PlanNineFromOuterSpace Tagged Articles at Cinematical

NASA's Phoenix lander has its rendezvous with Mars, and that, as well as the upcoming Puerto Rican primary, gives a torn-from-today's-weblogs quality to this purported horror film, aka'd both as Mars Attacks Puerto Rico and Mars Invades Puerto Rico. But Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster is a film for all seasons anyway. Lou Cutell's alienating Doctor Nadir (above) in bald wig, goblin ears, and loads of clown white makeup, isn't even the most uncanny part of this particularly inexpensive sci-fi epic, which pits a disfigured robot Frankenstein against the gorilla-suited, skull-headed Mull: a sort of an alien attack dog.

Made by Robert Gaffney, a long-time second-unit director for Kubrick (this piece from dvdtalk.com considers Gaffney's career), FMTSM is a good-looking li'l crapburger. It's remembered fondly for Mull, and the hoity-toity aliens who keep him on a leash. Recently at the Super-Con in San Jose, I saw two separate TV horror hosts on a panel endorsing FMTSM as their favorite bad film. Could it give Plan Nine From Outer Space a run for its money? Hard to say, but it shares four essential qualities of Plan Nine; four things that may be completely necessary to the making of a memorable turkey. You've heard it said that it's as hard to make a bad movie as it is to make a good one. Fair enough: there are plenty of filmmakers out there who want to work hard making a bad movie.

You want some blasphemy? Don't bother with that certain fantasy movie with that skinny lacquered redhead in it. Despite all the public outcry over that particular blockbuster's pro-Reformation message (isn't it risky for our cinema to endorse the policies of the heretic Martin Luther?), the Compass movie really doesn't give God much trouble for your entertainment buck. By contrast, The World's Greatest Sinner, a backyard-shot indie has a real beef with the Almighty. (Don't worry, kids, the Rock of Ages is tough enough to handle it!) As director, writer, producer, chief cook and bottle washer, eccentric character actor Timothy Carey shows the instincts of a French decadent. His Clarence Hilliard is a Southland Baudelaire who rails against the existence of God, and sets himself up as a false messiah. The hand-rubbed Letraset titles in the graphic above indicate the budget level of this berserk film. Much of it takes place in an early 1960s San Gabriel Valley a.k.a "The Inland Empire," so innocent and blue-horizoned that David Lynch would have refused to believe it.

Resurrecting the dead with extraterrestrial ray guns may not be the best method to end nuclear escalation. Such is the only lesson that can be gleaned from 1959 Plan Nine from Outer Space.  Newly colorized by Legend Films, Ed Wood Jr.’s distinctive independent film was celebrated with a re-premiere at San Francisco’s Castro Theater March 11,  2006.

Popularly but incorrectly named as the worst movie ever made, Plan 9 ... has been a punching bag for nearly a half century. This folk-art version of The Day the Earth Stood Still has a daydreamy approach to a science fiction. It concerns a flying saucer attack by fey aliens (one played by an actor who rejoices in the name “Dudley Manlove”) who reanimate three lumbering cadavers: TV host Vampira, whose clutching digits give new meaning to the phrase “spirit fingers”; the massive wrestler Tor Johnson and a decrepit Bela Lugosi, who died during production.  Aspects of the film are legend: Wood’s behind-the-scenes transvestitism, for example. Wood is particularly beloved for his desperate attempt to cover up the death of one of his lead actors.  His solution: hiring a slumming chiropractor named Dr. Tom Mason to play the part of the late Lugosi, simply by having the actor cover his face with an opera cape.   

Just the as easy answer when naming the best movie ever made is Citizen Kane, the easy answer when naming the worst is Plan Nine From Outer Space.  The slander began with Harry and Michael Medved’s 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards. The brothers  claimed 393 voters elected it “worst film”, when responding to a poll in their earlier book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. In the unrelated if suspiciously similar 2004 documentary, The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made, director Brandon Christopher puts Plan Nine at third worst film.  Moreover, the 2004 film’s narrator, Carlos Larkin, snickers at the cardboard steering wheels in the airplane cabin sequence in Plan 9…just as decades ago, in 1982’s It Came from Hollywood (a forgotten cine-manque documentary) John Candy was crowing “Check out that dime-store shower curtain behind the pilots!” Currently, MST3K’s Mike Nelson, doing a narration on the colorized DVD, tries to squeeze a few more laughs out of Plan Nine's failures of art direction.