Plan 9 From Outer Space

It's October (Hallowe'en month!) and Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day.

And here's somebody's idea of "The Worst Film Ever Made" (not mine, when I have the nerve I'll put that one up), but it's one of those movies that is merely horrifying rather than a horror film. More often than not, I've tried to watch it late at night and just fall asleep.

Plan 9 From Outer Space (originally: Grave Robbers From Outer Space)(Edward D. Wood, Jr. 1957)

 

Greetings, my friend! We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friend: Future events such as these will affect you in the future. 

 

You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are giving you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. 

 

My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty; let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space?

In their 1980 book "The Golden Turkey Awards," authors Michael and Harry Medved compiled sent-in suggestions from readers of the book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time" for the considerations of who would be given their "awards" and the ultimate winner was a movie that hadn't even been mentioned in that earlier book. Plan 9 From Outer Space had the dubious distinction of being dubbed "the worst movie ever made" (I should add the disclaimer "that we know of"). It's director, Edward D. Wood, Jr. was voted worst director.

And, subsequently, it (and its director) became quite well known. I use that phrase because one has to choose between the alternatives "famous" and "infamous" and, frankly, Plan 9 is a little bit of both. Most people know it from Tim Burton's cockamamie film-biography of Ed Wood, where he probably spent more money on recreating Wood's "style" than the original director did himself (He is one of many directors associated with the phrase "He never shot a take he didn't like"). Burton's film is an absurdist comedy, but at its core is the philosophy that one must stay true to their "vision" despite the nay-sayers and...you know..."taste."

Plan 9 has a simple plot, based on the concepts behind The Day the Earth Stood Still, of an alien race visiting Earth to warn of the dangers of scientific advancement without safeguards. Plan 9's aliens have trouble with the whole "take me to your leader" thing and have been unable to communicate with the Earth's governments, so their ninth plan—they're tenacious—is to raise the dead to attack Earth cities to prevent them from discovering "solaronite" (it's pronounced differently by different actors in the thing), which can have the ability to explode sunlight particles, endangering the Universe with an unstoppable chain reaction (well, when you put it that way...).

One can raise all sorts of questions as to why the aliens can't seem to reach the world's governments and why raising the dead is a rather extreme "demonstration" of their abilities, but if one started counting off the absurdities of Plan 9 From Outer Space, one would simply be exhausted by all the inanities, ineptitudes, gaffs, goofs, flubs, fumbles and stumbles that make up the bulk of the film. When you consider that part it of originated with having the last film footage of Bela Lugosi, one has to question if the enterprise was worth starting in the first place.

I have a strange relationship with Plan 9. I've never been able to get through the first hour of it. Just the other day when thinking about the film I couldn't remember how it ended. I'd usually get to the part where the aliens' Commander Eros starts bleating: "Stronger. You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!" and then gets punched in the face in counter-argument...and then I just give up (or fall asleep). So, I watched only the last half-hour and, lord, it's just the same as the first interminable hour—the level of mediocrity (not stupidity, not just ineptitude) becomes overwhelming and one has to turn away in disgust.

 The "complex" cock-pit set from Plan 9 from Outer Space

I know there are people who watch it for the sheer lame-brainedness of it and find that entertaining. But, I've never found it so, instead finding it sad...and not laugh-out-loud funny...and cruel to watch in a weird way. I have no problems with camp. I have no problems with parody. I have no problems with cheap (cheap actually can produce innovative solutions in story-telling). But, the "bad school-play" feeling it generates just makes me depressed, and I know because of my reaction that I'll probably never watch another Ed Wood movie. I love movies, but his break my heart.

Chiropractor Tom Mason playing Bela Lugosi (deceased) as Ghoul Man ("no one'll notice...")

This October in the blog, we've been looking at a lot of poorly-financed horror movies that still manage to eke out some promise on a budget that wouldn't cover the catering in today's market. It wasn't planned that way, it just happened. But, it shows how talented people can make the most out of limitations by imagination and ingenuity and a certain dramatic flair. Ed Wood evidently had none of those because most of the movies I've reviewed this month had a creative spark just edgy enough that monetary problems could be surmounted or, at least, masked.

