PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (aka GRAVE ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE, 1959)

Streaming in Black & White, colorized, and Riff-Trax versions on Tubi!
Directed/Written by Edward D. Wood Jr.
Starring Gregory Walcott, Tom Keene, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson, Bela Lugosi, Vampira, Dudley Manlove, Joanna Lee, John Breckinridge.

I have seen my fair share of stinkers. Bad editing, bad acting, bad writing, just bad filmmaking is something I’ve grown accustomed to. When you review horror, they can’t all be gems, so I tend to look at films through a lens of what positive can I say about this film or how can I constructively criticize this film. I do this because I believe unlike any other genre, people who make low budget horror do so because they love the genre. So despite how amateur or low budget things get, I still see that spark of imagination shine through the crappy editing and remedial camerawork.

No other film deserves this type of rose-colored lens viewing as does PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. I remember trying to stay up late as a kid to watch this film. I remember for some reason being frightened as hell by Tor Johnson. Hell, just the name Tor Johnson was so cool to my brother and me, that we made up our own nightmarish stories about him before we even saw the film. Though I didn’t see the film until I was much older, when I was a kid, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE was a goal for me to see. Though I couldn’t quite stay up late enough to do so, I was a fan of PLAN 9 long before I even saw it.

Thing is, when I did catch it later on, I was hugely disappointed. This was before I had developed my taste in kitsch films, before I saw Tim Burton’s ED WOOD celebrating the manic genius of Ed Wood, before I learned to appreciate film. Now, this isn’t just a bad movie. It’s technically horrid with amateur effects (saucers on strings, foam gravestones, cheesy fright makeup), worse dialog, and a meandering script and plot only loosely thread together and even then still makes little sense. Wood’s mixture of sci fi and horror might have caused a scream or two in its heyday, but now only guffaws and chortles would be heard. But still, upon watching it, I couldn’t help but remember the kid in me all those years ago who saw PLAN 9 as the pinnacle of cool.

Alien invaders have come to wreak havoc on Earth by raising the dead. After a saucer is seen from an airplane, it hovers over a graveyard where a recent funeral was performed. Soon three corpses; Vampira, the Old Man (Bela Lugosi) and Tor “Mutherfuggin” Johnson wander around attacking cops, damsels in distress, and anyone else in their path. When a handful of humans make their way on board a spaceship, they uncover the 9th Plan the aliens have used and end up sending the ship off in flames, though not before scores and scores of discourse from the aliens lecturing the humans on how stupid they are.

Though it has been dubbed the worst movie of all time, I’ve seen much worse films than PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Sure it staggers all over the place when it comes to plot and both acting and effects are as bad as they come, but the undeniable love of the genre is evident in every frame, making my revisit of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE as enjoyable as those dreams I had of almost watching it as a child.

Check out the trailer here!!