Plan 9 from Outer Space: 31 Days of Horror
For all of October, we will review horror films. Submit your requests here, and you may see your picks selected!
Plan 9 from Outer Space has erroneously been slapped with the label of “worst film ever made” time and time again, dating back to the ‘80s (which was easily a far too early time to make such a declaration, especially with what films would eventually be released). I’ve said this before many times, and will continue to do so: a terrible film that brings me laughs or entertainment is not the same kind of terrible film that doesn’t. Plan 9 has made me full of joy, and I can safely say that about many others. Like The Room before The Room, Plan 9 attracted audiences for ages that all celebrated its awfulness in every single way. Boom microphones are captured in shots. Set props fall over because they’re poorly made. The acting is appalling. The writing is completely nonsensical or redundant. Plan 9 is awful in every way. We all know that.
What helps make it so enjoyably bad is that it was made with love. Ed Wood just wanted to tell stories (not very good stories, but stories nonetheless). He did whatever it took to become the next big auteur, and he felt as though he owed cinema something great. After suffering other cinematic bombs, Wood just wasn’t cut out for making another picture. He tried his best anyway, approaching the Southern Baptist Convention with a request for funding for his then-latest flick. The Baptists he approached had their conditions, but were fine with his request. So, Plan 9 was saved, and sixty thousand smackeroos were used to make… well, whatever the end result was. This alien story dabbles with the undead in ways that are never fully explained. The last remnants of Bela Lugosi — before he passed — are featured at the beginning, but the stand-in for Lugosi (Wood’s wife’s chiropractor) looks nothing like the Dracula legend (even with his best self-masking efforts. Spaceships look like hubcaps or plates. The cemetery is like a carpet with styrofoam (or cardboard) headstones. I wish I was a fly on the wall of the Baptists’ first screening of this end result.
This is precisely all of us when we watch Plan 9.
Still, Wood wanted to make something, and Plan 9 is equivalent to a child playing with toys; what they’re making might not make sense, but their enthusiasm shines through anyway. There’s no malice, here. Wood wasn’t trying to make a ton of money for nefarious reasons, outside of wanting to make more films. I am glad that Wood is being celebrated, even if for reasons that weren’t his original intentions (although Glen or Glenda has been reassessed as the LGBTQ+ statement that it sought out to be). With Plan 9 from Outer Space, we might be indirectly championing his craft whilst laughing at its lifeless performances, atrocious dialogue, and diabolical effects. We’re still being whisked away by his film, for better or for worse.
For that, I cannot say that Plan 9 is the worst film ever made. In fact, it isn’t even close. Saving Christmas has driven me to pure anger. Battlefield Earth has rendered me literally sick with nausea. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie has bothered me that such putrid filmmaking even exists. Manos: The Hands of Fate is barely a film. Plan 9 From Outer Space is far too likeable — despite how much worse it is technically than some of the films I’ve brought up — to be crowned the worst. Hell, Ed Wood himself has made worse films. It just seems like the easy scapegoat for cinephiles who don’t want to discover worst films (I can’t say I blame them, to be honest). Regardless, I own a copy of Plan 9, and watch it as actual entertainment. It’s beyond poorly made, but it’s absolutely worth watching at least once (you’ll likely be watching it again and again, though).
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.