The Ed Wood Film Festival Plan 9 From Outer Space Review 35mm - 1.85:1 Aspect Ratio - Running time: 1:54 - Producer: Legend Films - Distributor: Holland Releasing - Available March 2006

Just check your theater or cable listings, or the shelves at your neighborhood video store, and you'll learn a simple truth - there are lots and lots of bad movies out there. People seem to make them every day.

But there's bad and then there's Baaaaaaad. Sometimes a movie can sink so far down into the pit of awfulness that it begins to climb back up the other side until it reaches, well not "greatness" exactly, but some embarrassing level of sublime perfection. There aren't too many films that can be described as staggeringly horrible and a masterpiece all at the same time, so when they come along it is for us to treasure them.

Edward D. Wood's awe-inspiring "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is just such a movie. The plot, such as it is, is simplici- ty itself. A rather ineffective group of aliens from Another World attempt to take over the earth by raising the dead. It's a good plan, this Plan 9, but the aliens don't count on a couple of trigger-happy cops and an airline pilot. And so, with- out giving the ending away, let's just say that somebody Up There should probably be working on Plan 10.

Let's list the some of the elements that make "Plan 9" great -- terrible acting, cheesy effects, an awful musical score and grade-school level sets. Aficionados particularly love the airplane cockpit that consists of two chairs and a show- er curtain. Or the munchkin-sized cardboard crypt from which mourner after mourner emerges, as if from a clown car. And let's not forget Ed Wood's script, so loony as to sound like poetry scrawled on the walls of an asylum. Or his insane miscasting, which seems to think that the slinky and cadaverous Vampira (with a waist that could be encircled by a single handcuff) is the perfect embodiment of the reanimated corpse of the elderly wife of poor Bela Lugosi (and more about him later); or that Tor Johnson, a bald, refrigerator-sized Swedish wrestler with virtually no command of the English language, would be just right as a tough-talking San Fernando Valley detective Daniel Clay.

But mostly "Plan 9" is great just because of Ed's directing. Everything is wrong - and by "wrong" I mean perfectly hilarious. It's possible in Wood's world for some characters to bask in broad daylight while others lurk only a few yards away in a cemetery shrouded by fog and the darkness of night. Passengers in a car driving down a Hollywood free- way are supposed to react in horror to flying saucers overhead but they point gleefully upward, apparently having a lovely drive. And even though the reconstituted zombies move with all the lightning speed of an office building slid- ing down a slight incline, their hapless victims still manage to get caught and mangled.

Released in 1959, "Plan 9" was soundly rejected by the few hapless patrons who actually laid down money to see it. Possibly some of them were fans of the great Bela Lugosi who lived just long enough to shoot two or three scenes for Wood before folding his Dracula cape around him for the last time. And no doubt those same patrons were puzzled, perhaps outraged, when another performer took over the role mid-film. Ed Wood seems to have felt that as long as the "other" Lugosi kept his cape over his face, no one would be the wiser, even though he was clearly taller and had dif- ferent color hair.

Soon enough, "Plan 9" began reaching its audience. Once it was widely declared to be the worst movie ever made, fans have flocked to it turning it into a genuine cult hit - a truly inept masterpiece.

But now, something new has been added. Legend Films has rendered the film into full color. This might be cause for outrage if applied to another film but for "Plan 9" it works out just fine. The colorization has not been applied to make the film look more realistic - probably not possible in any case - but to make it look, well, Ed Woodier. This strange- looking movie is now stranger than ever. And just as funny as always.

The new full-color "Plan 9 From Outer Space" would be a great evening in the theater all by itself. But, as the late- night commercials used to say, there's more! Audiences will also thrill to some of Ed Wood's personal home movies - he walks around in drag! He feeds birthday cake to a dog!; some truly horrible generic commercials he made in the early Fifties (one of which he stars in); and a special presentation which details Plans 1 through 8, as described by the genius of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," Mike Nelson.

It isn't every film that continues to live up to its reputation, year after year, generation after generation. But "Plan 9 From Outer Space" will never be in danger of being over-rated. If you're seeing it for the first time, rest assured that it truly is as bizarre, disorienting, confusing, silly and berserk as you've always heard. And if you're heading for your fiftieth viewing (and in this case, get a life), you'll find that familiarity just makes it that much better. After all, how could a film not be great when it starts off with lines like this: "And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future."

It's futile to try and resist! Surrender yourself to the new full-color "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Afterwards, you'll never be the same. From Holland Releasing - Contact: Tom Holland (818) 704-6650