Plus, script has an awful lot to do with it. Good construction, the sense of pace and revelation go a long way in making a good script and cleverness makes up a good portion in that consideration. Cleverness goes beyond what Wood thinks is "dialogue"—one line building on the previous line as in "Visits? That would indicate visitors!"—the kind of stuff that would pass muster in grade-school as sophisticated, but is put away as "childish things" once one gets over the fact that you can put words on a blank space. Wood seems to have never got over that fascination. I'm sure he must have gotten rejection letters from somebody in Hollywood that he might have learned from. But, evidently, he was good at conning people out of money to make the bare minimum product displaying his ideas and talent that never received the acclaim it supposedly deserved.

 

I would say it's a classic case of reaching beyond one's grasp, but I don't see much evidence of reaching.

Maila ("Vampira") Nurmi reaching...

At the risk of getting as pretentious as Edward D. Wood, Jr., it's got me to thinking of how things go right...until they go wrong; how the country is polarized, but more than just in political leanings, but in how we dance around the thin veneer of competence—where you either do the best that can be done or you merely stop, saying "that's good enough" and hope that you don't get caught when things fall apart. We let standards slip just enough to make things easier...until we're no longer accomplishing the job we set out to do and are actually working against it. Things fall between the cracks and we become indifferent to it. If you want to go all-Dr. Strangelove on it, we suffer from a "competence gap" of whether to make a larger profit or do a better job...and we always choose the larger profit.* Then, we scratch our heads and wonder when things start to come crashing down...or we have a market down-turn every ten years.

You'd think we'd learn...but we don't...("You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!"). No wonder I don't get any enjoyment out of Plan 9 from Outer Space: It takes the superior attitude that people are knuckle-dragging monkey-people and proves its point by looking and acting like it was made by knuckle-dragging monkey-people! It makes its point by its very existence! I hate that!

Maybe it's because I'm so steeped in the "work ethic" culture I was propagandized into ("If, at first, you don't succeed, try, try again"...until you get to Plan 9, anyway), or I never bought into the "get-by" mind-set, where "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."

But, for my part, Plan 9 From Outer Space, in all senses, leaves me baffled.

"But one thing's sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible."

 

Colonel Tom Edwards: This is the most fantastic story I've ever heard.

Jeff Trent: And every word of it's true, too.

Colonel Tom Edwards: That's the fantastic part of it.

 

* Thank you, and with that, I'd like to offer up my services as CEO of Boeing. (Now, about that severance package...)

 

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Charles Barton, 1948) The full title is Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (as they all had the same production studio, Universal Pictures). But even that mouthful of a title leaves out two major characters in the film: Bela Lugosi re-stakes his claim as Count Dracula, the role he originated in the 1931 Universal film, and Lon Chaney, Jr. plays that poor S.O.B., Larry Talbot, aka "The Wolfman,"* who turns lycanthropic whenever the moon is full (sort of an eternal frat-boy)** 

The unholy trio of Universal met long-time companions Bud and Lou for some hi-jinks and low horror. The boys play Chick Young and Wilbur Grey, who are warehouse workers with the bad fortune to be dealing with two crates of European antiquities bound for the local museum--Dracula's coffin (with an "occupado" sign on it) and the inanimate Frankenstein Monster (victim of a dead battery). Talbot's in the neighborhood, as he's tracking the shipments for some convenient reason.

The plot revolves around Dracula's ambition to re-animate the Monster, but replace its criminal brain with a more compliant, simpler brain, and Lou's character, Wilbur Grey, is the perfect candidate. This film was a favorite of the kids in my neighborhood, and when it aired (around Hallowe'en, after "The Brakeman Bill Show"), it was the sole topic of conversation for two weeks, and endlessly recreated on the streets and playgrounds. All the Great monsters--in one movie!! Of course, it'd be great!

And it was: giddy fun with enough strangeness, horrible deeds, and the slapstick and repartee that Bud and Lou were good for. Maybe it's "Mom's Apple Pie Syndrome,"*** where the tastes of childhood circumvent our better instincts later in life, but a re-appraisal of "A + B = F" in adulthood found me admiring its competence, humor and basic story-telling construction (circuitous, though it is). It's good stuff--strictly "B" material, but when did that ever get in the way of Big "E" Entertainment?

