'Plan 9 from Outer Space' is another of those guilty pleasures that lingers flavoury in the memory and really calls for an exclamation mark rather than a conventional rating.
Although the late Bill Warren declared that "'Plan 9' deserves its fame and should be suffered through at least once by anyone interested in movie history", and it receives respectful treatment in Tim Burton's 'Ed Wood' - who depicted it receiving a gala premiere - it was hidden in plain sight on late night television for more than twenty years (the earliest entry it received in a reference book probably being Steven H. Scheuer's 'TV Key Movie Reviews & Ratings' in 1961, which gave it one star and sarcastically damned it with faint praise as being "Important for students of Vampira's mid-50's films") before its embrace by connoisseurs of the awful; and wasn't even included in 'The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time' (published the year the director died).
Seriously flawed by its almost total lack of humour (although the scene - SPOILER COMING: - where Bela Lugosi gets hit by a car is pretty funny), its very easy to mock a film made on a mere shoestring, but like most truly bad films its certainly not dull, Wood certainly shows a flair for purple prose and many of its technical shortcomings such as continuity mismatches can be found in far more commercial films without looking too hard.
Described by Anne Billson as "a thinking, feeling generous-hearted person with more genuine vision in his little finger than in all of today's working-stiff directors laid end to end", and a bigger name dead than he ever was alive, Wood would have probably revelled in his posthumous fame.
Although the late Bill Warren declared that "'Plan 9' deserves its fame and should be suffered through at least once by anyone interested in movie history", and it receives respectful treatment in Tim Burton's 'Ed Wood' - who depicted it receiving a gala premiere - it was hidden in plain sight on late night television for more than twenty years (the earliest entry it received in a reference book probably being Steven H. Scheuer's 'TV Key Movie Reviews & Ratings' in 1961, which gave it one star and sarcastically damned it with faint praise as being "Important for students of Vampira's mid-50's films") before its embrace by connoisseurs of the awful; and wasn't even included in 'The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time' (published the year the director died).
Seriously flawed by its almost total lack of humour (although the scene - SPOILER COMING: - where Bela Lugosi gets hit by a car is pretty funny), its very easy to mock a film made on a mere shoestring, but like most truly bad films its certainly not dull, Wood certainly shows a flair for purple prose and many of its technical shortcomings such as continuity mismatches can be found in far more commercial films without looking too hard.
Described by Anne Billson as "a thinking, feeling generous-hearted person with more genuine vision in his little finger than in all of today's working-stiff directors laid end to end", and a bigger name dead than he ever was alive, Wood would have probably revelled in his posthumous fame.