Plan 9 From Outer Space
So much has been written about this movie. There are books written about this movie. There are numerous documentaries about it. It's studied in college classes. You can find information about this movie all over the web. So, it seems rather pointless for me to analyze it. I will just share a couple of my viewpoints on it.
It is not even close to the worst movie of all-time. I have to say that I have seen hundreds of movies worse than Plan 9 and I have many movies in my collection that are worse than Plan 9. What is the criteria for judging? Is it bad acting? Is it how boring it is? Is it how cheap the sets are? Is it how bad the dialog is? It certainly can't be the entertainment value. The worst crime a movie can commit is to be boring. Plan 9 is anything but. It clips along at a nice pace, barely giving you enough time to ponder the insane dialog just thrown at you before the next batch of insane dialog is thrown at you. It jumps from female vampires to caped ghouls to 300 pound Swedish wrestlers to effeminate aliens to Liberaceish seers with lightning speed. It's day, it's night, it's day, it's night.
The result of all of this is one of the most engaging, surreal experiences ever put on film. Did Ed Wood intend for this movie to be surreal? Probably not. But he did have the vision to put vampires, aliens in medieval costumes, zombies, and Criswell all in the same movie. To say that this man's vision was unique is putting it mildly. The dialog is mind-boggling. But it is delivered in such a way that occasionally, you have to wonder if the guy is saying something so incredibly profound, that your stupid human mind can not comprehend it.
I guess I'll take this opportunity to say that if you watch this movie to make fun of it, then it's your loss. This movie should be appreciated as a unique viewing experience. If you're wasting your time looking for flaws, you're missing out on the beauty of the pure escapism that this movie offers. If you had any imagination, you wouldn't see cardboard tombstones or strings on the flying saucers. Ed Wood didn't care about this stuff. He had imagination. Maybe he had more of a suspension of disbelief than most others are capable of and wrongly projected it onto others. If you need to have everything laid out for you in perfect detail, than you lack the imagination to appreciate an Ed Wood movie. You can watch the movie and get a good laugh. Those of us who appreciate the movie on a different level, those of us who don't notice the flaws, can appreciate it on a different level. (I had to laugh when rereading that last statement since it sounds so Woodsian. I think I'll just leave that as written.) To me, nothing is "so bad that's it's good". Bad is bad and good is good. Plan 9 From Outer Space is good. I've watched it countless times and it still holds my attention from beginning to end and it still sucks me in like a giant sponge and doesn't let me go until the end credits start rolling. That doesn't sound so bad to me. And if anybody is wondering if I'm joking, I'm not. I'm deadly serious and I give the movie a 5.