Weirdhouse Cinema: Plan 9 from Outer Space

of the schlock to gone. It is the nineteen seven undead saucer invasion film Plan nine from Outer Space, a movie in which fussy aliens attempt to conquer planet Earth by creating approximately three zombies at a local cemetery in Los Angeles. I've been wondering how long it would take us to do an Edward movie, and we debated whether we should uh do do this? Do this one or

Bride of the Monster. They're both fantastic, but I think this might be a sort of emotional episode for me because Plan nine is not only one of the best and most famously bad movies of all time, it also played a very special role in my life. So, Rob, I don't know if I ever told you this before, but when my wife Rachel and I were very first hanging out when we were in high school. This was before we were technically dating. I don't know what the term in your high school time and place was. It

was going out for us. Before we were going out. One of the first times we ever got together was to watch Plan nine from Outer Space in the basement of my parents house. Oh yeah, so we all we already knew each other, we had some friends in common, but for some reason we decided we needed to see this movie. And I still remember vividly. Uh a bunch

of failed attempts to acquire a copy. Like we we went to Blockbuster Video thinking oh, yeah, okay, it's Blockbuster, surely they will have Plan nine from Outer Space and what a shock they did not. This would have been I think around two thousand two, so they could have hooked us up with the thirty seven copies of Mr Deed's if we wanted, but they did not have any Edward movies in stock. And eventually we figured out that one of Rachel's friends had a bootleg VHS tape of it.

We we finally got our hands on it, and wow, it was so perfect, like the aliens wearing the costumes with the medieval sigils like you know, Bunny breck and Ridge with the ax and uh, the constant switching between night and day, the floppy tombstones, the line delivery, but I'll be in there. Uh, and it was. It was just a magical experience. Uh. I. And now in our house, right next to one of our wedding photos, we have a framed portrait of Tore Johnson and Vampira from Plan nine. Uh.

That's sweet. And I have to say this is probably the perfect movie to watch on a bootleg VHS in a basement somewhere. It's this is a great date movie in general. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've watched this with my wife before, and it's it's just it is. It is NonStop, it is relentlessly what it is, and it's I was having trouble coming up with the perfect adjective for what this film is, because you can say it's cheesy, or it's bad, or it's amateur, or it's

outsider art. Uh, you know, and it's and it is all those things, and yet it it kind of expands beyond easy definition. Oh yeah. And I also just want to point out that this is another nineteen fifty seven sci fi horror movie, which you know, I was trying to think of. I have a feeling about this. It's

kind of ineffable. I was trying to find the best way to put it into words, but I think it's that I have a sense that like nineteen fifty seven to fifty eight was a two year period that was a renaissance for sci fi monster trash, like just to stick to movies that we've talked about on Weird House, fifty seven was the same year as Attack of the Crab Monsters and Not of This Earth. Fifty eight was

the Brain Eaters and Fiend without a Face. I feel like something happened during this two year period there was a shift in the veltgeist and it gave rise to all these emanations, emanations in the gnostic sense, from a kind of primeval spirit of B movie weirdness, and the world has never been the same. We live in the culture that was built by the clumsy, brow furrowing dimmi urge that descended from those emanations. It's fifty seven to fifty eight, and and it's been monsters ever since. This

is the air we breathe. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And uh yeah, thinking about my own history with with Edwood and Plan nine Matter of Space, I'm reminded that I I think I saw my first clips from a number of these movies in two It came from Hollywood, which somebody in my family had taped off of HBO onto VHS, and and for some reason I

was allowed to watch this over and over again. Um, even though you know, it's mostly like a lot of fun monster clips, but also some risk a human are and also some disturbing content from from Hollywood of Yesteryear. But still there's a whole section on there that's that is celebrating Edwood and talking about like how great and how fun. You know. So much of this content was so many of these films, and I guess I kind

of took all that for granted. And it wasn't until I was digging into researching a little bit for this picture that I realized that like before, like before the the early eighties, when this came out and some other things were going on with film festivals, uh, like Edwood had already drifted into obscurity. Uh. And it was it was the memory of these films for that ended up resurrecting his spirit. Oh yeah, the weirdness of Plan nine.

I get the impression that this was not recognized at the time as anything great or worthwhile, and it was not celebrated, h even in an ironic sense, for a long time until like decades after it was made. I think the initial reaction was, well, that was weird. Okay, I never see that again. But but but to come back to what you said, like the classic era, you know,

I mean they're different. Classic eras in cinema that we had that late nineteen fifties era seemed to have produced a number of these these ideas, uh, these tropes that would continue to resonate throughout our film culture as different creators then grew up with those images in their heads

and then created their own things. I sort of feel like this is the era where like the Corman machine is finally humming at full output, like it it has it's going and uh, and other parallel production machines for drive in monster movies are sort of at the at

their peak output. Yeah. But but but before we get too wrapped up in how Plan nine from Outer Space is, you know, cranking the gears of history and of our personal lives, before we get caught in the wheels of progress, we should also describe what this movie is in a literal sense. So I have a few categories I think it should fit into. One is that it's a fifties flying saucer movie. The plot concerns Aliens who fly around in saucers that are described both as saucers and as

quote cigar shaped. Uh that's mutually exclusive, dude. I don't know why you say that in the movie, but that's what they say. Um, but their saucers. They come to Earth to do something something vaguely hostile. It seems their main objectives are to make sure that humans acknowledge their existence and to keep humans from finding out about them. And we find out more about their missions. But yeah, so what is their mission? Well, this entails the second thing.

It's also a zombie movie. The aliens plan involves resurrecting the dead from a cemetery and making these revenants wander around and scare people. It is also an ed Would movie. Now, more about that when we discuss Edward directly. But this means a film made with an absolutely irresistible blend of overwhelming ineptitude and all inspiring self confidence. And it's it's a combination I can't really think of in any other filmmaker.

It's a movie that is so bad it's unbelievable, and it yet it doesn't feel like just check cashing hack work. It feels like it was made by someone who thought this was a brilliant masterpiece and it might even change the world. Yeah, there's an audacity to to Edward movies for sure. Yeah, so so we'll get to win into that into bed but but yeah, there's nothing quite like an Edward film. Also, tying into the cast, which we will discuss more in a minute, I think it's important

to say this is sort of a a bizarro ensemble movie. Like, despite the fact that this is a very low budget movie, the cast includes a surprising bill of strange but familiar faces or what would have been strange but familiar faces at the time. You've got Bella Legosi, the legend himself,

but also Tore Johnson van Hira, the amazing Criswell. It's really kind of unusual when you when you stop to appreciate how many sort of names ended up in this thing, at least names that would have resonated on television in l A at the time. Yeah, and and and beyond that to some extent, and and who might not necessarily be known for acting but who make a very striking screen presence. I mean our Vampira and Tore Johnson actors, not really, but I mean when they're on screen, it

looks great. They They're both individuals who had totally nailed what they were doing outside of film and in this movie though, those skill sets are able to to work well on film in kind of an acting space, but I would not say they are acting right. Um. What one last thing I want to say is that it's in a category of a category that doesn't exist as much as it used to, uh, and that is the thoroughly technically incompetent film. Maybe we don't appreciate this distinction enough,

but here's my take. I'd be interested to hear from people who actually work in the film industry to maybe agree or disagree with this. But my feeling is that in decades past, bad movies were packed with way, way more technical mistakes than bad movies of today. So you have everything from you know, continuity failures between shots, obviously phony sets. You might see a crew member who wasn't supposed to be in the shot standing in the background.

You know, you see the boom mic decinct audio stuff like that. But now the film industry has become much more professionalized, and I think there are so many people working in the film industry now who know how to execute the technical aspects of a film properly. They're good at their jobs. There are enough of those people that even bad movies today are rarely full of actual technical

and competence. Even the bad movies of the twenty one century are made with a pretty high baseline of technical professionalism. And instead now I would say when a movie is bad today, I would argue it's almost always bad because

of the creative elements rather than the technical ones. So, for example, in my personal opinion, hands down the most common problem for bad movies made this year is going to be a bad script, followed by other creative failures, you know, failure of like a cinematographer to establish an interesting or pleasing visual style. But this will rarely extend to like mismatching day night, continuity between shots right right or or or one that is also frequently used by

Edwood jarring use of stock footage. It's like not even of apparently the same film grain or whatever right right, different film grain, different era, sometimes different continent. It looks like there's a really good one. In the other movie were thing about doing um Bride and the Monster where a character like looks at a tree and then we cut two grainy stock footage of a snake and then

she screams and faints. It's really it's wonderful. So, I mean, for the most part that's the pitch, but for just to throw out an elevator pitch, I'll use one from that is from the trailer that we're about to listen to, and that is a terrifying revelation of things to come. Uh. We cannot overlook the fact that this is this is a movie that is not just about something that could happen.

