Review of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) by Josh G — 20 Aug 2009

I saw Plan 9 From Outer Space a while back and have since decried the much-promulgated idea that it is the quote-unquote "worst movie ever made". Sure, it's bad, I'd tell the gawking crowds who would gather around my soapbox in the square, but there are certainly worse movies out there.

I still kind of feel that way, after watching the movie for a second time, but it's true that the seams are very easy to see. The repeated use of the same sound-stage setting for the graveyard, the poorly choreographed fight sequences, the bad line readings, the nonsensical plot - it's all there. And I saw a colorized version, which was colored in such a way to draw the viewer's attention to the sheet standing in for the sky, the strange photograph of an entirely different couple above the main character's bed, and so on.

Still, there's a story here: a group of aliens have come to Earth with the intent of freaking out the planet's inhabitants by raising the dead. Through the use of small electrode guns, they proceed to bring to life three recently deceased persons, all of whom mostly spend their time stumbling around and looking as zombie-ish as they can. Meanwhile, the inept police force tries to figure out what is going on while narrowly avoiding death at the hands of the dimwitted zombies.

The fact that there is a coherent central premise is a point in director Ed Wood's favor, even if the strands that make up that premise - like Criswell's opening monologue about events that take place in the future that you can't prove didn't actually happen in the future - are frayed beyond all recognition. The story of Plan 9's creation has become sort of romanticized, most famously through Tim Burton's own film-about-the-film Ed Wood. Nevertheless, the truth is that Ed Wood was a remarkably determined to get the film produced, and not even the death of one of the movie's stars was enough to deter him from following through on that dream.

Yes, the movie is inexplicably misogynistic and at one point the controls of an airplane are represented with strange plywood half-circles, but dammit if there isn't a deeper story here about man's tendency toward violence. Or something. Maybe it's just a B-movie trying to cash in on a seemingly sure-fire genre: science-fiction. If it weren't for the status that Plan 9 enjoys, what with its general "worst movie" label, what would it be? It would be a long-forgotten rip-off of much better films. It is only through the ineptitude of its makers that the film has gained any attention at all.

Which leaves a professional movie critic like myself to grade backward - much as the films of Uwe Boll lend one to do, I might add. Instead of looking at how bad the movie is, I find myself instead looking to see how bad it is not. It's plenty bad, sure, but would it have been as clumsily executed with a $40 million budget? Perhaps so, but given some of the awful movies being released even today, one wonders whether the field has been leveled some since 1959.