#28 Plan 9 From Outer Space

#28: Plan 9 From Outer Space

Plan 9 From Outer Space has pretty much become a bad movie cliche to the point where it transcends its sheer awfulness. Over the years it has become embraced in an almost cult classic way for being so over the top bad that people love it. From flubbed lines to a ridiculous plot to continuity mistakes left and right to obvious DIY special effects Plan 9 comes off as the equivalent of a student film made by someone who has never seen much less made a film in their life. In one of my first film classes on our first day we watched what is considered the best movie ever made (Citizen Kane) and on the second day compared it by watching the worst movie ever made...which ended up being Plan 9.

With all the notoriety of Plan 9 being dubbed by some as "the worst film ever made" you would think that I would have put it higher on a list of Bad Movies, however I kept two things in mind:

1. There are a lot of movies that have been made over the years for a lot more money than Plan 9 that are 100x worse.

2. Plan 9 has a sort of oddball charm about it and despite the obvious flaws you can tell that it was lovingly made to the best of Ed Wood's ability.

With all that out of the way it would be a huge oversight to not include Plan 9 when compiling any list of bad movies. The plot revolves around aliens resurrecting zombies and vampires to stop humans from creating a device that will destroy the universe. One of the main draws of the movie is that it is Bela Lugosi's last roll in that they only filmed a couple scenes of him as a vampire in daylight (for an entirely different film I might add). Seeing as Lugosi passed away after that Wood decided to continuously use the Lugosi footage no matter if it breaks continuity or makes sense at all and also use a stand in who looks nothing like Lugosi. Plan 9 is peppered with these amateur mistakes throughout the film whether it be homemade flying saucers on wires, Criswells hammy over the top narration, stilted dialogue that often contradicts itself, continuity being broken (usually day for night scenes); in fact it's safe to say that if you made a drinking game out of taking a shot during every mistake made in Plan 9 that by the end you would have alcohol poisoning.

When all is said and done Plan 9 From Outer Space is a down right awful movie that fully lives up to its less than stellar reputation, however it also shows that anyone who puts their mind to it can make a movie...for better or worse.

-Astroboy