This is not a speculative work. This is about things that that have happened, are happening, or definitely will happen in near future. Yeah, all right, well, let's go ahead and listen to this trailer in full because on its own, like if this were a lost film and all we had was the trailer, we would still have a masterpiece on our hands. It is safe to state that the grandchildren of some of the people in this dinner will

not be on Earth. They come from the bowels of Hell, a transformed race of Walking Dead zombies guided by a master plan for complete domination of the Earth. Plan nine from Outer Space m H starring the most brightmarished past ever Fella Legosi, the seductive Vampira, and poor Johnson as the Walking Dead. Turn off your electro gun, stop it dead, you get it? Cheery Bullets bounce off their bodies, Rockets, missiles, Jets cannot stop their death ships. What earthly power can

stop this terror? What a glimpse of things to come? See this blast of screen suspense, or it could be happening right now? Alright, I absolutely love that it is safe to state that the grandchildren of some of the people in this theater will not be born on Earth. Can you prove the trailer wrong? I don't think you can. You don't even know who was in that theater. All right, well, let's let's get into the people a bit more. Um.

Of course, we're gonna start at the top. We're gonna start with Edwood or as as he is credited on the film, Edward D. Wood Jr. He is the director, He is the writer, he is the producer, he is the film editor, and he also has a cameo in the picture. You know, I realized that a lot of my thoughts about the life of Edward actually are not like researched for accuracy, but a lot of them come from the nineties Tim Burton movie ed Wood, which I

think is it's probably my favorite biography movie. It's it's fantastic. I don't know how true it is to the reality of the events it depicts, but uh, it's it's incredibly fun and it has a standout performance by Martin Landau

as Bill Leegosi. Yeah. Yeah, ed Wood. Uh also pretty pretty crazy because you know, we've talked about how already about how Adwood Edward was a Hollywood outsider, and yet through Tim Burton's picture, uh, it becomes an Academy Award winning property, like Martin Landau's Bella Leghostie role wins an Academy Award. Also, Rick Baker's Makeup wins an Academy Award for that picture, and so it's kind of like the Hollywood establishment finally has to enshrine woods legacy, which is

kind of interesting. But okay, putting the movie that movie aside, I don't know, how do you describe what Edwood was? Yeah? Again, it's difficult to sum up. Um you know, it's just a low budget legend, counterculture icon overconfident, amateur outsider artists. Sometimes I think about that. I compare him to someone like a Howard Finster in my mind, you know, someone who who doesn't have the training that that other individuals working in the field have, but they have that that

there's something going on. This is spark that still manages to force its way into the medium inspiration in the classic sense, like as in literally meaning divine guidance. I when I was looking around for some additional biographical information on him, one of the mistakes I made was thinking, well, I'll look up to see what the oh bits of the day said. And that's one of the things about his life is that there weren't really any major oh bits about him when he died because he had drifted

into such obscurity. But I was looking at a review that Roger Ebert, the late Rogeriebert wrote for Tim Burton's ed Wood movie, and he included, like I thought, what was a nice summary of who and what Edwood was? Quote, Edward D. Wood Jr. Must have been the Will Rogers of filmmaking. He never directed a shot he didn't like it. Takes a special weird genius to be voted the worst director of all time, a title that would has earned

by acclamation. He was so in love with every frame, of every scene of every film he shot that he was blind to hilarious blenders, stumbling in aptitude, and acting so bad that it achieved a kind of grandeur. But badness alone would not have been enough to make him a legend. It was his love of film sneaking through

that pushes him over the top. You know, I think this is a phrase I recall from Roger eberta I don't remember the origin of it, but it was Roger Ebert talking about some bad movie that he said was not just bad, but was awesomely bad. And I think that is a good descriptor to apply to the Edwood movies I've seen. There. They transcended normal badness. They even transcend the normal way that you you appreciate bad movies at an ironic level. They become in some genuine sense

and all inspiring spectacle. It's like, it's, uh, you are observing a work of sheer will. It's oh, I guess, uh, you know, to to quote the title of another podcast, you wonder how did this get made? Like, how was this pushed through to completion? Yeah, and it's a it's it's a rare enough thing just historically, but it's certainly rare now. You don't you don't really find examples of this as much as one might like, and I feel

like we're kind of starved for it at times. There have been films that have come out in recent years where I think people were expecting awesome badness, and unfortunately the cases you end up with something that's just bad in the n the lackluster, luke warm since of the word Plan nine has such a kind of relentless, ludicrous

unbelievability while you're watching it. That rob before we started recording, we were talking off Mike uh about how when you're explaining this movie, you want to like quote the weird dialogue, but then you can't really end up doing that because you end up wanting to quote the entire script. Like every scene is just filled with exchanges that that that clang and and sound wrong in the most awesomely weird way,

and and then it never stops. You think like, oh, I gotta make a note of that one, But then the next one is exactly like it. Yeah, it is relentless. It is stupefying. Uh so. So briefly on the bio of of Edwood. Here he lived, he was a film enthusiast as a child, he had a Kodak centis special. He was an usher at a cinema at one point, he served in the Marines. He moved to Hollywood to pursue his cinematic dreams. He would become a legend, true enough, but like we we said, his his star would rise

after his death in seventy eight. Um, the end of his life was one of obscurity. But then you had stuff like eight twos that came from Hollywood come out, which again featured in edwood tribute section. You had a growing cult following of for films of this nature, including for instance, Michael Weldon's Psychatronic Film Guide, which started up

as a magazine in nineteen seventy nine. You know, the year after after his death, documentaries would follow film festivals, and then by the time you get ninety four's ed Wood the Picture by Tim Burton, like the legacy is assured, like it's cemented. And again the Hollywood establishment itself kind of has to enshrine Wood's legacy. Towards the end of his life, Wood's output descended sharply into erotic and adult territory. This would be in the seventies, but he's working the fifties.

Gave us a string of just numerably weird films, including the semi autographical fifty three film Glenn or Glinda and which would himself plays the titular lead character Uh. He also gave us Bride of the Monster in fifty five, The Violent Years and fifty six, The Bride and the Beast in fifty eight, Nine of the Ghouls and fifty nine,

and The Sinister Urge in nineteen six. I would say he's most remembered I think for for Glenn or Glinda and the two big Bella leego see Monster movies, which were Bride of the Monster and and Plan nine for Outer Space Bride of the Monster. We may have to come back and also do on the show UH in the future, because it has more Bella leegosie than Plan nine does. In fact, Plan nine has almost no bell allegotee at all, and that's one of the real core

paradoxes of Plan nine. I would say that this movie seems in a way to be kind of built around Bella Llegosie. It might be in modern to use a modern expression called a Legosie vehicle. And yet Bella Leegosi is almost entire really missing from the movie. He actually appears in literally just a couple of shots. Legosi I think died before most of the movie was filmed, so in most scenes that feature his character, he's played by

a body double holding a cape over his face. Um, And even including the shots with the body double, Legosi's character is not really central. He's just one of a number of zombies. Yeah. And it's just such a wood move right to not let this stand in the way of not I not I not only completing the film, but also like not reshooting anything they already had. Like we already have Bella in in one scene, two scenes, Why why reshoot any of that. Let's just keep going

and we'll just have the cape over the face. It looks perfect, no reason, no notes, no reason to change anything. It does not look perfect at all. The guy that got to replace Bella Leghostie kind of looks like Jared Leto. He's just like creeping around with slicked back hair and the cape over his like he's you know, his faces in the crook of his arm with the cape. There no explanation of why he's walking like that. Uh. There are some scenes where I'm not even sure it looks

like it was shot for the movie. There there's like one of just Bella kind of standing around. It's hard to tell because again there's such such a jarring difference between one scene in the next, and and yeah, at times it looks like like he's just standing there. So yeah, I agree, it's it's a weird paradox of plan nine and almost That's one of the reasons I'm not even gonna go into Bella Llegosi uh too much here because this is it's not really a Bella Llegosie film because

he's in it so briefly. It's still an important part of his legacy. It's his final film, but um, but still here here the basics Bella Legosi in this place, the old Man slashed, the dead man slash the ghoul Man. Like several characters in this they're called different things. He lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty six, and uh, yeah,

he's a titan of classic horror. At the star of Dracula Befo is the black Cat and um, yeah, we'll have to come back to him in a in another episode of Weird House Cinema when we can really talk about Bella Leghostie as a performer more because again barely performs in this at always barely in this movie. But he was one of the greats. I love Bella, yeah, but but you know who performs in this movie without acting?

I would say it performs almost entirely with this uh, with this kind of uh statue like Grimace is toward Johnson, Uh toward Johnson is so good in this playing he has basically a dual role here. He gets to play a human by the name of Inspector Clay, a policeman. Uh he gets so he gets kind of like a straight acting part. But then he also plays the main undead character, who is sometimes called the Big One or sometimes called the Giant um and it's it's a it's

a great physical performance. So towards Johnson lived and apparently there's some disagree once on exactly when he was born, either nineteen o two or nineteen oh three. Seems this seemed to be the prime candidates here. Died in seventy one. He was born Carl Eric tor Johansson and uh yeah is a is a Swedish born professional wrestler, slash strongman, slash actor um and uh quite an interesting character he was.