And it had Monsters. The Bestest Monsters. The ones that represented our Id's and haunted our dreams. Given the content of my previously sex-obsessed reviews of "Frankenstein" and "Dracula," what, then, can we glean from "A + B = F?" well, despite my "longtime companion" crack, Bud and Lou were room-mates who were 'into" dames. In fact, as if to counteract the threats of homosexuality (Frankenstein) and rapacious heterosexuality (Dracula) the Monsters represent, they are SO hetero, that Lou's Wilbur has two women vying for his attentions, though "bad girl" scientist Dr. Sandra Mornay only wants him for his mind. Bud and Lou are "safe" examples of "normal" sexuality--ya know, dancing and going to parties and dressing up and nothing further than "First Base."

"Who?"

Now, don't get me started....

Wait a minute....Bud Abbott's character's name is "Chick." Hmmm.

Dracula (1931)

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) Filmed version of the stage-play* featuring its matinee-idol, Bela Lugosi. As with "Frankenstein," there had been other versions of Count Dracula's British Invasion, including one (Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau) that got around copyright issues by calling its "vampyre" "Count Orlok."** As with Universal Picture's earlier productions of The Phantom of the Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Man Who Laughs, the film is heavy on theatrics, but, this time, is a bit lean in the make-up department, although Lugosi did wear painful silvered contact lenses to enhance his seductive glare. Lugosi's elegant monster, with his slash of a mouth, and eyes wide open while balefully squinting with a laser-like intensity manages to still evoke "the creeps" to this day.

Tod Browning's direction is full of subtle touches--the sudden appearance of the Count's "brides," for example--and not-so-subtle--a shot of Jonathan Harker on Dracula's staircase is shot through a spider web, and Dwight Frye's performance as Renfield is babblingly over-the-top, as is required of so many actors in the horror genre.

As we wrote of the primal homosexual aspects of Frankenstein, Dracula is the straighter blood-brother--the heterosexual aspect of humanity gone hysterical. Dracula's attacks start as seductions, but his acts are akin to rape--animalistic and savage--and linked to sexuality--penetrative, taking blood and passing on the disease of vampirism to his victims. sapping life-strength and energy. And it's all under the guise of civility and position, of manners and societal restraint. But underneath throbs the bestial urges--hidden by day, and only alive at night. Sure, it's nice to bask in the glow of celebrity, but make sure the smile isn't hiding fangs.

Count Dracula, then, is one big hard-on, that by light of day, crumbles to dust. That his bane are religious icons and his own lack of reflection (self-knowledge) only reinforces the metaphor. He's never gone out of style, no matter how straight-laced or free-loving the times. Dracula is one popular "playa."

With the times, the incarnations of "Dracula" have become increasingly sexual over the years, *** only making more obvious what Bram Stoker and Tod Browning buried in the sub-text. "Dracula" is, and always has been, the personification of serial criminal sexuality--which can only be curbed by the light of day. Dracula is The Forbidden, and carries the risk of damnation for seeking it. Besides the purifying rays of the sun, the surest way to kill a vampire is a blessed stake...through the heart.

Frankenstein-homosexuality. Dracula-heterosexuality. Of course, these haunts were conjured during the repressed Victorian era. But what horrified them, still carried a tingle, just as their stories intrigue us and our children, thrill us, and haunt our dreams. No wonder the Religious Right condemn them, or any aspect of the occult.

Hollywood makes a vain attempt (or stab) at killing them, but these monsters of the Id keep coming back, rising from the grave (or the ashes) to stalk another day...er...night. How do you handle these monsters/urges?

The answer next Friday

*Adapted from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel by Hamilton Deane and John L. Baderston. A Spanish-language version was filmed simultaneously (the English version during the day and the Spanish at night) using the same sets, directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villarias, Lupito Tovar, and Eduardo Arozamena. BOTH versions are in the National Film Registry.


** "Dracula" did not go into the public domain until April, 1962.

*** A guided tour of coffin-dwellers (PLEASE, no flash pictures!): Christopher Lee's athletic, animal Dracula in the heaving Hammer films, Frank Langella oozing Byronesque charm in the 70's stage version and 80's film version, Barnabas Collins, cutting a swath through the ladies of daytime soap-opera on "Dark Shadows," Anne Rice's tortured, damned rock-star vampires, and right on up to current day with the throbbing vampiric (though chaste) teen romances of the "Twilight" series.

