Youngblood at the Movies

I just finished watching a classic. No it wasn’t Gone With the Wind or Psycho or even a remotely well made movie. It’s a movie that I think all film students should see, not for its good qualities but as an example of what not to do. What I just watched was the worst movie of all time. I am of course talking about Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Oh, how I could make fun of this movie, and I will. But I’m going to, once again, try and give it a fair look and try and give Mr. Ed Wood as much credit as I can, because he needs all he can get.

First lets go over all the “legendary” mistakes that this gem has to offer. There’s the tombstone that falls over. In Ed’s defense it was made of cardboard so it was pretty likely to fall over whether someone fell on it or not. Then there’s the changing of day to night going from shot to shot. First it’s night and people are at the cemetery, then two bodies are discovered. Still night, the police get in their car at the police station (I have to add that the guy driving can’t open the door so he has to reach through the open window to unlock it), then as stated in the film “minutes later they arrive at the cemetery” and it is day, then they walk into the cemetery and it’s night again. Finally the flying saucers: Yes you can see the string holding them up. Legend has it that they were hubcaps, pie pans, pizza pans and paper plates, but they actually were kids model flying saucers. So there’s some credit towards Ed, he went for realism on that one.

Now going on to the script. I can’t give Ed any credit here at all. He can’t write. His dialoged is terrible and the story is just…it’s terrible. Here’s some examples of the dialogue: “Visits? That would indicate visitors”; “future events such as these will effect you in the future”; “Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible”; “they attacked a town, a small town I'll admit, but never the less a town of people, people who died”. I could go on forever, but I think you’ve got the gist of it.

Let’s talk about Bela Legosi’s scenes know. He died four days after filming started, but instead of re-shooting his scenes they just retooled the movie to almost, kind of, make sense with what they had. The same shot of Legosi running out of a bush is used 4 times. And the scene at the beginning with him smelling a flower was just a home movie that he and Ed Wood made and Ed found a way to get it in the movie. He had to, this was supposed to be Bela Legosi’s last movie. It was its selling point. So he had to figure out a way to get him in there. And speaking of that home movie, in it the narrator says that he’s grieving the loss of his dead wife. But in the scene before it he’s at a funeral and it say’s that it’s his brother who just died.

Now as much bad things are in this movie, you have to give Ed Wood credit for one thing: he had ambition. There’s no doubt about it. What other person would get all his friends baptized just so a church would fund his movie. And all these things like about inaccuracies like day to night and tombstones falling over, it’s not because he thought no one would notice it, he just couldn’t afford to re-shoot the scenes. Film costs money and that’s something that Ed didn’t have. The church wasn’t too keen on making a movie about grave robbers, and they weren’t about to give him more money to do it. Because he didn’t have any money he also couldn’t afford permits to shoot out in the street, so he shot as much as he could in the soundstage, which explains the day to night thing. All he had at the sound stage was a black backdrop and some clouds. Another way he cut his costs was using as much stock footage as he could. At least in this movie his use of the footage makes sense. In Glen or Glenda it makes no sense at all. Legosi’s sitting in a chair then suddenly there’s buffalo running. Make’s no sense.

So Ed did what he could with what he had: no money and a non-union crew. At least he was proud of the work he did. So for all Ed’s hard work scamming churches and cutting corners on costs, and giving me a whole lot of laughs I am giving Plan 9 from Outer Space ……1/2 out of 5.

Youngblood