He was known in professional wrestling circles of the day as Super Swedish Angel and uh and he was Swedish. But the reason he was an angel, it wasn't angel, but the angel thing is interesting. So he's Super Swedish Angel because there was already a Swedish Angel wrestling. So you can't have two Swedish angels. You gotta mix it up. Somebody's got to be like son of the Swedish Angel or Swedish Angel too or Super Swedish Angel. There you go.

And then that's a gimmick. Um, but this whole angel thing, but in both cases they're tweaking a gimmick that was established by the French angel Maurice Tillott, who was more three and died in nineteen fifty four, who was um like a big, Brutish strong man with a very interesting look, very much you know, a giant uh wrestler of the day WHOA yeah, I found an image comparing him to Shrek Um, yeah, I've heard that that Shrek, the character

Shrek was actually patterned after um, after Maurice Tillott. So it's interesting. Now it's hard to find footage of Tour Johnson wrestling, or at least it was hard for me to find any, but we did find some British footage of Tour wrestling some guy. Um. I'll have to include a link for this on the blog post for this episode at Samuta music dot com. But it's it's it's weird. It's yeah, I mean, on one hand, it's not Monster Tour.

I mean, is a big guy, and you get to see him moving around, applying headlocks and doing some matt wrestling, but he's not like a he's not in monster mode. He's not toward Johnson wrestling the way a modern wrestling fan might expect towards Johnson to wrestle. Yeah. So is this the clip you shared with me that has the British narrator on it? Oh? Yeah, just totally trashing the

whole enterprise. Oh so yeah, so the narrator is like, well this professional wrestling, you know, it isn't very serious, is it? That is somewhat funny? Yeah, it just really rips into it, and then there's all this other weird stuff, like the ref is either shirtless at one point or the ref has like a very like small undershirt on. It was weird. I'm just used to seeing a reff

in ref's clothing. The ref can't be shirtless. That's weird, right, Well, maybe it's aren't there some cases and like the I don't know whatever it's called, the w W or wherever where, Like a heel will attack the reff. Maybe the reff has to be dressed like a wrestler in case the he'll attacks. I don't know, uh, And I don't know a lot about this this period of of pro wrestling, though,

though I have read that it is. It is rare to have footage from some of these these earlier eras because for one thing, a lot of it wasn't taped, and then if it was recorded, those recordings weren't necessarily preserved. Sometimes you know, you're essentially taped over, uh, and they would be lost to history. According to cage match dot Com, Toward Johnson's earliest match was y three and his last

match was ninety five. The records on this website, I don't think are always complete, especially when dealing with older stuff like this. But still it seems like a respectable era in which to have have applied his trade. And he was indeed a big boy build at six three forty pounds, he he is massive, and you can see why people wanted to put him in monster movies. This is not the only one he's uh, He's in a

number one. Another one that sticks in my mind is the Beast of Yucca Flats, where Toward Johnson plays I think he uh so, that is, if I'm not wrong, a Coleman Francis movie, the same guy who made Red Zone, Cuba, which was famously parodied on Mystery Science Theater. Beast of Yucca Flats I mainly remember for two things, having a really just over the top narrator who you know, every time you'd see a character, he would just say something like,

you know, John Johnson, caught in the wheels of progress. Uh. In fact, it's almost kind of similar to Criswell's narration in Plan nine. We'll get to Criswell in a second. But um, the other thing I remember about Beast of Bucca Flats is they barely put tour in any makeup to make him the Monster. He plays like a Soviet scientist who defects to the United States, walks onto a nuclear testing range. They blow up a bomb and that

turns him into a radioactive monster. But they just sort of like put some oatmeal on his face, I think, and then he's otherwise he's just tour. Yeah, I mean tour was a walking special effect. I mean the physicality, the grimace, that was all you needed. So yeah, but Basta Jucca flats. That's that's a fun one. I think MST.

Three K did that one as well. Um, he was in such films as nineteen fifties Appen and Costello in The Foreign Legion, Bob Hopes, the Lemon Dropped Kid in fifty one ed Woods, Bride of the Monster, and Night of the Ghouls. But in terms of earlier in his career, uh, he he started off doing uncredited strongman type bit parts in films back to the mid nineteen thirties, and by forty nine he was showing up still uncredited in films

like Ernest b Showed Sacks Mighty Joe Young. Uh. There's a scene in that movie where a number of strong men are are are playing tug of war with the giant ape and uh, and it's it's kind it's not a kind of interesting. I didn't work on I being all of these guys. But one of them was the famous Italian boxer turned professional wrestler Primo Carnera, who is a really big guy six six and was you know, very much a legendary figure in boxing of that day. Oh, I don't know him. Is is he the last guy

on the tug on the tub rope here? Yeah? I found the still he's the last guy. So he's the most enormous and he's like this big, you know, handsome, well built Italian gentleman. And I'm not sure exactly. I think I think I've pinpointed the individual who's Tore Johnson in this, and I think toward Johnson has hair. I read somewhere that tor actually had like a full head of blonde hair, but he kept it shaved because that was the look, you know, that was the look he

was going for. I can see that. I think he's the first guy in the picture you have for me here. But this other guy looks like he would definitely be cast as Goliath in a bunch of nineteen fifties Italian Bible movies. I think he did some sword and sandals work. I didn't go go too far into the primo filmography, but he was. He was a celebrity of the day and uh and may have had some mob ties apparently, but but yeah, he was. He was in a number

of motion pictures himself. But going back to the picture on your shelf, Joe, we we we can't just talk about Tore Johnson here. We also have to talk about Vampira. So Vampira has no lines in this movie, and yet I think she is the best actor in it. She she well, maybe a tie between her and Tour they both need uh. The Tour has lines before he gets killed. Both of them spend a number of shots just sort

of menacing the camera, and they're great in it. Vampira is wonderful as like making the creepy face and just like flexing her nails. Yes, yes, she has the basically has this um Morticia Adams kind of look going on what essentially has become an iconic Gothic female vamp look. Right, she has the long nails and then she also has this um very painful looking corset on that makes her, you know, have this kind of almost skeletal appearance. You know, she's very made up and she's she's hamming it up

big time as well. Uh you know, she's really twisting her face in a way that she's coming off like like the undead. Now something I've always wondered. I don't know if you know the answer to this. Vampire. We we've recently on the show been talking about these horror movie hosts, the people who would you know, host a TV program where they would show a horror movie and then they would interrupt it to do commercial breaks and make jokes about the movie. That was Vampira's gig way

back in the fifties. And so I wonder was she the first one or were there other people who did this before her. Everything I've read seems to indicate that she was the first. She's the matriarch of the entire enterprise. I don't think anybody else was doing it before her. Uh So it's as an interesting story. So Vampire is the persona of Malia Nermi, who lived ninety two through two thousand and eight. And it didn't even have a

long run. It only ran fifty four throughft but but it resonated with with folks, especially apparently in the in the l A area. I believe that's where it was primarily airing. That's where it was based out of. And she also did appearances on some other shows, uh, popping up you know, and pretty much always in the persona

of Empira. So yeah, she was this goffy queen, super narrow, corseted, waste, long fingernails, often with a cocktail and some sort of in the set, you know, behind her would be something atmospheric and goffy, maybe a little um dry ice smoke going on, you know. Uh So for the most part, yeah,

she's always showing up in her persona of Empire. But she also pops up as a hag and a sorceress in Burt I. Gordon's nineteen sixty two fantasy film The Magic Sword, which started Basil Rathbone, Estelle Wynnwood, and Gary Lockwood. That is, at least for me, a much below of MST three K episode as well. I never seen it. Oh it's good. Um Yeah, Croty Robot falls in love with Estelle Winwood and has a whole song about how much he loves this stell and then the movie itself

is a lot of fun. It's you know, it's Sword and Sorcery from Birdeye Gordon. Oh, I bet the effects are just perfect. Um. But you know, so, Vampiro was not the only l A Area TV celebrity to appear in Plan nine from Outer Space. The other one, the other main one, is Chriswell, who planed nine definitely would not be the same without Chriswell. Chriswell is the narrator

in this movie. Criswell was the name of Jared Charles Criswell King, also known as the Amazing Chriswell, who was an eccentric celebrity psychic who is probably best known for making predictions about the future on late night TV shows in the fifties and sixties. Yeah, yeah, he was. He was a psychic for Maywell and was a friend of may West's and at one point he was also Vampire's roommate.

So you do get the sense that like it was like a network of of l A weirdos, really, and I think that's something that that Tim Burton captured rather well in his film, the idea that like these were these were the outsiders and they were brought together, uh in this strange enterprise. So when we were getting ready to do this episode, I got really into doing, uh to to reading about the predictions made by Chris Well.

