Review of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) by Kris W — 14 Nov 2010

"Unspeakable Horrors From Outer Space Paralyze The Living And Resurrect The Dead!".

"Aliens Resurrecting The Dead! Flying Saucers Over Hollywood!".

"The worst movie of all time is finally available on video for more laughs than you got from Monty Python!"[video release].

"As the screen's greatest shock star Bela Lugosi is back to haunt the Earth in a terrifying revelation of things to come!".

Famous for being considered the "worst film of all time", it is sooo bad it is actually good and has gone on to become a cult classic. The film Ed Wood intended to make and the one that was made may not be the same, but it's a typical 50's cautionary tale of humands destroying their planet, as well as others. Having seen the film Ed Wood, it makes you almost feel bad for him, tried so hard to make a movie that would connet with people, and it just never worked.

Funded by a Baptist church, several members of the cast let themselves be baptized.

Bela Lugosi appears in footage shot just before his death, but with no script in mind. Edward D. Wood Jr. wrote the script to accommodate all the footage shot in a cemetery and outside Tor Johnson's house in the new production. Lugosi was doubled by Tom Mason, Wood's wife's chiropractor, who was significantly taller than Lugosi, and played the part with a cape covering his face.

The film's original title was "Grave Robbers from Outer Space", but, supposedly, the Baptist ministers who financed the picture objected to it, so Edward D. Wood Jr. changed it to "Plan 9".

A video release, making note of the actor's death before production began, lists on the cassette box, "Almost Starring Bela Lugosi". This same box also touted the film as being "science fiction gold".

Bela Lugosi's role in the film is listed in the credits as "The Ghoul Man". In Edward D. Wood Jr.'s screenplay it is called "the Dracula character".

Bela Lugosi supplied his own costume. He wore one of the capes he used when portraying Dracula on stage.

One of the legends about the production of this film was that Edward D. Wood Jr. used everything from automobile hubcaps to pizza pans to pie tins and even paper plates as flying saucers. The truth is that he bought a number of children's plastic model kits of flying saucers for use as props.

This film was shot in late 1956. It took almost three years to find a distributor who would handle it(the film's copyright is 1957).

Contrary to popular belief, the detective that points his gun at himself several times was actually testing director Edward D. Wood Jr. to see if he would notice. Needless to say, Ed Wood didn't notice.

Revealing mistakes: The grass wrinkles and the gravestones flap in the wind and topple over.

Continuity: The white wicker patio furniture moves itself from the patio to the bedroom.

Revealing mistakes: Ghoul Man is played by Bela Lugosi in some scenes and Tom Mason in others (see trivia entry).

Revealing mistakes: When the saucer flies across the cemetery in the beginning of the movie, actors knock over headstones as they fall.

Revealing mistakes: The inside door of the small saucer is the same as the outside door (there is the same ladder on the left hand side of the hatch). Obviously the exterior walls of the saucer were inverted to provide the interior set. The hatch itself is the same as the hatch on the airplane cockpit, and in the interplanetary headquarters.

Factual errors: The tombstones are in the cemetery are too close together for there to be room for bodies.

Revealing mistakes: In the cockpit scene, the curtain separating the cockpit from the rest of the plane is rustled, and you can catch glimpses of the stewardess behind it. It's obvious she's waiting for her cue, even though she shouldn't be anywhere near the cockpit at that moment.

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): General Roberts says that the alien radio messages are garbled by "atmospheric conditions in outer space." The vacuum of space has no "atmosphere.".

Revealing mistakes: Just before Inspector Clay resurrects, and the dirt falls back into the open grave, you can see there is a blanket underneath the dirt, which is used to pull down the dirt.

Revealing mistakes: In the cockpit scenes, the pilot sitting on the left is reading his lines from a script on his lap.

Factual errors: The pilot sitting on the left in the cockpit scenes calls in to the air traffic control tower using a candlestick telephone. Pilots use hand held CB radios for communication purposes.

Factual errors: The mortars used by U.S. soldiers inaccurately nearly hit.

The UFOs, which are hundreds of miles in the air. Mortar shells can only achieve the altitude of 60 meters.

[first lines].

Criswell: Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?

The Ruler: Plan 9? Ah, yes. Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary gland of the recently dead.

Air Force Captain: Visits? That would indicate visitors.

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

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

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

Lieutenant John Harper: Modern women.

Colonel Tom Edwards: They've been like that all down through the ages. Especially in a spot like this.

Eros: You do not need guns.

Jeff Trent: Maybe we think we do.

Paula Trent: ...A flying saucer? You mean the kind from up there?

Jeff Trent: Yeah, either that or its counterpart.

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.

Lieutenant John Harper: I'll bet my badge that we haven't seen the last of those weirdies.

Criswell: [narrating] ... All of us on this earth know that there is a time to live, and that there is a time to die. Yet death is always a shock to those left behind. It is even more of a shock when Death, the Proud Brother, comes suddenly without warning. Just at sundown, a small group gathered in silent prayer, around the newly-opened grave of the beloved wife of an elderly man. Sundown of the day; yet also the sundown of the old man's heart, for the shadows of grief clouded his very reason... The funeral over, the saddened group left the graveside. It was when the gravediggers started their task that strange things began to take place.