Ninotchka

Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937) You don't often get to see a perfect movie—a movie of fine material: a great script, perfectly cast and executed, yet isn't calcified in pre-calculation, that lives and breathes and takes advantage of accidents. Something that feels like life, only written better. A movie that beguiles, while still acknowledging the real world, and that any interruption will just have to wait until "The End"...which comes far too soon. A movie that widens the eyes, expands the mind and tickles the funny bone. That's Ninotchka.

Three Russian emissaries (Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach) are in Paris on official business, hoping to get top dollar for some diamonds confiscated during the Russian Revolution. Out of the discriminating eye of the commissar, they decide to stay at Paris' most opulent hotel--the better to attract the interest of capitalist speculators, comrade. Of course. As luck would have it, it's also the domicile of the Russian Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), in exile, and shy a few diamonds due to the Revolution. When her "kept man," the Count Leon D'Algout (Melvyn Douglas) encounters them, he plies them with the finest life Paris has to offer, stringing them along while the gears of the authorities grind slowly to take back the diamonds before they can be sold.

The delays in retrieving money for the Soviet State puts the Reds on high alert, and a by-the-book-politburo-crat, Nina Ivanova Yakushova (Greta Garbo) is dispatched to investigate.

She does not like what she sees.

Her humorless buttinski attitude might put things on the right track, and that's the last thing Count D'Algout wants, but he finds his and Paris' charms are lost on "Ninotchka." She is so gray and humorless, with a suspicious look in her eye and expressionless of face, she is more than ideologically committed to the Socialist state, she is practically Vulcan (emphasis on "practical"). The Count must work overtime to beguile her, and overtime is something this representative of the Worker cannot abide. Like it matters. The Count becomes intrigued with her, and decides to make time on his own time.

Ninotchka is political satire as fairy-tale, complete with the converted princess and the pixieish subservients (all thing being equal, comrade, but some are more equal than others—or is that "fairest of them all?"). The conceit is charming, and add the star-power of Greta Garbo as "Ninotchka" and the thing practically fizzes. Garbo has always been a legendary presence, somewhat unapproachable. But her work in this film, with Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's words and buoyed in its interpretation by "The Lubitsch Touch," is the effervescence that pops the film's cork. Again, the structure of the story helps. Garbo's no-bolshevik attitude at the beginning sets up a magical transformation from mugly ducklink to beautiful swana-be. That she is funny in both aspects and possessed of a comic timing with the accuracy of a Swiss watch, while still radiating the sex appeal that made her a box-office queen, is a bit of a miracle. It's my prejudice to think that such a lionized star couldn't possibly be such a fine actress. You learn something new every day.

Which is exactly the point. You might as well enjoy it. One can't help it when the lesson is so delightful.

Mark of the Vampire

Mark of the Vampire (Tod Browning, 1935) Oooh! Here's a Hallowe'en nugget! Bela Lugosi as a vampire in a film directed by the original director of Dracula, Tod Browning? What could be better than that?

Well, just about anything, but all is not lost. The film is full of Browning's atmospheric touches—which made Dracula so creepy—and he does himself better here with extensive fog effects, a "real" flying vampire, and a hot she-vampire that's creepier than Lugosi, himself.

A remake of Browning's London After Midnight (a Lon Chaney silent film classic considered lost), this version is re-set in Prague. Plans for the wedding of Irena Borotyn (Elizabeth Allan) and Fedor Vincenti (Henry Wadsworth) are dampened when her father, Sir Karell Borotin (Holmes Herbert) is found murdered, two holes in his neck and his body drained of blood.  The police are baffled, but not the townspeople, who blame it all on Count Mora and his daughter Luna (Bela Lugosi and Carol Borland), who the locals think reside in the Borotyn castle near town, despite being dead for many, many years. 