So that was what he was famous for. He'd come on TV and say, you know, I'm a psychic, so I predict that. Allegedly, he correctly predicted that John F. Kennedy would not run for re election because of some tragic event in November nineteen sixty three. Uh, that is at least what I've seen claimed on his website. I don't I don't know if that's actually what he said, but that's what it says. That's what it claims retroactively. But he made all kinds of other predictions that definitely

did not come true. So there's a there's a website called Criswell predicts dot com where you can read a bunch of these exerpted from his books, or at least from one book of his. I don't even know where to start with these. There there are a lot of predictions about like Earth being destroyed. So to read one passage quote, can our whirling, turning, churning Earth last out the night? Our geologists tell us that the danger to Mother Earth lies not in the uncharted vast of outer space,

but from inner Earth. Here is what will more than likely happen. According to geologists, small tidal waves will play havoc for no reason at all. The surface of the Earth will bulge ever so slightly, and highways will slightly buckle. Foundations will tip, and floors will slant. When you pour a cup of coffee or a glass of water, the rim will not level. Telephone, coin boxes and vending machines

will refuse to work. Delicate instruments will go haywire elevators will go out of whack, jukeboxes will be mute, radio and TV will fail. All electric power, gas and water service will cease. And then will come the time when garbage cans roll across the street for no apparent reason. Then and only then will you realize the advanced corrosion spelling the end of our earth. The seas will fill up quickly with a gooey mass of inner earth rubble.

Our streets and city lots, farms and deserts will bubble up like a festered oil and marking the complete collapse. Has this happened before, more than likely, and it will happen again in your incredible future. Uh He also predicted

the assassination of Fidel Castro in nineteen seventy. Uh. He predicted that there will be an outbreak of men becoming cannibals in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in uh December nineteen eighty and he predicts the world will end on August eighteenth nine in a sequence of events including a jet black rain bow, a huge snake in circling the world, and feeding upon the oxygen which we need to exist. Um. Well, oh wait, actually sorry, I apologize. The huge snake in circling the

world is a metaphor he's using. Okay, al right, the black a metaphor for the black rainbow that's caused by a mysterious force. So it's a black rainbow, but it's like a snake eating all of our oxygen. But the black rainbow is not a metaphor, it's an actual black rainbow.

I think so. Uh. Also, several of his predictions are about some kind of mass sexual behavior phenomenon, such as one he predicts where clouds of afrodisacs substances will take over the country in the year's nineteen eighty nine, causing

people to marry cats and stuff. Okay, well, this reminds me one of the things I read about Chris Well is that he worked with Edward to figure out exactly what he was gonna say on this film because there were certain words that Chris Well could not really get out all that easily kind of a speech impediment kind of a situation, and so they kind of like figured out how to like figured out what he could say, so you know, work it to his his favor here.

Uh And ultimately I feel like with Tore Johnson with a Vampiro, with Chris Well, like these are all examples of someone who they'd already figured out their gimmick outside of film, and then they're brought into the film world and they're just they're continuing to do their thing on their terms, and that's why they're they're probably the most impressive figures in this picture. Yeah, Uh, there is, there's.

Tour doesn't really do any wrestling in the movie, except there's one moment where he gets a really nice wrestling slap down on a cop. He like smacks him on the shoulders, you know the part I'm talking about. Yeah, Yeah, he does kind of it almost looks like a like a double chop, Yeah, situation, almost like a Mongolian chop. Or something. But uh, but but the other individual just completely collapses if it just instantaneously broke all of the bones in their body. All right, Well, onto the rest

of the cast. Some of these are humans, some of these are aliens or celestials, but the first is definitely a human man. This is the character Jeff Trent, played by Gregory Walcott, who lived through two thousand and fifteen. He has our square jaws six four punch first hero.

This is the lug hero of this monster movie. Yeah, and it's interesting because he's also He was also more of an established actor than many of the folks in Plan nine, which isn't saying much obviously, but he'd already been in a string of movies and TV shows at

this point. He mainly went on to do a lot of TV after this, but also popped back up on the big screen in a trio of Clint Eastwood movies in the nineteen seventies, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Eiger Sanction, which I remember is being a pretty fun mountain climbing thriller every which way, but Lose, which which some would say is a Grade eight movie, and then N's House to the second Story. He even has a cameo in in in Burton's Edward movie, plays like a potential backer

for one of the pictures. I don't want to be too unkind, but Gregory Walcott this is no John Agar. I mean, you've, you know, in fifties sci fi movies, You've got your lugs and then you've got your lugs, and Walcott is the latter. The best comparison I could think of. I don't think I've ever put this together before, but on this viewing, I realized that this is what you get if you made an alien invasion movie where the dashing hero was Putty from Seinfeld. Yeah, I know

what you mean. His voice. He's got a deep voice, but it's almost a little too deep, like he's almost leaning into lurch territory. Uh. And again he's he's he's already six four, Like he's a very tall guy. I mean, we're getting I guess he's taller than than tour Really at this point, he's getting up in there into into primo territory. And that's that's awfully tall for your for your heroes. You're how to pull some apple boxes on stat at this point. Yeah, So, actually, you know what

I think to go even better. I would say he's a combination of Putty from Seinfeld and Jack Palance. Oh that's good, yeah, yeah, but but without without the the uh, the overpowering charisma of either. Oh of course, I didn't mean he has the charisma of Jack Palance. He does

not have that sneer. No, he's He's actually quite appropriate though for the role he plays, which is he he seems to be playing a man who's supposed to represent the stupidity of Earthlings, because the Aliens are like, you know, you're going to destroy yourselves by creating weapons that will annihilate the entire universe, And he's like, but wouldn't these

weapons make us stronger? Uh? And he also, I hope you'll notice in the later scenes where the aliens are calling Earthling stupid, he's the only Earthling who gets offended, and I think that tells us something. Alright. So he plays Jeff Trent, human man. But then we also have the actor Paula Trent, a human woman. Uh. This is his wife played by Mona McKinnon, who lived through Tennessee born actor who acted in just a handful of movies during the nineteen fifties, including Nisa of the Lost Women,

Jail Bait, Teenage Thunder, and Night of the Ghoules. She has some line deliveries in this movie that will leave you reeling. Yes, I mean it's you can't blame her too much because she's she's using the lines that were given to her by ed Wood, but oh, it's it's it's beautiful to be held. There's a scene where Jeff Trent is, you know, her husband, He's going off to fly an airplane and she's like, I wish you'd go stay at your mother's house because of all these zombies

that have been wandering around. And she's like, oh, don't worry about things, and he's like, okay, well be careful. And then the line she says is, I'm afraid I'm getting wrong. I think it's something almost exactly like this. The flying saucers are up there, the cemeteries out there, but I'll be in there. Yes, Oh my god, Like really, she did a great job with what she was given there, like what are you? How are you supposed to deliver that?

And and then there there's so much other weird stuff that she's given, Like there's this whole bit where she's talking about how with um with lug head away with with Jeff away that she's got a pillow that she's gonna hold at night, and he's acting a little jealous of the pillow, and there's like some at least mild pillow eroticism wrapped up in the whole scene, and it's just so weird, alright. So so that's that's McKinnon playing Paula,

a human woman. But our next character is Aros, a celestial an alien, which, of course, especially in the film like this just looks like a human being accept in a funny costume. And this character is played by all the brilliant Dudley man Love who live through a California radio announcer with a voice of just solid gold and

also sometimes actor exact opposite end of the spectrum. So whereas with Jeff and Paula, both of them have these line deliveries that just clang and clunk and like roll tumble down the stairs, this guy says every single line, no matter how banal, with like like he's giving a sort of political announcement, yeah, or the Hindenberg is crashing, but he's just he's that that that's the level of his Delivery. Yeah, he was not an actor, to be fair,

sometimes an actor, but this was his first picture. He went on to act in nineteen sixty two is the Creation of the Humanoids. And he had some roles, uh that would pop up here and there on TV shows like even Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Dragnet. But this, uh, this is his memorable performance. He's just he's a light anytime he's on screen, but he's usually not alone on screen. There there are two aliens who pilot the main flying saucer in the movie, and the other one is Tanna,

played by Joanna Lee. I lived one through two thousand and three, and as an actor, she was mostly active in the nineteen fifties, including a role in The Brain Eaters from fifty eight, but she more extensively had an impact as a producer, a writer, and a director. She wrote for a slew of TV comedies, including, just to name a few of them, The Jetsons, My Three Sons, Johnny Quest, Bewitched, The flint Stones, Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch,

The Waltons, and then later on Dynasty. Uh So, like that alone is pretty impressive, but she also produced and directed episodes of CBS School Break Special and ABC After School Specials. So seems to seem to me like a pretty solid career. Yeah, yeah, broke mainstream YEP. Now, before we get to the next celestial, we want to get back into the human world for a second, and mentioned that we have this patrolman. Patrolman Kelton played by Paul Marco.

