PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE TOR JOHNSON COP MOVIE

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE TOR JOHNSON COP MOVIE

Let’s face it – most movie-type folks, when they put out a stinker, know that their movie isn’t going to win any awards, but Ed Wood was the opposite – he defended ‘Plan 9’ to the bitter end as a fantastical movie that could be a huge hit with movie-goers and a commercial success for him (the biographical film ‘Ed Wood’ sheds much light onto the director and his interesting life, focusing a sizable chunk of its time on ‘Plan 9’ related time). The bottom line is, ‘Plan 9’ is largely regarded as the worst movie of all time, and it owes a great deal of that title to the fact that it’s director so adamantly thought that it was going to be a success. I could spend tens of thousands of words here giving you little bits of trivia and telling you about the tales surrounding this movie. There have been interviews, retrospectives, websites, and even entire novel-length books devoted to how ‘Plan 9’ went so wrong. This just added to the haphazard “feel” of the movie in one shot, Lugosi would be rambling towards the camera in the graveyard in the daytime, and then the camera would change angles and the “Lugosi Stand-In” would be walking through what was very clearly a different graveyard set, in the nighttime no less! So, Wood had his chiropractor (who was definitely NOT the same height or body type as Lugosi) play Lugosi’s character in these other scenes, using the vampire cape draped over his arm to conceal his face and hide the fact that the actor underneath was in fact not Bela Lugosi. The character Lugosi played was a bigger piece of the film than the few scenes he had shot, and his character was needed in other scenes.

Lugosi passed away and Wood decided to write the rest of the movie around the scenes he’d already shot with him Wood couldn’t decide on the tone he wanted for the movie, so Lugosi’s vampire became an undead zombie (one of three total in the film, narrowly making this movie a “zombie film”) that had been reanimated by aliens that seemed to fly over Hollywood nightly, yet the general public could not recall seeing them. The scenes they had filmed were few: Lugosi looking distraught at a funeral, Lugosi skulking around a graveyard while making various Dracula-esue poses, and Lugosi sneakily entering a house (through the front door, granted, but he looked awfully sneaky while doing it). Lugosi had filmed only a few days worth of scenes for the at-that-time untitled movie, and Ed Wood had decided he wanted Lugosi to play a vampire-type character, most likely trying to feed of off Lugosi’s previous success at portraying Dracula on the big screen. Let me quickly give you a little more information about the scenes involving Bela Lugosi, as this is a part of this film that really intrigues me. It’s amazing to think that Wood seriously thought that he could cut all of these corners and skimp on all these costs and still produce a quality movie that people would want to see. But somehow the movie rides that fine line of being terrible without being boring it’s so bad, it’s actually fun to watch. The dialogue is a joke, with actors saying lines that not only make no sense, the actors clearly don’t even believe the things they are saying. The special effects are anything but special, with the prime example being the flying saucers going across the screen with strings clearly attached to them. The editing is haphazard, with sections going from night to day at random in mid-scene. ‘Plan 9’ is a film near and dear to my heart, but let’s not mince words here: the movie is an absolute disaster from start to finish. The resulting movie is an amazingly accurate guide on the exact wrong way a movie should look, feel, and sound. ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ is a movie that its director, Ed Wood, thought for sure would land in the “really good” category, but he was plagued with problems throughout the movie, including: a disastrous script that he refused to let anyone else re-write or add to one of his “name” stars, Bela Lugosi, died during production of the movie, but Wood simply re-wrote the script to fit what scenes had already been shot and he skimped on production costs, especially in the special effects and editing departments. There are a lot of good movies, too, but use whatever cliché you’d like: you can’t score a touchdown on every play, even the best have their off days, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, you can’t win ’em all…take your pick, the bottom line is that some movies are really good, some movies are average, and some movies are really bad.

Plan 9 from outer space tor johnson cop