The infamous "Plan 9 from Outer Space" was initially conceived as "Grave Robbers from Outer Space" until writer-editor-producer-director Ed Wood found financing for his masterpiece from Baptist minister J. Edward Reynolds (it took a meat packing executive to help him complete "Bride of the Monster"). Wearing his Dracula cape for what was intended for "The Vampire's Tomb," the late Bela Lugosi is shown emerging from the woods in three different shots, then skulking about someone's back door, while we first see him mourning at the funeral of his late wife before leaving his home one last time (this was actually the residence of Tor Johnson). If this was all the footage in the can that Wood had filmed for other projects, 3 silent minutes of a shattered Lugosi performance, then he must be congratulated for making certain the public would see it, billed above John Breckinridge and Lyle Talbot as 'Special Guest Stars.' Local television celebrities Vampira (as Vampire Girl) and would be prognosticator Criswell make their presence felt early on, the latter narrating off screen when necessary, while the former horror hostess appears very much in costume playing Lugosi's deceased wife, the first corpse to rise from the dead through alien means, Plan 9 to be exact (no light is shed on how the previous 8 fared). This may have been the first occasion when extraterrestrials brought back the living dead, two years before John Carradine's "Invisible Invaders," and over a decade before radiation was suggested in George Romero's Pittsburgh classic "Night of the Living Dead." Wood's story holds together as well as "Bride of the Monster," Gregory Walcott a headstrong pilot, former Western star Tom Keene assigned by Lyle Talbot's General to investigate flying saucers over Los Angeles, Duke Moore's Lieutenant in charge with the demise of Tor Johnson's Inspector Clay. The cemetery next to Walcott's home is a hive of activity, Dudley Manlove as Eros and Joanna Lee as Tanna the concerned invaders fearing the worst from mankind's acquisition of greater power in the wake of the hydrogen bomb. Far too entertaining to be erroneously labeled 'worst movie ever made,' plenty of quotable lines since exhausted from overuse, and Wood's all too real sincerity in the face of nuclear annihilation, younger viewers such as Joe Dante may have scoffed at its dirt cheap production values but no other director could have achieved so much with so little.
Review of Plan 9 from Outer Space
