Plan 9 From Outer Space

Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Gregory Walcott
Dir: Edward D. Wood
Running Time: 79 mins
Certificate: PG
Release date 22nd July 1952 (US)

The first time I saw this I thought to myself, “How can someone direct something to inept, so obviously awful and believe this is the greatest thing since Citizen Kane?” Was there a blindness that Ed Wood was suffering from, that he couldn’t see how amateurish this was? I suppose he was suffering from the same illusions of grandeur that those contests on the X Factor suffer, who think they are the best thing since Whitney Houston, and then they open their mouths and a sound that can only be described as blood-curdling exits, and then even when they are told they are useless, they still think they are brilliant.

So why do I love it so?. There is so much on offer here, whether it be the cardboard gravestones, the hubcap flying saucers, the expert use of a shower curtain, I could go on, but every time you watch it, you find something different to openly laugh at. The dialogue is truly classic:

“Visits? That would indicate visitors.”

“But one thing's sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible.”

There’s so much more but you have to see it to believe it. From the hoax beginning of Criswell warning us that what we are about to see is based on sworn testimony, you are on a rollercoaster ride of ridiculousness, and there’s plenty of games you can play while watching: The Night and Day game; Which is Bela? Who is reading from a script? What is Tor Johnson actually saying?

What makes this almost impossible to resist is that modern day film makers, especially those who commission those terrible monster movies that the SyFy channel churn out every five minutes, haven’t learnt from Ed Wood’s mistakes and they still believe that theirs is a fine, entertaining work, just like Wood’s did. He believed that his film was going to ignite the world. Well it did. It has been studied, poked, pruned by experts and fans alike but the truth of the matter is this. Just take it for what it is: a gloriously outlandish mess that you can sit with your friends with a huge bowl of popcorn and laugh at the complete ineptitude of the proceedings. There is one other film you can do the same to, and that is The Room (Oh we love The Room…but more about that at another time). We also love Plan Nine!