Plan Nine from Outer Space (Wood) 1959 BFI Blu –Ray
“One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp (‘camping’) is usually less satisfying”
Susan Sontag.
Everyone knows that Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outer Space has a huge cult following. A film so ineptly directed that it has become a classic good bad film: a delirious guilty pleasure that people have ascribed a weird dream-like quality to which makes the film special. Special yes, but is it really a good bad film, by the Sontag standards of naive camp, that you can watch again and again? Or just an over-naive and stupid SF Horror that quickly loses its initial mad charm and becomes boring?
But first let’s have the absurd plot.
ET’s are trying to stop the world from creating a doomsday weapon that could destroy the universe. They launch “Plan 9”an attempt to resurrect dead people. This will cause mayhem and hopefully persuade all of humankind to listen to them: if not the ET’s will destroy everyone with their armies of the undead.
In the 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards Wood’s Plan 9 was given the title of the “worst film ever made”. Well it isn’t. There isn’t quite a top worst film (though 1953’s execrable mad scientist caper Mesa of Lost Women comes closer than Plan 9). And anyway why is more attention paid to bad B pictures? Let’s have more Turkey awards for serious but crushingly dull A pictures like say Fred Zinneman’s Behold a Pale Horse or the Bryan Forbes’s hopelessly incoherent Deadfall?
But camp too often rules the day when it comes to badness. And badness doesn’t necessarily mean enjoyment but tedium. The guilty pleasure gradually morphs into pain for the innocent. And this, after 3 viewings over 10 years, more by accident than design, of Plan Nine from Outer Space, has been my experience: that the novelty of how enjoyably bad it is (was) quickly wears off and you’re bored by the stilted nature of the film: earnest, preachy and evangelistic nonsense lacking in authentic passion. The terrible script, wobbly graveyard crosses, the flash Gordon like costumes of the aliens, the clunky editing, un-scary zombies, a ridiculous vampire girl and the tired re-use of army documentary footage all begin, for me, to pall, falling into an unwatchable cardboard void.
This Blu Ray set also contains Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster another poverty row production that at least, on my first viewing, has a melodramatic vigour – mainly because its mad scientist is played by the watchable, if hammy, Bela Lugosi. And the 2 discs come loaded with extras in the form of commentaries, essays etc. The most pleasurable being Kadoyng (1972). A really delightful Children’s Film Foundation feature about an alien helping a bunch of kids prevent a motorway bypass from being built that would destroy a village. It has a wit and professionalism that Ed Wood would have envied.
Not that all of Wood’s films are that terrible. His best effort is still Glen or Glenda (1952 ) a remarkably honest, and again remarkably bad, film about the challenges of a transvestite. This is a crude but compelling drama that manages, at times, to be oddly sensitive and touching.
No matter what I say about Wood’s world, my critique of Plan Nine from Outer Space shouldn’t stop sales from being very healthy for the BFI.
Alan Price©2026
Plan Nine from Outer Space (Wood) 1959 BFI Blu –Ray
“One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp (‘camping’) is usually less satisfying”
Susan Sontag.
Everyone knows that Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outer Space has a huge cult following. A film so ineptly directed that it has become a classic good bad film: a delirious guilty pleasure that people have ascribed a weird dream-like quality to which makes the film special. Special yes, but is it really a good bad film, by the Sontag standards of naive camp, that you can watch again and again? Or just an over-naive and stupid SF Horror that quickly loses its initial mad charm and becomes boring?
But first let’s have the absurd plot.
ET’s are trying to stop the world from creating a doomsday weapon that could destroy the universe. They launch “Plan 9”an attempt to resurrect dead people. This will cause mayhem and hopefully persuade all of humankind to listen to them: if not the ET’s will destroy everyone with their armies of the undead.
In the 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards Wood’s Plan 9 was given the title of the “worst film ever made”. Well it isn’t. There isn’t quite a top worst film (though 1953’s execrable mad scientist caper Mesa of Lost Women comes closer than Plan 9). And anyway why is more attention paid to bad B pictures? Let’s have more Turkey awards for serious but crushingly dull A pictures like say Fred Zinneman’s Behold a Pale Horse or the Bryan Forbes’s hopelessly incoherent Deadfall?
But camp too often rules the day when it comes to badness. And badness doesn’t necessarily mean enjoyment but tedium. The guilty pleasure gradually morphs into pain for the innocent. And this, after 3 viewings over 10 years, more by accident than design, of Plan Nine from Outer Space, has been my experience: that the novelty of how enjoyably bad it is (was) quickly wears off and you’re bored by the stilted nature of the film: earnest, preachy and evangelistic nonsense lacking in authentic passion. The terrible script, wobbly graveyard crosses, the flash Gordon like costumes of the aliens, the clunky editing, un-scary zombies, a ridiculous vampire girl and the tired re-use of army documentary footage all begin, for me, to pall, falling into an unwatchable cardboard void.
This Blu Ray set also contains Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster another poverty row production that at least, on my first viewing, has a melodramatic vigour – mainly because its mad scientist is played by the watchable, if hammy, Bela Lugosi. And the 2 discs come loaded with extras in the form of commentaries, essays etc. The most pleasurable being Kadoyng (1972). A really delightful Children’s Film Foundation feature about an alien helping a bunch of kids prevent a motorway bypass from being built that would destroy a village. It has a wit and professionalism that Ed Wood would have envied.
Not that all of Wood’s films are that terrible. His best effort is still Glen or Glenda (1952 ) a remarkably honest, and again remarkably bad, film about the challenges of a transvestite. This is a crude but compelling drama that manages, at times, to be oddly sensitive and touching.
No matter what I say about Wood’s world, my critique of Plan Nine from Outer Space shouldn’t stop sales from being very healthy for the BFI.
Alan Price©2026
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film, film archive • Tags: Alan Price, film, film archive