• Written, produced and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.
• Starring
  • Gregory Walcott
  • Mona McKinnon
  • Tor Johnson
  • Bela Lugosi
  • Vampira
  • Criswell
• Executive produced by J. Edward Reynolds

While dealing with Hollywood’s Attic recently, I got myself a copy of Plan 9 from Outer Space (I’m kind of ashamed to admit that I didn’t previously own it). Let me tell you right now that Hollywood’s Attic’s issue is from a very good print; you could definitely do worse out there.

Anyway… What can you say about Plan 9, the ur-template for cult b-movie camp classics? It’s obviously not the worst movie in the world, as it is commonly touted — that distinction would have to fall to a completely unentertaining movie, and Plan 9 is nothing if not entertaining.

It is certainly one of the most inept movies ever made; it also has some of the most unintentionally riotous dialogue. But what makes it really distinctive, and gives it the position of ur-template (yeah, I love pseudo-Germanic expressions) is the entire low-budget ethic of working with (or around) your resources.

Observe: A high-budget film will get whatever it wants. Want to recreate the Titanic? Build a replica of 42nd Street? Blow up the world? You got it.

A low-budget film will limit itself a story which needs fewer resources — a haunted house, an enclosed space station, a military installation, etc. — and use its remaining resources to fill it out.

But a no-budget feature will first see what resources it has available, then craft the story around them.

In Ed Wood’s case, he had:

• some soundless footage of Lugosi doing various things
• a wrestler, a former TV host, and a psychic willing to make a movie with him
• loads of stock footage

So what did he do? He made a movie which could incorporate his friends and as much stock footage as possible, plus use the footage he had of Lugosi, and then he limited himself to very few props and locations.

I saw this same “use whatcha got” ethic in The Alien Agenda: Under the Skin, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. We have a college campus we can shoot on weekends? Write it in! We’ve got a fake arm? Write a scene where an arm gets ripped off! We’ve got an acre of woodland with a stream? Write an outdoor chase scene — but we can only afford a prop head for the creature, so don’t capture it!

Sometimes these piecemeal pictures turn out well, but it’s almost by accident, because the story you’re telling is not only limited by your resources, it’s practically written by those resources! It takes a special talent to take those crazyquilt pieces and make a collage out of them.

With Plan 9, it was (I think) the ludicrous dialog which tied the whole picture together, and gave it a cohesiveness and special charm that carries it through. Is that a talent? I don’t know. But given Hollywood’s furor for remakes these days, I’m almost certain that one day we’ll be accosted by a big-screen remake of Plan 9 From Outer Space, and then we’ll be able to decide if the original’s charm came about in spite of its limitations, or because of them.