Paul Marco lived through two thousand and six. He was a three time would actor. He also appears in Bride of the Monster and Night of the Ghoules classic Bumbling Cop performance. I was trying to find where to insert this in our outline, and I feel like maybe the best places here. So I came across a record that I just have to get a copy of. It is let's see what is it called. It came out in nineteen five or ninety six, I think, and it's called Uncle Dale presents Paul Marco as Kelton the Cop and

Chris Well Uh, and they're performing two different songs. So it's like a single record with a one song on each side, and one is performed by Paul Marco singing a song called Home on the Strange, which is like a sort of monologue song about a bunch of horror stuff happening. And then the other side is Chris Well doing a song that I have to say Chris Well sounds like he's real phoning it in. It's called someone Walked Over My Grave and it's just piano playing and

he's going sub one while walked over my Grave. I think I've heard this in a weird mix at some point as well. But the Paul Marco song is is better. I mean, it's it's worth a listen. You should look it up Home on the Strange. Alright, Well, I'll make sure that I did listen to Someone Walk Over My Grave, but I'll listen to Home on the Strange as well, and I'll put both of these on the page for this episode at Samuda music dot Com. All right, now,

back into the celestial realm. We have the Ruler a celestial played by John Breckenridge, who lived fourteen through a very fun screen presence in this film, a very very sassy performance. Um, but this is a guy who's just was a complete non actor making a one time appearance in film. He just happened to be a house guest of Paul Marco at the time. He's well he's got

wonderful screen presence. Yeah, he does, because he he has he has, he has his performance, his his his performances such that I feel like some of his lines are legitimately creepy, like he's the he's the the actor who gets to deliver the line. Plan nine deals with the resurrection of the dead and so forth. So it's a it's a fun, fun little role. But but yeah, he's not an actor at all. And just kind of I

guess convinced UH to show up and do this. He was French born, the great great great grandson of U. S. Attorney General John Breckenridge, born into a wealthy family, and also the great grandson of Wells Fargo Bank founder Lloyd Tavis, heir to the dynasty. All Right, and finally, I want to just I want to have a note here about the music though, because as with Tarantula, we're knee deep

in fifty stock music here. But I will say, in a movie that is so well known for it's an aptitude, uh, and it's in its amateur style and the clunkiness of pieces coming together, this is a film in which we pieces of music from multiple sources compiled by one Gordon Zaler, and I feel like some of these are just really great pieces of music. You know, they're that classic kind of horns, blaring monsters, attacking music from the from the day.

And when you're watching the film, you may be noticing all these other things that don't feel right and are coming off weird and amateurish, but the music isn't one of them. The music sounds really solid. So I have to give Gordon credit for for bringing in these pieces, assembling them in such a way that they're able to back the film up and make you and you may be second guessing everything else, but you're not really second

guessing the music for the most part. Yeah, I cannot hear those horns without thinking of of Tore Johnson's gaping mouth, like they're the sounds are coming out of his mouth. Now. I think we face a different kind of challenge when breaking down the plot of this movie than we normally do, which is that there is way too much of a temptation to minutely describe and quote every single scene, which

we're going to try not to do. But this movie, like the weirdness and the double take inducing stuff that's happening, is just NonStop yeah, it is. It is relentless this film, and you definitely should see it. It's one of these. It's it's rare to find anyone who is not amused by it. Uh, this is this is one that I would I would recommend to everyone out there, and it's one that that that holds up to repeat viewing. I've

seen this a few different times. I've I've seen I think I saw riff tracks presentation of it many many years ago, and and that's fine, or riff tracks can it can be a lot of fun. But this is a film that doesn't even need the riffing like it is. It It's energy is such that that you will do the riffing. You know that the riffing occurs in your own head. It's brilliant. But one thing we do have to talk about is the introduction, because the movie begins.

This is a fictional movie that begets with a Criswell predicts segment like the amazing Criswell did on TV. And uh he so it. You know, the lights come up on Criswell and he goes into a monologue that is so indescribably weird, like the rambling, nonsensical nature of it actually reminds me of you know, when you're in high school and people have to do class presentations and sometimes there's a kid in the class who hasn't done any of the homework or any preparation, but they're also kind

of good at talking, and they just start saying words. Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's totally fair. And really it seems like it would line up well with with Chris with with with Criswell's career here where he's essentially saying nothing, but the delivery is good enough that it sounds profound. I can't, I can't do the Criswell voice. It is famously the adjective I think is stentorian. You know, it's greetings, my friend. Uh, And so he begins by saying, 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 with it so far, okay, future events will affect even you in the future. Um. 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 you the full story of what happened on that

fateful day. We are bringing 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? I absolutely love it, and it's it's so ridiculous, and yet at the same time, one thing I was thinking about is that if you compare this opening narration to the John Leriquette opening narration on the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they have a lot that lines up with each other, like they're both presented uh to varying degrees of believability um as a statement of that what you were about to see is real, this really happened,

this is really important. And then both examples say the name of the picture at the very end, uh the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And even though Plan nine from Outer Space was the final title for this picture, Grave Robbers from Outer Space was was like an alternate title or

working title or something to that effect. Yeah, I don't know if this is historically true, but in the movie Edwood, they explained the reason for the change of name was that the film was at least partially financed by a Baptist church in the Los Angeles area, and they found the idea of grave robbing sacrilegious. Uh, it should be noted graves aren't really robbed. I mean they're self robbing by courses. So it's but but really nitpicking at this point,

there's so many other glaring errors. Well no, wait, actually to that point, there is an absolutely unbelievable scene that goes on for minutes of cops talking about standing over a grave, of talking about whether or not they can go down into the grave to look at it. Right. It goes on forever, and they're they're talking about do we have jurisdiction to go in there? But also it's like can we physically do it? Can all in here? And then one guy goes in and he's like, I

can't read anything. It's like you're in an open grave and I think it's supposed to be night, and so they're like, well, we better get him a flashlight. And we mentioned that we have DeMarco playing a bumbling cop, but like all the cops are bumbling, and they're so blum bumbling, Like this seems to be a picture in which the only understanding of law enforcement was based entirely on Laurel and Hardy movies. It's it's incredible, but I mean,

there's so many levels of the Criswell monologue. So yes, it is like the Texas Chainsaw. It's like insisting this is real even though the events don't don't even have internal consistency, but also saying, what what is the relationship to time here? It seems to establish that that causality is still in effect. Future events will only affect you in the future, which I guess is good, Like it's good to know there are some rules still in place

here for this motion picture. But he's also saying that the events he's talking about are are happening in the future, but also have already happened. Okay, well yeah, now that just twists me all up. Okay, So we go from Criswell to Boom Thundercrack credits etchings on a tombstone. You see tour Johnson Just a little note. I remember thinking even back the first time I saw it, Wardrobe on. This movie is by someone named Dick Cheney. I think

it's not the same one. I missed that. But then so the credits finish, and then one of the funniest things is that it cuts to a funeral and then Criswell is still going. You think you're done with him, but he just comes back in. You're watching people in a graveyard, and he's all of us on earth know that there is a time to live and a time to die. And uh, we see Bella Lego, see the

real Bella Lego. See in this sense, he's crying into a handkerchief at a grave side and some guys reading a Bible and there are two grave diggers nearby who look like they belong in a commercial for baked beans, and uh. And the Criswell monologue just goes and goes and goes. You know, he's talking about like the nature of death. He says, when death the proud brother comes suddenly without warning. Um, and he says, oh. But he also gets very poetic. He's talking about like the sundown.

You remember, the sundown, last sundown of the day, and yet also the sundown of the old man's heart. And you're just like you can just a mad j Edwood writing this and or Cruswell riding with him, and they're just like, yeah, this is so good. It's so good. So here's where things begin. Bella Lego sees at a

funeral for his wife. Uh, it doesn't show us this, but we find out later his his wife was Vampira, and uh, then the grave diggers start tossing dirt on the coffin, and then we cut to an airplane, and then we cut inside the airplane and wow, wow this set. Yeah, it's it's a ludicrous set. Um really just so so obviously a set, like like Muppet Show level of set. It's just a room with an open door and a shower curtain and I guess that's supposed to go back

into out of the cockpit. And then on the wall there's a clipboard and what is this circular thing is that's supposed to be a thermometer or something. I guess it's supposed to be some sort of gauge, but it's clearly just some sort of um a circular slidey reference tool that's just been pinned to the wall. But they're so they're like looking out the window and saying yep, that's the old San Fernando Valley right there, right where

you're supposed to be. And then suddenly, zoom, you got a flying saucer goes by out the window and it they're showing it off to the flight attendant and uh and it kind of rocks the plane and they're like, wow, that was nothing from this world. And the pilot here is Gregory Walcott. That's uh, Jeff Trent, our our hero, and he's immediately very concerned that the passengers not find out about the flying saucer. But the flying saucer goes by and then it lands at the cemetery from earlier,

and the grave diggers here something. This is a dialogue exchange that must be quoted. Uh so the grave diggers say, you hear anything I thought I did? Don't like here in noises, especially when there ain't supposed to be any Yeah, kind of spooky, like maybe we're getting old. Well, whatever it is, it's gone now that's the best thing for us to gone. Yeah, let's go. It's just And then

here comes vampire. She shows up, comes lurching out of the darkness, and the myths looking just you know, completely put together, very much. Has this this gothic queen look down, um and uh yeah, we're we're off to the races here with the dad rising from the grave. Absolutely flagrant inter cutting between night shots and day shots in this sequence,

continuity does not even seem to be attempted. And so Vampira walks up on them, and I was, she kills them, But how are you imagining she kills the grave diggers? What she does is she kind of stands in a pose like an idle video game character, like a t pose, and then suddenly raises her hands up while standing behind a shrub, and then the grave digger scream and die. Yeah. I think it's later in the picture we do have

some police comparing bodies to aunt wild animal kills. So I guess she's supposed to have used those really long nails of hers. I guess, so, yeah, the nails seem significant. But then after that we get the famous shot immortalized in Tim Burton's Would of Bella Go See, coming out of a little house and standing in his front yard and stopping to smell a rose, apparently in grief. Meanwhile, Chriswell is narrating, you know, Chris Well is just going on about how the house that they when which they

shared their love, became a tomb. And then Bella wanders just out of frame, and then there is an immediate sound cue. He's the second he steps out of out of picture. Tire screech, scream, crash, sirens. Though I would like to stress obviously we're supposed to believe that Bella was crushed by a runaway truck or something right after he left the shot, but actually you can see his shadow still falling on the grass, not moving, So he's just stepped out of you, is standing there casting a shadow.

