Plan 9 From Outer Space is the grandaddy of all bad movies. It is the film that has worn the title Worst Movie Ever Made for the longest. One review of the movie said that it might not be the worst movie ever, but it is the most entertaining bad movie you’ll ever see. I think this description is the best. Its reputation was established in the late 1970’s through the book The Golden Turkey Awards and has continued to grow over the years. The Tim Burton film, Ed Wood, about its director has added to the lore of Plan 9.
Before I read the Golden Turkey books, I had heard about this film and was able to catch it on cable TV in the early 1980’s. The problems with this film jump out at you on the first viewing. The basic story of the film is that aliens come to earth and raise dead people to form an army to take over the earth. Their army consists of a ghoulish woman, an old man and a fat police chief. The old man is portrayed by Bela Lugosi. Bela was dead by the time this film was made but the director had a few minutes of home movie footage of him walking around his house, wearing his Dracula cape and attending a funeral among others. The director was able to build the story around this footage and even gave Bela top billing. There were some additional scenes where he needed Bela but used his wife’s chiropractor as a stand-in. The chiropractor looked nothing like Bela. He was taller and had a completely different hairline. The chiropractor hid his face behind a cape in all his scenes.
There are tons of other things that are noteworthy about this movie. The script has insane dialog, the cemetery set has obvious cardboard tombstones, the cockpit of a plane has cheap, fake steering mechanisms and a shower curtain to separate it from the rest of the plane and visible strings holding flying saucers are just some of issues that make this film so entertainingly bad.
I came to love this film soon after I saw it the first time. It was one of the first films I ever bought on video tape. We used recording of the dialog as sounds on our family computer over the years. Our kids were raised hearing the following lines:
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
One thing’s sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible.
Plan 9 continues to be one of the Wheeler family’s favorites. The Rifftrax guys (Members of Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast) have done a few riffs of this movie but we tend to like the original better.