Eros, the earth people are getting closer to that which we fear.  Since they will not listen or respect our existence, they cannot help but believe our powers when they see their own dead walking around again, brought about by our advancement in such things.  As soon as you have enough of the dead recruits, march them on the capitals of the earth.  Let nothing stand in your way.  Their own dead will be used to make them accept our existence… and believe in that fact.

Of course, it’s impossible to turn back the hands of the clock but in this silver anniversary year of Ed Wood’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959), I’ve been trying to remember what it felt like before I knew this was “the Worst Film of All Time.”  Now before I go any further, I should state (as I have before) that I consider PLAN 9 to be not only not the worst film of all time but also not even the worst Ed Wood film of all time.  That particular allegation and dubious honor came courtesy of THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS (Pedigree Books, 1980) by Harry and Michael Medved.  (A year earlier, the brothers’ FIFTY WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME had neglected Wood and PLAN 9 entirely.)  With heat-seeking snark, les freres Medved not only singled out Wood’s magnum opus for derision but branded its maker “the worst director of all time” to boot.  Of course, Wood was dead by this point and not likely to kick.  For those who had never seen the movie in question, the Medved’s proclamation (based on an open vote they had called for in the end pages of THE FIFTY WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME) stamped PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE with a reputation that has endured to this day, although it might be argued that the authors’ boorish, high-handed dismissal of the film did nothing so much as to introduce it to a whole new generation of B-movie fans eager to find out for themselves… “how bad could it be?”

I suppose I first saw pictures from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE in the pages of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine.  Ed Wood knew FM editor-in-chief Forrest J. Ackerman and peppered him with letters over the years, announcements of his latest projects and irons in the fire.  I wonder know if Forry only ran pictures from PLAN 9 to get Ed Wood off his back but whether 4SJ liked or didn’t like the movie he gave it the royal treatment in his magazine.  To a 10 year-old kid, PLAN 9 looked like the coolest movie ever.  The imagery was crisp, the shadows were as black as Cola Cola, and the monsters were really scary… at least in picture form.  I mean, look at Tor Johnson in the frame grab above, rising from his grave inside a cone of light that seems to have been mounted in the casket.  Nobody but Ed Wood would have thought to light the coffin from inside!

When I was a kid and saw these images for the first time, I thought Tor Johnson was the scariest monster ever.  The trouble with most movie monsters, from a terror standpoint, is that their faces too often reflect recognizable human emotions.  Dracula was cunning, Frankenstein’s monster vulnerable, the Wolfman enraged… but Tor Johnson’s “Big One” perfectly embodies (and enfaces) the absence of human emotion, the terrible emptiness of death… the true definition of a zombie (non-flesh-eating).  When I was in college, I spent $25 on an official Don Post Tor Johnson full-head mask and used it to scare my roommate.  I hid in his closet and waited for him to return from campus.  Going to hang up his coat, he opened the closet door, saw me, took a breath and SCREAMED, long and high-pitched, like a tea kettle.  Then he took another breath and SCREAMED AGAIN.  Twenty five bucks well spent.

And Vampira … when I was 10, I don’t think I’d ever seen a sexier woman.  (And I should point out that I had unlimited access to my Dad’s cache of PLAYBOYs.)  Vampira strolled the fine line between alluring and repulsive with catwalk precision.  Finnish model Maila Nurmi had created her cadaverous alter ego for the purposes of a 1953 Hollywood costume contest, in which she entered herself as Morticia Addams.  A producer for KABC-TV spotted the self-professed intimate of James Dean and tagged her to be a late night horror hostess.  The gig lasted but one season and soon Nurmi was back looking for work… and Ed Wood was hiring.  Though Nurmi had higher aspirations – and there had been at one point major studio interest in her – she was by this time so broke that there was no recourse for her but to accept Wood’s offer of $200 a day.  Nurmi’s only request was that she be allowed to play the part mute.  Well, the result speaks for itself.  Countless Goth queens have patterned themselves after the late horror hostess (who entered eternity in January 2008) but there’s no bettering the original.  She really is immortal.

Laugh all you want (no, really… yuk it up, I don’t mind).  PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE carries a release date of 1959, the same year as John Cassavetes’ SHADOWS.  The Cassavetes film, self-financed and shot guerilla style on the streets of Manhattan, is widely considered to be a seminal tract in the history of American independent films but there’s little done by Cassavetes, pioneer though he may have been, that Wood hadn’t done first.  (PLAN 9 was shot for the most part in 1956, while all footage featuring Bela Lugosi was filmed somewhat earlier.)  Filming on the fly, mixing nonprofessional actors with more seasoned performers, and the reconstitution of standard Hollywood tropes in what feels like a looser-knit, more experimental affect all point ahead to the techniques of the French New Wave.   It seems these days almost anybody can claim the title of indie filmmaker, especially with the advent of digital photography, but back when you had to lug an old Mitchell around town it took some doing.  Love him or hate him, Ed Wood did it.  He did it without the Internet, he did it without MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or viral marketing.  He did it without buzz, 100% sweat equity.  His results may never have lived up to his aspirations but he did complete nine feature films and a number of short subjects, as well as unsold TV pilots, over the sourse of twenty exceedingly odd years.  I think in our Psychotronic rapture, we’ve failed to give Ed Wood the credit he is due as an indie trail blazer.  I’m not trying to elevate the man above his station or try and make some postmodern argument that bad is good but it’s worth entering into evidence that his movies are nothing if not unique – Wood’s ear for dialogue was certainly his own (“Inspector Clay’s dead.  Murdered.  And somebody’s responsible.”) – and that we’re still discussing them half a century later should count for something.  I’m lucky, I guess.  Forty or so years after I first heard of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, I not only still like it; I probably like it more now than I did then.  The spooky shots of Vampira and Tor Johnson doing their zombie walk is still creepy to me and Wood’s anti-armament stance, an openly critical view of American bellicosity and entitlement in the Eisenhower era (and this from an ex-Marine who saw combat in the South Pacific) strikes me now as incredibly brave.  So at the end of the first fifty years of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and a full generation past Ed Wood’s sad and lonely death in a North Hollywood rental on December 12, 1978, I feel a genuine fondness for and an incredible gratitude to the man who predicted before I was born that future events would affect me in the future.  They certainly have.  Thanks for the warning, Eddie, and Happy Birthday PLAN 9!