Rob I did a picture for you to look at. You can see the shadow on the bottom left and then the screech and and the scream. Brilliant Again, Edward was not going to let the death of a central character stand in the way of not only continuing production, but also not redoing a single thing that he'd already shot. Right, So we go straight onto the funeral and then we see people coming out of what they call a cript but it's just like it looks like a cardboard box.

And oh, it is such a clown car situation. Many people coming out of this tiny box. We have this tiny's and you know, if you've ever been in a crip, I mean, I guess this is a movie cript This is like like a Santo and the Tomb of Dracula crypt where I guess there's supposed to be a lot going on in there, but we don't see that on screen. It looks like a tiny little phone booth made out of cardboard that's been sprayed gray to look kind of

like granite. And is this the scene where they also they go ahead and established well, due to their customs, um the the the old man's wife was buried in the ground, and he was buried inside of a tomb inside of this mausoleum type situation, which I love because it's clearly a situation where there is they at least realized, oh, yeah, well we have her. Why would we Why would she be buried there and he buried here? Should we reshoot anything, No, We'll just to have a have a line or two

that establishes that there is a reason for this. It's cultural. Don't worry about it, but it makes sense. Yeah, it's the mourners who climb out of the box, and then the lady goes first his wife, then he and then her husband goes tragic, uh, and that, Yeah, they have the conversation about how it's due to due to an old family superstition that she had to be in the

ground and he had to be in a crypt. But I think, yeah, I think it's literally because they just already shot some of the shots and then they're like, oh, we gotta cover for that. I just had so many questions about this custom, like why, I mean, it's it's it's you know, it sounds kind of sexist obviously, but like what possible reason would there be, Like well, like, oh, you can't bury the men and the women in the same soil. I need the soil. That's where you bury women,

then you bury in them. It's just ridiculous. But we're about to get to the police because some mourners they get spooked seeing bodies of the grave diggers and they freak out and the police arrive and oh man, this is when we first meet Tore Johnson. Before he's a zombie. He's a human. He's in fact a police inspector. Yes, uh, And there's yeah, there's some great dialogue here from him. This is a scene where the dialogue like it would have been funny even if it had been delivered. Well,

but it's Tore Johnson saying it. So you know here there's one part, I think the very first thing he says when he gets there, he's like, melcle Examiner been here yet? So it's the Melcle Examiner. And um, there's one part where he's like, I'm gonna go walk off in the dark and they're like, be careful, it's dark. And then he's just like, I'll be big boy now, Johnny. Yeah toward Johnson. Yeah, clearly not a not not an

actor in this sense, is a physical presence. But it's kind of cute though, because you get kind of maybe a sense of the real tour Johnson in this shot, you know, because he was supposedly like just kind of a big teddy bear. They didn't say much, but it was kind of a nice guy to be around. Yeah. Um, so he goes wandering off into the darkness and the mist and then we, uh, we finally we meet Paula Trnt.

So Jeff Trent is back home now and he's hanging out on his porch with a bunch of wicker furniture, having a drink with his wife Paula, and uh, they're commenting on how you remember Jeff Trent was the pilot from the plane, and so they're married. They apparently live in a house inside the cemetery as best I can tell. Um, like they talked about that fact, and uh they are no tour Johnson's. But this couple has really weird energy

and some of the clunkiest dialogue in movie history. Uh it's again, it's hard to explain without just watching the movie, you know, Like Paula says to him, I don't think I've ever seen you in this mood before, and he says, I guess it's because I've never been in this mood before. And uh, Putty here explains that he's in this unfamiliar mood because he saw a flying saucer on his flight this morning, and she goes, you mean the kind from up to the from up there, and he goes, yeah,

or it's counterpart. I didn't know what that meant this whole sequence. One of the things I love about it is that Wood is trying to create what is essentially a realistic scene with with with this whole speculati the pick aspect to it, where it's a wife asking her husband, like, what's bothering you there's something bothering you, and he is having to admit that it's something that I don't even feel,

but that comfortable talking about. And so this has tons of real world parallels obviously, and it's one of these great moments where it's like the writer director, uh, you know, filmmakers almost like aliens, trying to figure out how how normal humans interact with each other. And well he yeah, so it's trying to show that is the dynamic I think it's going for, But instead it just turns into Gregory Walcott having this rant about about a cover up.

He's like, you know, big army brass grabbed us and made us swear to secrecy about the whole thing. And then he's just on the subject of big army brass like he he mentions it several more times. He's really upset. He's like, people keep seeing these saucers, but but I can't say a word. I'm muzzled by army brass. Oh and then right then the uh flying saucers zooms over

them and knocks over all the wicker furniture. Uh. So then we get a scene where Tore Johnson is attacked by Bella not Bella Legosie by the Bell Legosie body double and by Vampira, And I just wondered why. So he's supposed to be investigating the graveyard for clues, but he's just walking around with his gun pointed in front of him. Yeah. Yeah, really, this one, this is just a small thing when it comes to the depiction of firearms by law enforcement in this picture. Uh yeah, there's nobody.

Clearly nobody had ever been around a gun before or had any idea about what gun safety was or what it might look like on the screen. Uh, it's it's so ridiculous. Well, so, yeah, tour gets killed by the zombies. And then the other main cop who we follow after this is the police lieutenant I don't even remember his name, the police lieutenant who just uses his gun as like a like a pointer stick. So he whenever he's talking about something or about someone, he points their gun the

gun at them. He also scratches his own head with the barrel of the gun and like holds it with the barrel pointed into his own chest. Yeah, if he had picked his nose with the barrel of the gun, it would not have been any more outrageous than everything else he does with it. But so they're walking around they find they find Towards Johnson dead and they observed. They said, Inspector Clay is dead, murdered and somebody's responsible. So we get a funeral for Inspector Clay and it

seems vampires attending the funeral. She's just standing there watching. Uh. And then we got two people seeing flying saucers over Hollywood Boulevard, like there's like a car going by in a part where like three people suddenly point out the windows at the saucer, all in unison. Um. Uh. And meanwhile we're getting Criswell monologues over this where Chris wells like, there comes a time and each man's life when he can't believe his own eyes. And uh. They here's where

they decided got to pad this movie out. We got some stock military stock footage, so they show planes flying, rockets launching, just military hardware doing stuff. Yeah. Yeah, there's all these shots of one Colonel Edwards just standing there basically a blank background, staring up supposedly the sky would have been poculars and just ordering all the rockets to be fired at these three UFOs. He doesn't even seem to care what continent. These rockets are on, so we

just got all the stock footage of rockets firing. What is the deal with the secrecy about the UFOs? This is completely inconsistent in the movie. So part of the movie they're saying Army Brass won't let anybody know that UFOs exist. But then also we here we cut to Colonel Edwards and he's talking to just some soldier and they're talking about the flying saucers and the soldier is like, hey, what's the deal with these flying saucers, And the colonels like, well, uh,

they attacked us. They he says, they attacked the town. A small town, I'll admit it, but nevertheless a town of people across the line. And he reveals Edwards reveals the big Army Brass is covering up the alien menace. You know. He says, take any earthquake, any fire, any natural disaster. You think that's natural disasters, you know what, it's probably actually aliens. Yeah, if you drop aliens in the middle of this and everything makes sense. But I

think it's time to meet some aliens. So let's go to the mothership in orbit around the Earth. A mothership which really just looks like a breast or a nipple. I mean, it's it's very glaring. But so we meet the aliens and these uh they do a salute where they like cross their arms on their chest, and that's very funny. Kangan Kodos do the same salute when they're

on The Simpsons. But the Alien boss is played by Bunny Breckenridge, and here you he's wearing a medieval times tunic with a like a sigil of an ax on it. And then we see the underlings Arrow Syntana and they're wearing their satin tunics and they have this bizarre conversation where they're talking about what plans they are going to enact on Earth. Breckenridge says, oh, what plan will you follow now? And Arrow says, well, you know, we tried

to contact Earth leaders, but they reject our existence. You just can't talk to these Earth humans. Their soul is too controlled, that's what he says. I don't know what that means. But here they say it's time to go with Plan nine. So what's Plan nine going to be? He says, oh, yes, Plan nine deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pinnial and pituitary glands of recent dead. Okay, I guess that would explain the zombies we've seen. But what what we're

