A Year of Garbage Movies #98, “Plan 9 from Outer Space”

Well one thing is for certain, the shitty movie scale seems to be logarithmic.

If you were to ask me two days ago if there would be a discernible drop in quality between the 100th worst movie of all time and the 98th worst movie of all time I probably would have said no. At most, number 98 may have killed an extra animal or two during the course of filming, but nothing qualitatively different in the realm of cinematic blasphemy would have occurred. The scores (out of 10) aren’t even that different. How much worse could it be?

As it turns out, quite a lot.

“Plan 9 from Outer Space”, at first glance, looks like your typical 1950’s low-budget sci-fi movie. Flying saucers, weird Mid-Atlantic accents that no one actually uses in real life, the usual. The difference main difference, however, is in just how much the director half-assed not only the writing but also the visual effects and editing.

So here’s my rough breakdown.

Pros:

• It kept Bela Lugosi from having to work as a Walmart greeter in retirement I guess?

Cons:

Geez, let’s see

• strings could be seen supporting flying saucers
• scenes that should be happening at the same time chronologically alternate between day and night because all of the cemetery scenes were clearly shot on the same day of filming
• the ground crumples up whenever anyone falls because it is a rug
• The props are all about 50% smaller than they should be so everyone looks like a giant. There is a scene with a bunch of people leaving a mauseoleum that looks like a very sombre clown-car.
• I can only assume that the writer never proof-read any one part of the script before he wrote the next because the motives of the aliens seem to shift constantly. At various points the antagonists actually work against their stated purpose at the beginning; not that their plan ever made sense in the first place.
• The boom mic is clearly visible in one shot, sliding back and forth at the top of the frame.
• The acting, dialogue and general narrative are about on par with “The Room”. I guess maybe this movie got us “Ed Wood” in the same way that “The Room” got us “The Disaster Artist”

Anyway, the next one I have to watch is #97, Robocop 3 (1993). I wanted to believe that somewhere in this pile would be a hidden gem, but I am no longer optimistic.