by Gus Sanchez

Created on: January 30, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

Written, produced and directed by legendary bad film auteur Ed Wood Jr., Plan Nine From Outer Space is an earnest sci-fi flick. Earnest in the sense that what Ed Wood lacked in true cinematic talent, he made up for it in drive and determination. So what if the budget of Plan Nine matched the budget of a Howdy Doody episode? None of this was going to stop Ed Wood. Not a miniscule budget. Not even the death of his star, Bela Lugosi.

The film opens with a psychic named Criswell, who narrates throughout the film. Criswell appears with the pre-requisite goofy haircut and even goofier narrative voice, describing the insidious alien invasion that nearly destroyed the Earth (not really, but bear with me...). The alien invasion is spurred by mankind's discovery of atomic energy, and their fear that once mankind has destroyed the Earth, it will turn its' destructive eye towards all extraterrestrial life. To counter mankind, the aliens enact an insidious plan to raise the dead and wreak destruction on the Earth, a plan called (wait for it...) Plan Nine.

The living dead

Alright, let's fast forward: the living dead are raised, but the aliens are vanquised. Mankind lives to see another day. The end. The aliens proved pretty easy to defeat, considering the kind of spaceship they were saddled with:

Plan Nine stars legendary horror film hostess Vampira as one of the walking dead. According to Rob Zombie, Vampira refused to speak any of her lines. She realized her lines were just too embarrassing for a walking dead to read. She did keep the $200 she was paid for her work.

Vampira's pretty hot...if, by "hot" you like your women pale skinned, big-boobed, thin-waisted and possessing of lips that would make Angelina Jolie murderous with envy. (Yeah, I think she's hot...) It also stars Tor Johnson (he's the big burly bald-headed fella in the pic above), a former wrestler from Sweden and friend of Ed Wood, as a police detective who becomes one of the living dead. His dialogue is pretty bad, too, made worse by his gruesome butchering of the English language. Mercifully, his dialogue consists of a few lines before his character is killed, not before he becomes one of the living dead.

Bela Lugosi was supposed to star in this film, but he died of cancer before filming began. No matter: Wood was determined to continue, and his beloved friend's death wasn't going to get in the way. The character of the Vampire was pieced together using some stock footage Wood had of Lugosi dressed as a vampire,

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