I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

The Best Worst Movie You'll Ever See

Plan 9 From Outer Space 

aka Graverobbers From Outer Space (1959)

It is quite impossible to just write a review about what is largely considered to be the worst film ever made. Ed Wood even received a posthumous award for being the worst director ever. So how can one criticize this movie - it would take pages and pages. Continuity? There is none. Plot? Thin to sheer at best. Acting? Non-existent. And it's a damn shame that it's the last film that the very great actor Bela Lugosi would be attached to. This film had a budget of $60,000 - in 1956 money. That would be $504,201.68 in 2012 dollars. Half a million is going to get you a low budget film - but it would be a hell of a lot better than this one. I have a personal theory: Most of that money probably went to persuade Mr. Lugosi to star in it, the rest to settle gambling debts or something - it sure didn't go into this movie.

Yes, Plan 9 (or Graverobbers, as it was supposed to be called) was horrible. And yet, if you want to look at it from the angle 'does it entertain' the answer is definitely yes. Especially if you're the type of person (and I am) that likes to tear movies apart and examine their flaws. You don't even have to try for this one - I was riffing all through the movie like my fave MST3K crew...

Very last footage of Mr. Lugosi.

Ah, Bela Lugosi. A true legend, a man who IS Dracula, no matter who played after him. He was in so many movies and did so well - but he was a human being. Meaning that illness and dependency on medication was his downfall. This doesn't make him any less of a man, just more human I guess. He had sciatic neuritis, which symptoms include pain, muscle weakness, and numbness or tingling. He suffered with this for years, so as a person battling fibromyalgia as well as ankylosing spondylitis I can totally relate. By the 1950's he was pretty ill, and dependent on morphine and methadone. In fact, during the movie's filming in 1956, Bela died. In the movie, the (silent) scene where he's outside his house picking a flower - that was the last footage ever shot of him before his death. Every other place you see him (the real him, not the incredibly dumb so-called double they kept substituting) was from silent footage that was actually shot for another movie which was scrapped. So Ed Wood was able to say Bela starred in his movie - barely.  If you ever see it, this is a sad moment in an awful film. Bela deserved so much better.

Not-so-great Criswell.

The movie begins with a narration by a man with the most ridiculous hair I've ever seen - overacting horribly. This would be Criswell, also known as The Amazing Criswell - he was a supposed psychic known for wildly inaccurate predictions. He was perfect for this part. In his over-the-top narrative he claims the following to be solemn testimony of the past, current and future presence of aliens on our planet. And apparently no one told him about the change of the movie's name - he introduces it as Graverobbers From Outer Space. 

Oh yeah, totally real.

The plot of the film involves extraterrestrial beings who are seeking to stop humans from creating a doomsday weapon that would destroy the universe, because humans are, as the male alien keeps repeating, "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" So Earth Girls Are Easy, Earth Boys Are Stupid. The saucers 'buzz' Hollywood so we get to see (I guess they wanted to keep it fair) a 1956 view of the ABC, CBS and NBC buildings. That was pretty cool. Also Eartha Kitt is billed at some nightclub but for the life of me I couldn't read which one...

I can fly a plane with no hands...

'Plan 9' is their brilliant scheme to raise the dead to, I dunno, teach the living a lesson? Nothing is really clear here, why zombies would teach us anything about not making weapons is not explained and if you expect anything to make sense, you're watching the wrong movie. It just keeps getting better and better - the shots alternate almost every other frame between day and night (like I said, no continuity whatsoever). The 'pilots' who first see the 'spaceship' and say it's shaped 'like a cigar' (Hmm, saucer shaped cigars?) are in a tiny cardboard room with no controls and their control stick, or wheel or whatever are actual half-circle cardboard cutouts that they don't even bother holding onto. See, this movie does have value - you laugh yourself sick by the silliness of it all...

Don't worry if you miss it, this is used many times.

Whenever they show the graveyard scenes, those are the most fun of all. The 'set' for the graveyard is very small so everyone is always crammed close together. The background isn't even a painting - just another piece of cardboard. The ground is obviously covered with some kind of astro turf or something, and everything is so flimsy that when they walk the ground moves and the 'gravestones' move or tip over completely. The silent scenes of Bela outside a cemetery flinging his cape Dracula style are used and reused throughout the film - when he's supposed to be in the cemetery, we see a man much, much thinner and about a foot taller with a cape over his face - hilarious! 

