelton and Jamie(Conrad Brooks), and Jeff takes advantage of this to escape. A fight ensues, alien equipment (played by war-surplus junk) is thrown, and the inside of the saucer goes up in flames. The Earthmen escape in time to see Eros' spaceship (played by, yes, a flaming paper plate) take off; it goes up in a spectacular explosion above the skies of Los Angeles.

Then Criswell...you do remember Criswell, right?...wraps up the movie in his unique fashion (he wrote all his material for this movie, but it's easily on a par with Wood's dialogue):

"My friends--you have just witnessed this tale, given through sworn testimony...Can you prove it didn't happen?...We once laughed at the horseless carriage...radio...vitamins, and even television! And now we laugh at outer space...God help us in the future!"

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In spite of the description I've just given, no prose account can do "Plan Nine From Outer Space" justice. "There are times in every man's life when he can't even believe his own eyes!" Criswell states in his narration, and it applies well to this movie; "Plan Nine" deserves to be suffered through at least once by anyone who calls himself a movie fan.

Much has been said by many (especially the snooty Micheal Medved in his contemptable "Golden Turkey Awards") about the rock-bottom cheapness of "Plan Nine" and how it affected the movie: scenes shift instantly from day to night to day again because Wood couldn't afford day-for-night processing, for instance. The cemetary where most of the action takes place is too obviously a set: a furry dropcloth with trees and cardboard tombstones that wobble at the slightest touch are meant to give the impression that, yes, this is a graveyard. The patio furniture that Jeff and Paula Trent have out on their porch can also be seen inside their bedroom. The cockpit of Jeff's airliner is simply conveyed: a doorway with a shower curtain, two chairs, and two control-wheels for the pilots...truly minimalist set-design, to say the least.

 Then there's Wood's skills as a both a writer and a director. According to all I've ever read about the guy, Wood didn't have very much talent in either area of expertise, but he had an endless supply of sheer enthusiasm, not unlike Mickey Rooney in those old movies where he'd get the other kids together (along with Judy Garland) and whip up a huge Busby Berkely-choreographed production. The differance here, of course, is that Wood had to scrape by on what was available to him...which wasn't much.

Wood's style of writing is truly amazing. His unique style adds to the (unintentional) hilarity of "Plan Nine"; his dialogue ranges from the curiously-redundant...

 Colonel Edwards:This is the most fantastic story I've ever heard.

 Jeff Trent: And every word of it's true, too.

Colonel Edwards: That's the fantastic part of it.

...To the outright surreal...

Paula Trent: Now, don't you worry. The saucers are up there. The graveyard is out there. But I'll be locked up safely in there.

...And on and on and on. This film is a treasure-trove of blundered syntax and badly-delivered lines; Paula Trent's above reassurance was supposed to be delivered with her head moving first up, then to the boneyard, then the Trents' house...but Mona McKinnon's head stays as steady as a rock throughout.

Wood the director doesn't do much better than Wood the writer. Somehow, he doesn't seem to bring all these peculiar components in his story to gel together as a coherent unit, as if he took a whole bunch of different elements that he thought would make a spooky film and slapped 'em together like some kind of weird celluloid collage (the Lugosi footage, for example). On the other hand, even worse films have been made that are even more incoherent than "Plan Nine" by directors who seemed to care a lot less than Wood did towards what was destined to be shown on that silver screen ("The Beast of Yucca Flats" would be a perfect example).

So then...after all is said and done, we must ask ourselves this searing question: is "Plan Nine"The Worst Movie of All Time? Well, there's no denying that it's among the cheapest movies of all time--one screening will confirm that statement. I suppose it depends on your definition of what a "bad" movie really is. My own definition of a truly bad movie would be one that cares so little about its audience that it becomes that thing no movie should ever be...dull. And in spite of...or in this special case, maybe because of...all of its many failings, "Plan Nine From Outer Space" manages to make its modern audience laugh its collective ass off, entertaining as very few films have ever managed before. That may also very much apply to the other movies collected on this website...these are flicks that do manage to entertain in spite of themselves. As long as they're fun to watch, that's really what matters.

Ed Wood made movies that actually were even worse than "Plan Nine" (rent "Glen or Glenda" or the Wood-scripted "Orgy of the Dead" and you'll see what I mean), but this strange little grade-z movie remains his most watchable movie...something more than "The Worst Movie of All Time" can ever imagine achieving. Inflict it on your friends tonight!

--Jeff "Widget" Myers

CREDITS:Director, Producer, Screenplay: Edward D. Wood, Jr. Executive Producer: J. Edward Reynolds Associate Producers: Charles Burg, Hugh Thomas, Jr. Cinematography: William C. Thompson Editor: Edward D. Wood, Jr. Costume Design: Dick Chaney Make-Up: Tom Bartholemew, Harry Thomas (uncredited) Sound: Dale Knight Special Effects: Charles Duncan Assistant Director: Williard Kirkham Production Manager: Kirk Kirkham Music Supervisor: Gordon Zahler Electrical Effects: Jim Woods.

CAST: Jeff Trent: Gregory Walcott Paula Trent: Mona McKinnon Police Lieutenant John Harper: Duke Moore Colonel Tom Edwards: Tom Keene Patrolman Larry: Carl Anthony Patrolman Kelton: Paul Marco Inspector Daniel Clay: Tor Johnson Eros: Dudley Manlove Tanna: Joanna Lee The Ruler: John "Bunny" Breckinridge General Roberts: Lyle Talbot Danny: David DeMering Edith (stewardess): Norma McCarty Air Force Captain: Bill Ash Reverend: Rev. Lynn Lemon Man in Cemetary: Ben Frommer Woman in Cemetary: Gloria Dea Policeman: Conrad Brooks "Vampire Girl": Vampira (Malia Nurmi) "Ghoul Man": Bela Lugosi Criswell: Himself Gravediggers: J. Edward Reynolds and Hugh Thomas Jr. (uncredited) Farmer Colter: Karl Johnson (uncredited) "Ghoul Man" (Bela Lugosi's understudy): Tom Mason (uncredited) Mourner at Old Man's Funeral: Edward D. Wood, Jr. (uncredited).

1958; A Reynolds Pictures production for Distributors Corporation of America release. Running time: 79 minutes. Black and white. Original working title: "Grave Robbers From Outer Space".

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