![]() government from developing a universe-obliterating bomb), but it’s nonetheless commendable how many classic moments and caricatures Wood was able to stumble upon. Not that there’s a whole lot of plot for the actors to work with here (the basic premise involves aliens-who look deceptively like humans, only with silk purple blouses in place of stock ’50s attire-journeying to Earth to thwart the U.S. And credit where it’s due: Plan 9 is essentially well cast, with Vampira, Tor Johnson, and Lugosi kept all but mum throughout, allowing their physical presences do the talking while Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, and the appropriately named Dudley Manlove are left in the lurch with some of the most ludicrous, Cold War-steeped dialogue in the history of the B picture (say it with me: “Your stupid minds! Stoopid! Stooopid!”). Then again, you’ve really got to hand it to Wood, who apparently would let nothing stop him from realizing his epic vision-not even the death of his ostensible star, Bela Lugosi, who was literally resurrected for the film via footage Wood shot three years prior to his death (a double, played by Wood’s chiropractor, natch, would stand in for Lugosi for most of the shoot, and not very convincingly). For all its grade school-level production flourishes, cardboard performances, narrative lapses, and continuity errors (Wood quite literally gives new meaning to the phrase “day for night”), Plan 9 stands as a testament to sincerity run amok, and as a passionate display of artistic limitations, it’s as glorious as it is flabbergasting. In this case, however, talent didn’t necessarily precipitate industriousness, just as quality didn’t precipitate the film’s lasting appeal. ![]() ![]() Even in the strictest sense of the term, Wood was an auteur, writing, producing, and directing his own original works in the face of even his own blatant lack of talent. It wouldn’t have “worked” and certainly wouldn’t have endured if Wood hadn’t believed that this was some sort of monument to high art, and it’s this earnestness which has turned Plan 9 into one of the quintessential American cult films.īut do we love it because of its grand ineptitude or because it speaks, at some level, to our ingrained sense of entertainment? There are any number of films to equal it in flagrant incompetence alone, but Plan 9, despite its (sometimes literal) flimsiness, retains its off-center artistry through Wood’s uncommon devotion to his material. ![]() It not only embraced all the questionable tropes that we consistently forgive with regard to genre consideration nowadays, but made an unintentional mockery of every last one of them. It’s become nothing less than a rite of passage for anyone even remotely interested in science fiction, horror, or B-movie lore. Wood Jr.’s Plan 9 from Outer Space is something of a sacred text. Of course, not everything is worthy of such consideration, and if anything our contemporary landscape has produced more objectively irredeemable garbage than any in history, but eventually anyone with even a modicum of stock in pop culture is forced into at least recognizing the unconsciously amateurish work that laid the groundwork for our current state of acceptance. At what point, then, did we collectively admit that shitty things and, by extension, shitty people doing shitty things to one another in front of camera, could be something of an art form unto itself? Without a durational degree of separation we’re left to gravitate toward what intrinsically appeals to us, I suppose, but at some point in the last decade it’s become ever more rare to find the high- and low-brow arts relegated to their own corners of the critical conversation it’s just as common to see the latest Sacha Baron Cohen character battle it out with the newest Lars von Trier antihero for top-10-list real estate. We’ve experienced the Screams and the Grindhouses, the Joaquin Phoenix meta-meltdowns, and the Banksy art-circuit brainwashings-not to mention the entirety of the reality-television industry. In the post-irony era, the term “guilty pleasure” has become one of the most loaded phrases in our everyday entertainment vernacular. ![]()
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