Plans one through eight? I was thinking about this, so I guess Plan one was evidently just buzz major cities with UFOs and just kind of like freak people out a little bit. And I'm guessing that plans too. Through eight we're just kind of the stock plots of any other nineteen fifties film, you know. So it's like Plan two's giant animals attack, Plan three animals attack, Yeah, giants, scorpions,

probably throw some robots and monsters in there. Maybe they get up to something like superviruses and space religion eventually, but by the time you get to Plan nine, it's the resurrection of the Dead. Well, it's it's a great plan, and Dudley man Love really sells it. He's like, we have risen too so far, we shall be just as successful on more. I do actually buy into Plan nine a bit when this scene in Others where they discussed that the aliens are discussing it because it's kind of

like they won't see this coming. This is going to freak them out, like there's a there's a sense of psychological warfare to it that sounds sensible, like if if aliens had the ability to do this and they wanted to mess with us, Yeah, make make our dead come back to life. Now, maybe resurrect more than three of them. But you know, I don't know. They had to scale up from somewhere right. Well, So they explained that the purpose of Plan nine is to make the humans acknowledge

their existence. They say, like, they won't accept that we exist. Uh, you know, they just shoot at us when we come down there, and then they believe that we're not real. So we have to make them accept our existence by raising the dead. I don't know why that would be

more effective than the flying saucers. Yeah, I don't have an answer to that, but I like, I like, if I lean into it and I think about it, I can think of it as kind of a psychological attack as a way of of causing um panic among the humans, like more panic than just the UFOs. The UFOs are

up there, but the dead are down here. There's a great scene Aero Syntanna like walk out of the room that they leave Breckinridge behind and uh arrows says, you know, it's an interesting thing the earth people who can think are so frightened by those who cannot. The dead. Yes, anyway, they go back to Earth. We get another porch dialogue scene between Paula and Jeff. You know, they're he's leaving.

This is the scene with the whole like the saucers are up there and the cemeteries out there, but I'll be locked up in there and um oh man. This is also the scene where they have the pillow conversation. She's like, when you're gone, I need your pillow here because I can touch your pillow and and he he seems kind of weirded out by it, you know. He he leaves being like, well, I love you, darling, but you're off your rocker. And then he gets back in

the airplane and leaves. It's awesome. Uh so what we get a bunch of other shenanigans with Jeff on the plane and the co pilot and the stewardess talking about going to Albuquerque and trying to party there. I don't even will skip over all that. So we get belle Lego see in some actual shots where it's really him, but then other shots where it's the body double showing

back up and essentially like creeping into the Trent house. Oh. I love this scene because he's creeping around and then he's like coming up to the door and sort of jiggling it a little bit. But no, no, no, he rings the doorbell and then he comes inside like he's just not cut out for this, uh, this breaking and entering thing. Yeah, So Paul is in bed and then the old man walks into her bed room. She screams, and then she just runs past him out the door.

He's very slow moving. Uh it makes me think of Night of the Living Dead. Actually, you know, like are these creatures slow moving? Oh? Yeah, they're dead. They're all missed up. I think that applies to Bella in this. And so she just runs past him and then runs out into the cemetery. We get a great shot of Tour Johnson rising from the grave and it does look

pretty creepy. I remember seeing this as a kid and finding it pretty creepy, pretty disturbing, because yeah, we've got the blaring horn music tour is just touring it up to eleven here. It looks really good. We get a bunch of chasing around in the cemetery. The zombies are chasing Paula, cutting randomly back and forth between nighttime and daytime. And then eventually a random cowboy hat man in a in a convertible rescues Paula. She like faints by the road.

He picks her up, puts her in the car, and drives away. For some reason, he knows who she is. I don't think we've ever met this character, but for oh, but next we get a scene where okay, so Aero Santana, the aliens now they're landing in the cemetery and they're gonna check out their monsters because they're gonna take them up to show Breckon Ridge up in the mother ship.

And there's a great scene where like toward Johnson and Vampire are trying to kill them, Like they walk in the door and they're like reaching for them, and and Arrows has to be like turn off the electrodes quickly. They can't tell us from anyone else. And this is not the only time they lose control of the zombies.

The zombies are frequently just attacking the aliens themselves. Yeah, this and you know this scene, I feel like man Love is able to really sell the threat, Like I buy into the fact that he's panicking, like he's he's losing it. He's a he's at crashing Hindenburgh level when it comes to his fear over the big one, the giant toward Johnson, Uh, coming after his throat, and then afterwards he's he's still had a breath and he's like

that that was too close. Yes. Uh. And then there's also a scene in here where the cops are bumbling around in the graveyard. This is the one we mentioned earlier where they spend a long time talking about whether they can climb down into an open grave or not. Uh. And eventually one of them does get in there. I think it's Paul Marco and he goes it's Inspector Clay's grave,

but he ain't in it. Uh. There's a oh. So we go to a totally different scene when in Washington, d C. Where it's time for more big army brass and this scene was also dumbfounding. So there's like a big commander and he gets Colonel Edwards, the guy who we met earlier in there and he's like, oh, you know, so you've been in charge of fighting off all these flying saucer attacks, but do you really believe there are

such things as flying saucers? And Colonel Edwards says, yes, I do, And then the boss is like, you can't say you believe in them. You'll be court martialed for believing in flying saucers. And then Colonel Edwards does some real like logic twisting on him. He's like, how could I defend the Earth against flying saucers if I didn't believe in what I saw and shot at. It's like, Mike drop, you can't. You can't beat that. It's the

patriotism shining through, but I don't even understand. So his boss was trying to get him to say, well, you have to fight off the flying saucers, but you also can't tell me you believe in them. Anyway, This scene leads into a long aeros monologue where they're like, hey, we have a language computer that allows us to decode messages from the aliens, and so let's listen to Arrows talk for ten minutes. Uh So it's a very He's giving this whole conversation monologue about how do you still

believe it impossible we exist? You didn't actually think you were the only inhabited planet. You are stupid. Yeah, it's very smug, and it's all about just dissing on humanity. Uh something he does quite a bit. First of all, you're the worst. Secondly, you're the worst, and and then the third important fact here is you're on the verge of just destroying being tire universe. So late fifties Earth technology is on the verge of of creating a catastrophe

that will destroy the known universe. And you might think, well, they're not going to explain this, right they have, Well, but they will. They will explain it, and it is dumbfounding. Yeah. Yeah, we get some technical details on this, but he's like, you're about to do it. Your juvenile, stupid minds are are creating too many explosives and you're going to blow

up the universe. Uh and uh oh. And then later, um, let's see we get a we get a big army brass scene where it's Colonel Edwards and his boss again, and Colonel Edwards is like, oh, his I think his boss says to them these flying saucers they're attacking the Earth, and Colonel Edwards says yes, and then he says, you

think they mean business? So uh, so he sends Colonel Edwards to Los Angeles to the cemetery to investigate the zombies and the saucer attacks there, and then we get the scene where where Breckinridge choose out Arrows and they do the demonstration of Tour Johnson where he is like choking Arrows again. They're constantly losing control of him, um and uh, and this demonstration scene is a lot of fun. Yeah.

He also gets some of his ships taken away, right, uh, like you don't need all all three UFOs now you're down to one. Yeah. Yeah. Arrows gets chewed out big time, like it's a real dressing down by his boss. Um, but he is impressed by Tour when he sees him. He goes, yes, he's a fine specimen. Are they all this powerful on planet Earth? He literally says, well, actually the other two are a woman and an old man.

And he's like, okay, all right, but they're like, oh, I know a good idea with the old man, so he has the The boss has the idea, what if you take Bella Legosi and you make him He literally explains that they should do all this, you should make him walk into somebody's house. And then instantly decompose in front of them and that will convince them that aliens exist. That'll do it. Yes, that has to work. Uh. So here we get the big army brass shows up at

the Trent's house. So it's another porch scene. They're hanging out in the wicker furniture and Colonel Edwards walks in and it's like, uh, hello, how are you doing? And uh, Bella Legosie walks up on them while they're on the porch and they shoot at him to no avail. But then suddenly a ray is emitted from the spaceship at Bella lagos See and he just instantly turns into a skeleton. So turbo rot. Yeah, and it's one of those great scenes where he just turns into a like a high

school science classroom skeleton. Yeah, it's it's beautiful and in a way, Plan nine kind of works because that makes everybody be like, wow, I guess we better go and investigate. I assume everybody else at this meeting already did believe in aliens. Maybe not the police lieutenant, but Edwards did and Jeff Trent did. Yeah, and now they really I mean it kind of backfires on him because they're like, well, I guess we gotta do something about this. Now, let's

go arrest those aliens. Yeah, the police lieutenants like, we haven't seen the last of those weirdies. So um, they wander into the graveyard to investigate. They leave Paula in the car uh, and the aliens. Meanwhile, we see Aero Santana talking about how their ship is about to be discovered and they can't allow that. So, like the purpose of creating the zombies is to get the Earth Links to accept the existence of aliens, but they also can't

