So we've gone from #96 to #100 and now we go to #95. Just think of me as a blog Dr. Sam Beckett, leaping from blog to blog and hoping the next blog, will be the blog home. That made no sense. Anyhoo, like it or not we have leapt forward to #95, and the 2nd film from Ed Wood, (off course you would not know that as his first film in the list and #98 has not been written up yet!), Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).
As mentioned on previous blogs, a TV show which Wes and I love and which kinda inspired this list was a program called Mystery Science Theater 3000, (often abbreviated to MST3K). The show was about a human called Joel / Mike, (depending on which season it was), who would be forced to watch bad movies for reasons not really important at the moment. He and 2 robots would, in an attempt to keep their sanity whilst watching these films, take the piss out of them. The result is like a DVD which has the directors commentary switched on but which the director is poking fun at the movie, (please check MST3K out on you tube. It's not to everyone's suiting, but if you like it you'll end up loving it). I mention this because a film which was never done by MST3K, but which would have worked very well with the show's format was Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Plan 9 From Outer Space is a stereotypical 'B' movie. Aliens come to earth to try to stop humans from creating a weapon which would destroy the universe. And that basically is it. Well there is a little bit more, but not much. Plan 9 is actually the plan by the aliens to resurrect the dead in an attempt to scare the humans into listening to the aliens and to stop developing these weapons. Plan 8 was a petition, Plan 7 was a strongly worded letter, Plan 6 was a car boot sale and so on.
The film starts well. When one of the actors is called 'Dudley Manlove', you know you are in for a treat. A narrator starts to tell us the story in a very serious manner indeed. In fact, this is one of the joys of this film is that it tries to take it's self very seriously, which in turns sends itself up. What follows is then 1hr and 19 minutes of bad acting, bad storyline and bad sets.
Let's take the set for the cockpit of the aeroplane for example. It consists of 2 chairs, a shower curtain and 2 wooden actors. To make matters worse, the shower curtain is quite clearly used again for the interior of the mother ship and the cockpit is rearranged slightly and becomes the inside of the flying saucer! The graveyard has the worlds smallest church, (well the entrance, unfortunately the main building seems a bit, 'missing'). This brings us on nicely to the special effects. The flying saucers are hub caps suspended on a fishing line, (giving Lucasfilms nothing to worry about) and the mother ship resembles a boob. When the army are firing at the flying saucers, you expect the pictures of the firing rockets to have 'file footage' in the corner.
The aliens are a bit crap as well. Humanoid, (yawn), English speaking, (this is cleverly explained though by a universal language translator, which fortunately for us, has just been developed so we can understand them) and they are as butch as Alan Carr reading poetry in a ruff. The alien greeting is a bit funny too and reminds me of the little greeting dance by the Three Amigos in the film of the same name. The inside of the mother ship is one big curtain, (as mentioned earlier), which means that aliens entering and exiting looks a bit 'Morecambe and Wise'.
The story teeters along with the aliens resurrecting the dead. The dead then set about scaring the locals. One of the dead is played by Bela Lugosi, the famous actor from the 30's and 40's who starred in many horror films, notably as Dracula. His character is very much similar to Dracula and had Bela Lugosi not been dead whilst the majority of the movie was shot, probably would have given a very strong performance in a role he knows well. You do have to admire Ed Wood though, the death of one of your big name stars, would deter most directors, but not Ed Wood. Simply hire an actor who looks a very tiny little bit like him, get him to cover half of his face with his cape whenever he is on screen and insert some footage of Bela Lugosi which was intended for another film and bang, who notices?
I must note though, that Tor Johnson's zombie is fantastic. He looks scary, moves well and plays the part brilliantly. His features and build made this a good, (but rare), choice of casting by Ed Wood. The rest of the cast play zombies incredibly well also. The only problem being is that they were not meant to be playing zombies.
The final showdown between the aliens and the humans is brilliant. The alien, who now definitely has the humans attention, uses his big moment to impress on the human race the error they are making and how they could inadvertently destroy the entire universe, by having what can only be described as 'a hissy fit'. 'You're idiots' he whinges, 'stupid stupid stupid'. I mean, you can't argue with reasoned logic like that, could you?
And so the poor aliens could not convince the humans otherwise, their ship catches fire and they are killed as their flying saucer explodes. And then you feel sorry for the aliens. You see, their cause was a good cause, to stop stupid humans destroying themselves and the universe. I won't bore you with the science behind it, (unfortunately the film does), but it basically involves harnessing the sun's rays to cause a big explosion which would also destroy the sun. This, the aliens claim, would destroy the universe. The universe in 1959 only consisting of 1 star, our sun apparently. But whilst their methods were a bit, out of this world, (do you see what I did there?), it was only because us 'idiot' humans were not listening and so they went to extremes to get our attention. This then makes me not give a tinker's cuss about any of the humans and I rather wish by the end of the film, that the aliens had just found another sun, (if they looked, I'm sure they could have found another) and left the stupid humans to kill themselves, (or a least the character's in the movie).
I hope by now that you realise that I am playfully mocking this film, because in truth, I absolutely love it. When I think of the dirge I have had to watch so far, this film has been like a breath of fresh air. But this is because I love 2 things, old sci-fi low budget movies and MST3K. It is a real shame that MST3K never did this film as it is one of those films where you need a few mates, some beer and then you can all watch together and invite every one to make sarky comments throughout the movie. (The makers of MST3K have subsequently done a version, but now their 'show' is called 'Rifftrax' and they have 'riffed' Plan 9 From Outer Space. I have not seen it, and it is only available online, but they are good at what they do and I think it will be very good).
Now this premise does not translate well on this blog, nor did it translate too well on the live twitter commentary Wes and I did of the film. For example I tweeted, 'I wanna suck, your blood and I'd give that 10 mins if I was you'. This tweet makes no sense, nor does it here until I have to explain that in the scene I'm referring too, the vampire character enters the bedroom with his cape covering his face and approaches the scared women who is on the bed. In my mind it looks like he was using his cape to cover a bad smell and that he was coming to the bedroom fresh out of the loo. Sometimes gags don't work written down and you have 'to be there'. The laughter and fun you can get out of this movie, definitely falls into that category.
And so, very early on in this list, I am going to break a rule. I usually watch these films so you don't have to, but I encourage you and your friends to get together, have a bevvy and to give this film the full MST3K experience. Then you will enjoy it on so many levels....................
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