If you consider yourself a "cineaste", then you need to know Edward D. Wood, Junior., named the ‘Worst Director of All-Time’ in 1980 by the Golden Turkey Awards and his entire filmography is a list of the worst films of all time, the most infamous being Plan 9 from Outer Space, a Sci-Fi B-movie (Well, it’s more of a Z-movie) flick made on a budget of $60,000 and unrelated footage of Bela Lugosi. Despite the fact that the film has been named by numerous critics as the worst film ever made and is about as culturally bankrupt as a television series that celebrates Paris Hilton’s “celebrity” lifestyle, it is still an enjoyable film. It is the quintessential ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ film, where you laugh at the film’s incompetence and awful special effects and you should really see it, because words are hard to describe why this film is good, which I will try.
The plot, if I can recall it from all the madness, is that aliens have come to Earth and have resurrected three dead people for reasons never actually stated, but it was to stop humanity created a deadly new weapon that could destroy the universe. We don’t really learn of this until the near end of the film, while most of the film is padded with stock footage and scenes of guys faffing about in a cemetery. But one has to wonder how the aliens thought that resurrecting a few nobodies would stop humanity from discovering a new element thingy and use it as weaponry. It just sounds like one of those “Step three: profit” plans; a plan were they know what to do and hope it will result in the end result, without actually thinking about how that would come to pass.
The entertaining value of Plan 9 comes from the general incompetence of it all. It fails in every field of film making, but unlike many films were such a virtue is like a bicycle pump imbedded in the forehead, Plan 9 seems to take it in its stride: it’s laughably awful, not frustratingly awful. The dialogue seems a great place to start, because it’s just so badly composed and the first example of Plan 9‘s badness, especially in the case of the quote unquote “narrator” played by discredited “psychic” Criswell who makes such confusing and redundant statements like “future events such as these will affect you in the future” and “nobody can prove that it didn’t happen”. It also has that “questioning-logic-in-the-movie-that-is funny-as-well-as-stupid” quality that exists in the 1966 Batman the Movie, such as why would a man bury his wife (Vampira) in a shredded dress with nine inch fake nails? Why get one of your zombies to kidnap, not kill, the main protagonist’s wife? Why give an actor who can barely speak English so many non-badass lines?
The alien costume designs are also just awful; they’re basically just shiny pyjamas with belts and the costume of the alien commander doesn’t make him look like the commander of a interstellar fleet of advanced starships, but rather the guard of a medieval castle. And the set design is just so obviously fake with drapes used for outer space and doors on a spaceship and a graveyard so corny and cheap, that they don’t seemed to care if the fake gravestones wobble or fall over.
I know just detailing the humorous faults of this movie in this small section may just seem like piddly-ass nitpicks, but me solely describing them just ruins the impact and they truly are things that should be seen to be believed, the absurdity and badness can not be explained so simply.
Another awesome thing about Plan 9 is that it created possibly the most badass character ever. While we have no shortest of badass characters nowadays, you really have to do something unique in order to stand out and Plan 9 has. They have a man so badass, he doesn’t even need to touch the totally not fake airplane controls to fly a plane, a man so badass his only reaction to seeing an invincible zombie vampire is dull surprise. I am, of course, talking about pilot Captain Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott): Women want him and men want to be him…and want him. Now, what makes this simple pilot the king of badasses I so claim I hear you ask? Well, there’s a scene where the great Captain Jeff Trent and two undeveloped guys go into the alien spaceship and are confronted by the alien sub-commander or something and a female subordinate who can be best described as his bitch. He tells the humans that we are mere steps away from discovering the element “solarnite” and will use it to create a bomb (Because that’s what all humans do. When we discovered potatoes, we tried to make a ‘potato bomb’), a bomb that will destroy the universe. When king of kings Captain Jeff Trent makes the statement that we would be stronger with the element, the alien retorts “Stronger? You see, you see? Your stupid minds! Stupid, STUPID!”, then Captain Jeff Trent proceeds to pimp slap the alien. I’m serious, he back-hand slaps, also known as the “pimp slap“, an alien, a member of an advanced sentient species. Will Smith may have punched an alien in Independence Day, but did he pimp slap that interstellar bitch? NO, good sirs, no he did not! You have to be one badass motherfucker with gonads the size of melons and made of admantium steel to pimp slap an alien who probably has numerous weapons that could vaporise you in mere nanoseconds and fleets of planet-destroying spaceships at their command. So what if Chuck Norris repelled a Soviet invasion single-handedly in Invasion USA, Captain Jeff Trent pimp slapped an alien. So what if Samuel L. Jackson just stands there being cool in every film, Captain Jeff Trent pimp slapped an alien. So what if Bruce Campbell cut off his hand, replaced it with a chainsaw and fought demons in the Evil Dead series, that’s fucking awesome and he should team up with Captain Jeff Trent to kick some undead alien ass.
The point I’m driving to is that Captain Jeff Trent is kind of awesome and should be vindicated as such.
Plan 9 from Outer Space is most defiantly the quintessential so-bad-it’s-good film, it gets everything wrong and fails as a film, but it’s just so dang hilarious and charming that you can’t help but fall in love with it. Plus, it has the most badass character ever, Captain Jeff Trent, a man who beat a bear with the carcass of a bear he killed with his own hands. So, watch this film and spread the word and maybe we’ll have a new badass hero, in the shape of Captain Jeff Trent, a man who made ten women orgasm by describing sex.
I’m Random Internet Critic and I criticise it because I’m floating in a most peculiar way and the stars look very different today.
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