allow the humans to see them or know about them. Yeah, So they leave Paula in the car, but then Tour attacks the car. He knocks down paul Marco by slapping him on the shoulders. I think this is what you called the double chop. Uh. And then he grabs Paula and carries her to the ship. So we do get the classic scene that's on the poster of Tore Johnson carrying Paula unconscious. Yeah. Like we said on the show before, this is an iconic image of the classic monster, the

monster carrying the unconscious woman. Yeah, And of course Edward does not shy away from creating this tableau for us. So when Bride of the Monster on the poster, it shows bell Lego see carrying the lady, and he does not do that in the movie. I think Tore Johnson does in that one as well. Well, if you need somebody to carry another body around, I mean towards your

man like, that's what he's been doing. That's that he has a career based on carrying very large humans around and uh and uh, and and also being carried himself to a certain extent. So he can probably help you out if you did need a scene where somebody's carrying an unconscious tour around. So three lugs go into the spaceship. You got, you got Jeff Trent, You've got the police inspector or, the police lieutenant and Colonel Edwards, and they all have revolvers and they go into the spaceship and

point them at the aliens um. And then we get some villain monologue where Arrows he winds a lot about how human governments refused to accept their existence um, and he says uh, and it's like why And they ask, well, why do you care so much about governments of Earth accepting you? And he says, because of death, because all you of Earth are idiots. And then he goes into this, uh, this crazy series of monologues about how the Earthlings are

building a bigger, bigger, and bigger bombs. He says, first was your firecracker, a harmless explosive, Then your hand grenade. You began to kill your own people a few at a time, Then the bomb, then a larger bomb, many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom, then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by

our son. The only explosion left is the solar night uh. And this, he explains, is a bomb that will explode the sunlight itself. And of course Jeff Trent likes that idea. He's like, well, if we had that, we'd then we'd be an even stronger nation than we are now. And this is where Aeros responds with the most maybe the most famous line of the movie. He says, stronger you see you see your stupid minds, stupid, stupid, and Jeff, as I mentioned, he gets offended when Earthlings are called stupid.

He says, that's enough out of you, and he slugs it. It's a it's a great moment in an interplanetary um communication here. Yuh, everyone is really terrible at it. We get a long explanation of how the solar night bomb works using metaphors of a can of gasoline. I'm not going to try to reproduce all of that, but they say it's actually that it's a bomb that will allow you to blow up sunlight, and it will blow up the sun and then it will blow up everything that

the sunlight has ever touched. Yeah, like you split a photon and it's going to cause like a photon splitting chain reaction where it's going to follow a beam of light back to its source, which is the Sun, but also travel out on the starlight from the Sun, and I guess reach anywhere that the light of our sun reaches. And I was thinking, well, okay, if this, if I and I am being generous here, if this were going to happen, that would still take a very long time.

Like it's not going to be an instantaneous destroy the universe situation. Uh, people with better astrophysics knowledge, please correct me, because I haven't researched this. But my my gut understanding of this, I think is that that would mean the it would take a long time, but it would mean the eventual destruction of our entire local galaxy. But I would also think that at this point, other galaxies are moving away from us at such a rate that it

would actually never catch up to them. So I think other galaxies might be Okay, Well, maybe if we're to take everything that Aros says here is truth, like maybe maybe other cultures have developed this technology and have used it, and so you have you have whole pockets of the universe that have been wiped out by it, and so they just want don't want to see large chunks of

the universe continue to go this route. But I suspect that we would actually never be able to know that something like this was happening, because if the destruction is traveling at the speed of light, you would have no forewarning of it, right Like, you wouldn't be by the time you saw it it would arrive at you. Yeah, yeah, but I don't know. They're they're very advanced, these celestials,

so they have they have tools. We don't have resources, we don't have um again, one wonders what would have happened if they had a little more tact in approaching this instead of just showing up, insulting us, buzzing our city. He's been raising are dead? Come on, we're a sensitive people. Well anyway, so they have a big fight, big fist fight, uh Jeff Trand is like punching arrows, and they slam and they they like they're smashing the equipment on the table.

The ship is on fire, and eventually the humans get out of it. They're all right, and the aliens try to take off in their flying saucer but it's on fire and then it explodes. And I found this to be kind of a like a hauntingly nice scene. I mean, yes, the UFOs effects in this film are what they are, but the scene of the flying saucer on fire over the over the Hollywood lights at night and then it explodes, I don't know, there's something kind of poignant about it.

Can you guess how the movie ends? It's all monologue, go back to Chriswell. He's gonna tie it all up in a neat little bow. He's gonna make sense of all this. Um So, Chriswell says, my friend, you have seen this incident based on sworn testimony. Uh no, I can't do the voice the whole time, he says, can you prove it didn't happen. Perhaps on your way home, someone will pass you in the dark and you will never know it, for they will be from outer space.

Many scientists believe that another world is watching us at this moment. We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television, and now some of us laugh at outer space. God help us in the future the end. I love it. Yeah, prove that it didn't happen. The burden of proof is on you, audience. Yes, yes, disprove or except oh yeah. There's just there's there's so much to love in this picture.

Like even if you took out everything we mentioned, there's still like three more bad movies worth of stuff here, you know, three more psychatronic films worth of of like strange line deliver ease and weird ideas and and jarring use of footage. It's just it's a gold mine. This picture one of the best of the best of all time. Uh I love Plan nine. Yeah, and it's you know,

it's ridiculous. But at the same time you have these scenes that these kind of like very dry looking exterior shots in um in in in los in the Los Angeles area, you know, tombstones and uh in in these you know, these very scraggly looking plants and trees. I don't know, there's there's there is some authenticity sprinkled in there as well that kind of gives you a little

peek into the world out of which it emerged. You know, one last question, do you think Edward when he wrote this sympathized with the aeros monologue about our stupid earth minds? Was he expressing his point of view or was Arrows supposed to be the bad guy representing an incorrect point of view. I feel like he had to be sympathetic to this cause, I mean, it's given so much monologue time in the picture, and there's this, and then of course we have the Chriswell stuff that is treating the

film like prophecy. So yeah, he had to be. There is this kind of cautionary tale that seems to be present no matter how you know, poorly it's ultimately presented, or how whackadoodle the the speculative science is that's wrapped up in it. Um. But yeah, and and also I guess to be fair, this is also an idea that we see just spread out across science fiction in general.

That's something maybe watching us and Something may have an outsider perspective on where we are as a culture, and it may realize the the the errors of our way, the dangers that we're bound to encounter, and that we're kind of looking to UFOs as kind of a a divine entity or or or conversely an infernal entity that will either help us and help us choose the right direction or judge us for the direction we've chosen thus far. Yeah,

I think I can get down with that. Another last thing I will have to say this time is that I really think you can't overstate the importance of the Criswell framing in establishing the self important tone of the movie. Uh that like that, like the movie thinks that it is powerful and perhaps world changing. It's like I'm trying toine, like imagine if um the room started and ended with monologues about how this movie will change the world, and

the monologues are from like the Long Island Medium. Yeah, Yeah, there's a self importance to the picture. It feels like it's tapping into the now that it's you know, it's like, this is stuff that's happening, and people are talking about UFOs. There's something going on. Um. You know, we we have issues with UH, with where we are as a people. We have concerns about the future and about the state of technology, and so this this film is like, Yeah,

we're really tapping into all that. We have something to say. Get Deadly Man Love on the phone. We're gonna cast him in this picture. Okay, I think that's We've got to We've got to end. Yeah, there's so much here and and we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Everyone who has loved Plan nine from Outer Space in the past, and perhaps you haven't seen it before, like now is the time, and maybe you're inspired by our thoughts here. We would love to hear your thoughts on

it as well. Perhaps there's some particular UH moment or line in the picture that really UH is close to your heart that we didn't mention right in. We'd love to hear from you, and we'll discuss this UH in a future episode of Listener Mail. Oh and I should point out when it comes to where to find Plan nine from outer space. Luckily, you can find it a lot of places these days, the various DVD and perhaps

even Blu ray releases that are available. I know that there was a recent colorization of the picture, but I rewatched it in black and white. I feel like it needs to be in black and white. But but hey, if if colorization is what gets you there, then fair enough, go ahead and do it. Now. I'm a purist about this. Don't meddle with Plan nine. Yeah, I mean there's something about those gothic of scenes in the cemetery, right, I mean those those have to be in in black and white.

I mean I assume Vampira and Tour we're in black and white in real life. I can't imagine them as flesh and blood color uh entities. It's certainly not in this picture, alright. As always, you can check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed every Friday. We're primarily a science podcast, but Fridays are our time to set aside most serious

concerns and just talk about a weird film. Again. I'll post some of the various multimedia uh tie ins that we discussed here on the blog post for this episode at SMUTA music dot com. Also, if you were on Letterbox, and I recommend you get on there because it's a lot of fun. If you're a film fan, we are on letterbox as well. Our user name is weird House, so you can follow us there. You can also pull up a cool list that has all of the movies

that we've watched in order. You can you can do things like divide them up and look at them by genre and decade and so forth, and you can often get a little peek ahead and see what we're discussing next. Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff

to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.