Our three great zombies.

There's also a character who was supposed to be Bela's wife simply billed as 'Vampira' (real name Maila Numi) who has this impossible wasp waist - I've never seen a woman with a waist that small. I had to look her up - she graduated from high school in Oregon. SCORE! Yet another Oregon native does good - well, gets work anyway in Hollywood. She was a showgirl, a model, and eventually modelling after the then comic strip in The New Yorker by Charles Addams, she began dressing in a long black dress that accentuated her very pale skin. Her husband came up with the name Vampira and she hosted her own show for a bit, also appearing on other shows and movies as the character. In the 60's she wanted to re-do the show she had before, hosting late night movies but she claims when she showed up, a young Cassandra Peterson had been hired, the show renamed 'Elvira's Movie Macabre'. She sued Cassandra and lost but continued for the rest of her life to say that Cassandra merely stole her idea and her identity...When she died in 2008, her gravestone includes below her name 'Vampira'. See, and you thought you couldn't learn anything from this movie.

C'mon, you're sweating on me...

So we eventually have three 'zombies' - Vampira, Bela and a character that played a inspector, who was so out of shape (he was a BIG guy) that in a lot of scenes you see him sweating profusely and panting. Hmm, panting zombies... The alien will 'use' them to carry out their plan to destroy Earth before Earth gets a chance to destroy the universe with a weapon they haven't even invented yet, solarbonite. That's it folks, that's all there is. A couple of times they go to the 'mother ship' and talk with their superior. Watching these scenes is like watching an SNL skit - you know they haven't learned their lines when they don't even look at who they're talking to and their eyes are darting back and forth as they read the cue cards. He tells them Earth has to go...

Oh wait, before I get to the punchline I gotta tell you about the Inspector (before he became a zombie) -  see in this movie all the cops and plain clothes guys walk around with their guns in their hands constantly. He was trying to act expressively and kept waving that gun around, often pointing it directly at his fellow officer's faces - but the funniest part was when he started rubbing his chin with it.... I laughed so hard I think I wet myself...

Okay the unexciting conclusion you didn't ask for: Some army guys, a pilot and a cop get inside the saucer (that's when we hear the stupid stupid stupid speech). The alien must like throwing insults, because he also yells 'How can anyone be so stupid?' 'All of you of Earth are idiots!' Oh, but before you think this is an 'advanced' type race, his female counterpart tries to defend him as one of the 'stupid' earthlings attacks him and he throws her against the wall, stating 'Our women are for advancing the race, not to fight a man's battles!' How nice, on their planet women are simple little moo cows only good for making babies. When the pilot's wife shows her courage he says 'Modern women. They've been that way all through the ages in circumstances like this.' Umm what? All through the ages we've been modern? Cool!

Oh yeah, so totally real.

Okay, okay so the machos all start fighting, some trying to get out, the rest fighting the 'manly' alien (since the woman is required to stand in the corner I guess) and their really cheap Radio Shack equipment gets knocked off their wooden tables (they've got wood on their planet too) and the woman alien screams the ship is on fire - uh, nope, the budget doesn't cover for that, but she keeps saying it anyway. All the 'earthlings' escape and the woman puts the ship in the air - the outside is flaming (pretty good trick for whatever it's made of - it can stand deep space but not a little flame) and boom, it blows up. As soon as it does, all zombies become skeletons. Oookay.

Oh, we don't get to escape yet - The Amazing Criswell - err I mean the narrator Criswell swears all you've seen is true and if you don't think so be careful - anyone you meet could just very well be an alien and you don't even know it. Way to spread that paranoia guys.

See, you really can't review, criticize or compare to other films something like this. It may well be the worst movie ever made, but it is also funny, sad, interesting, and enough people have seen it for them to have released it in color (it's much better in black and white), and it has appeared in countless documentaries, TV shows, movies, there was even a musical, video games, etc. - and through the 21st century people still have their own plans for it. And while it is 'the worst movie ever made' it actually gets good reviews, people stating that it's 'just too amusing' to be rated as bad. So see, not a waste of time at all.