Criswell: [narrating] ... The grief from his wife's death became greater and greater agony. The home they had so long shared became a tomb, a sweet memory of her joyous living. The sky to which he had once looked was now only a covering for her dead body. The ever-beautiful flowers she had planted with her own hands became nothing more than the lost roses of her cheeks. Confused by his great loss, the old man left that home... never to return again!

[brakes screech and the old man screams].

Criswell: [narrating] At the funeral of the old man, unknown to his mourners, his DEAD WIFE was watching!

Gravedigger: You hear anything?

Gravedigger: Thought I did.

Gravedigger: Don't like hearing noises, especially when there ain't supposed to be any.

Gravedigger: Yeah, kinda spooky-like.

Gravedigger: Maybe we're getting old.

Gravedigger: Well, whatever it is, it's gone now.

Gravedigger: That's the best thing for us too, gone.

Gravedigger: Yeah, let's go.

Lieutenant John Harper: But one thing's sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible.

Paula Trent: I've never seen you in this mood before.

Jeff Trent: I guess that's because I've never been in this mood before.

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?

Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots.

Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.

Eros: No, you hold on. First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, there's no such thing.

Jeff Trent: I'm muzzled by army brass!

Jeff Trent: Ah, what's the use of makin' a fuss. Last night I saw a flyin' object that couldn't a possibly been from this planet, but I can't talk about it. I'm muzzled by Army Brass. I can't even admit I saw the thing!

Jeff Trent: They here, they're a fact. And the Public oughta know about it!

Patrolman Kelton: ...From all I've seen tonight, guns won't do any good. Clay's dead, and we buried him. How are we gonna kill someone who's already dead? *Dead*! And yet there he stands!

Paula Trent: Now toddle off and fly your flying machine.

Colonel Tom Edwards: ...Why, a particle of sunlight can't even be seen or measured.

Eros: Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can *explode* one. A ray of sunlight is made up of *many* atoms!

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

Eros: [with disgust] Stronger. You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!

Jeff Trent: That's all I'm taking from you!

[pistol-whips Eros upside the head].

Tanna: Eros, do we *have* to kill them?

Eros: Yes.

Tanna: It seems such a waste.

Eros: Well, wouldn't it be better to kill a few now than, with their meddling, permit them to destroy the entire universe?

Tanna: You're always right, Eros.

Eros: Of course. But those are not my words; those are the words of the Ruler.

Jeff Trent: You fiend.

Eros: I, a fiend? I am a soldier of our planet. I, a fiend? We did not come here as enemies.

Eros: It's because of men like you that all must be destroyed.

Colonel Tom Edwards: You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it?

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.

Lieutenant John Harper: He's mad.

Tanna: Mad? Is it mad that you destroy other people to save yourselves? You have done this. Is it mad that one country must destroy another to save themselves? You have also done this. How then is it "mad" that one planet must destroy another who threatens the very existence-...

Eros: [shoves her roughly aside] That's enough.

[to the humans].

Eros: In my land, women are for advancing the race, not for fighting man's battles.

[On what that strange sound was].

Lieutenant John Harper: It was a saucer.

Patrolman: A flying saucer?

Colonel Tom Edwards: For a time we tried to contact them by radio but no response. Then they attacked a town, a small town I'll admit, but never the less a town of people, people who died.".

Inspector Clay: I'm a big boy now, Johnny.

Jeff Trent: You promise you'll lock the doors immediately?

Paula Trent: I promise. Besides, I'll be in bed before a half hour's gone... with your pillow beside me.

Jeff Trent: My pillow?

Paula Trent: Well, I have to have something to keep me company while you're away. Sometimes in the night, when it does get a little lonely, I reach over and touch it. Then it doesn't seem so lonely anymore.

Patrolman Larry: Well, that's why you're a detective, Lieutenant, and I'm still a uniformed officer.

General Roberts: [the General is explaining why a transmission from the aliens has been cut short] "Thats the end of that one. Atmospheric conditions in outer space often interfere with transmitting".

Eros: With your ancient, juvenile minds you have developed explosives too fast for your minds to conceive what you are doing. You are on the verge of destroying the entire universe. We are a part of that universe. This is our last...

[cuts off].

Tanna: What do you think will be the next obstacle the Earth people will put in our way?

Eros: Well, as long as they can think - we'll have our problems.

Eros: You know, it's an interesting think when you consider... the Earth people, who can think, are so frightened by those who cannot: the dead. Well... our ship should be regenerated. We better get started.

Lieutenant John Harper: It was a saucer.

Patrolman Larry: A flying saucer? What makes you say that?

Lieutenant John Harper: You remember the noise we heard the other night?

Patrolman Larry: We were knocked to the ground, how could I forget?

Lieutenant John Harper: Exactly, but you're not remembering that sound.

Patrolman Larry: There you're wrong, Lieutenant. I'm with a fact the sound is similar, but what about the blinding light?

Lieutenant John Harper: Well haven't you heard? Many times a saucer hasn't had a glow, or a light of any kind for that matter.

Patrolman Larry: That proves it! What next Lietenant?

Lieutenant John Harper: Kelton, Get down there and check it out?

Patrolman Kelton: Well, how do I do that sir?

Lieutenant John Harper: By going down there and checking it out!

Patrolman Kelton: Aww, why do I always get the spook details?

Criswell: My friend, you have seen this incident, based on sworn testimony. Can you prove that it didn't happen?

Criswell: Perhaps, on your way home, someone will pass you in the dark, and you will never know it... for they will be from outer space.