The marriage is postponed, the case, being investigated by Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwell), goes cold and Irena goes to live with her guardian, the Baron Otto van Zinden (Jean Hersholt). And, wouldn't you know it?  Right before the wedding can occur again, another attack occurs—this time Fedor turns up double punctured after walking by the Borotyn castle. Then, Irena is attacked. Things are getting to be a real pain in the neck, so the inspector brings in noted vampire specialist Professor Zellen (Lionel Barrymore), who suggests a two pronged attack (naturally), they'll dig up the body of Sir Karell to see if he in thrall to the vampire, and they'll search the Borotyn castle for Mora and Luna.

There's more to this than meets the eye, and far less with a twist ending that makes horror fans see red. 

Still, before they stake these vampires, Browning's atmospherics are fun, effective and slightly risible and although it disappoints for toying with the audience (and for the many 20/20 hindsight "but if..." questions after), it's genuinely creepy.

The Island of Lost Souls (1932)

The Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932) You gotta be careful who you meet in your travels. As they say in Casablanca, there are vultures...vultures everywhere. Thing is, on The Island of Lost Souls (based on H.G. Wells' oft-filmed "The Island of Dr. Moreau"), they just might be vultures, literally.

Or, at least, some human-vulture hybrid.

Edward Parker (Richard Arlen), though, will take any port in a storm. Ship-wrecked, he's picked up by a freighter delivering supplies to a nearby island. After Parker causes some trouble after seeing the Captain attack one of the crewmen, he is thrown off the ship to the boat that meets it to pick up the supplies. It is manned by Montgomery (Arthur Hohl) and Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), and the doctor is only too happy to take the ship-wrecked Parker to his island.

It's not a pretty sight.  All jungle and dark and creepy, until Moreau introduces him to a young native named Lota (Kathleen Burke), who is entranced with Parker. While Parker tries to carry on a conversation with her, screams are heard, which frighten them, but mostly Lota, who enigmatically says that they come from "The House of Pain."

Parker investigates and finds Moreau and Montgomery performing surgery on a strange creature on an operating table. Alarmed that his host is a madman, Parker tries to leave the island but is stopped by a crowd of deformed brutes, until Moreau appears, cracks his whip and forces the creatures to obedience, making the Sayer of the Law (Bela Lugosi) recite the rules, which are echoed by the other creatures: 

Not to eat meat, that is the law. Are we not men?
Are we not men? 
Not to go on all fours, that is the law. Are we not men? 
Are we not men?
Not to spill blood, that is the law. Are we not men? 
Are we not men?

"Are we not men?"  Not just a Devo lyric (remember this was 1932. slightly before "their time"), but a profound question of identity. Turns out Moreau is a mad-man with God aspirations, an anti-Frankenstein, the difference being the German doctor was trying to bring life back from death, whereas the doctor with the South Seas practice is altering life, trying to "do" Darwin generations faster by "un-natural selection"—surgically, chemically, any way he can think of, attempting to turn animals into homo sapiens.

And doing a bad job, by the looks of it. The pre-code movie Moreau presages Dr. Mengele's work for the Nazis by a few years, with vivisection as a specialty, and dictator as a hobby.* Having started with plants and moving on in his designs, his hybrids live as beasts and only the one subject that has yielded the best results—Lota, "the Panther Woman"—has met his standards. Sociopathic in his methods, Messianic in his goals, he sees throwing Lota at Parker as an experiment in biology. Nothing more. And Laughton plays the scene like an avid voyeur.

Subsequent films have been make-up experiments to see how realistically latex can be applied to actors to make the illusion playable. The Island of Lost Souls does a fine job of it, but is expressly concerned with making the hybrids monsters, and the situation nightmarish (as opposed to believable). Realism isn't the goal with this version, so much as driving home the point of the novel (although Wells thought the result was completely different. burying the novel's intentions in horror—he was spared having to see the other versions).  

It should also be noted that this movie has nothing to do with Snapchat filters.

This movie inspired the phrase "The natives are restless."  No.  Really.

* "Moreau" has been filmed a couple times (once with Burt Lancaster and most recently with a risible Marlon Brando as Moreau, that was frankly a bit incomprehensible), but in those scenarios, the methods have been "magical" injections that can turn men to beasts and/or vice versa, more in tune with Dr. Jekyll than Dr. Moreau.  Supposedly, there's a new one in the works from Leonardo DiCaprio's company.