PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE 1957 ED WOOD’S NOTORIOUS CLASSIC CHEAPIE NOW IN ANAGLYPH 3D! BELA LUGOSI TOR JOHNSON VAMPIRA CRISWELL AND FRIENDS DVD-R!

Plan 9 from Outer Space is a 1957 American independent science fiction–horror film produced, written, directed, and edited by Ed Wood. The film was shot in black-and-white in November 1956 and had a preview screening on March 15, 1957, at the Carlton Theatre in Los Angeles under the title Grave Robbers from Outer Space. Retitled Plan 9 from Outer Space, it played in 1957 as a double feature with the British thriller Time Lock, and went into general release in July 1958 in Virginia, Texas, and several other Southern states, before being sold to television in 1961. In Texas, it played on a double bill with the re-released Devil Girl from Mars (1954).

The film stars Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson, and “Vampira” (Maila Nurmi), and is narrated by Criswell. It also posthumously bills Bela Lugosi (before Lugosi’s death in August 1956, Wood had shot silent footage of Lugosi for another, unfinished film, which was inserted into Plan 9). Other guest stars are Hollywood veterans Lyle Talbot, who said he never refused an acting job, and former cowboy star Tom Keene.

The film’s storyline concerns extraterrestrials who seek to stop humanity from creating a doomsday weapon that could destroy the universe. The aliens implement “Plan 9”, a scheme to resurrect the Earth’s dead. By causing chaos, the aliens hope the crisis will force humanity to listen to them; otherwise, the aliens will destroy mankind with armies of the undead.

Plan 9 from Outer Space played on television in relative obscurity from 1961 until 1980, when authors Harry Medved and Michael Medved dubbed it the “worst film ever made” in their book The Golden Turkey Awards. Wood and his film were posthumously given two Golden Turkey Awards for Worst Director Ever and Worst Film Ever. It has since been called “the epitome of so-bad-it’s-good cinema” and gained a large cult following.

The film combines elements of science fiction, Atompunk, and gothic horror. Science fiction remained popular throughout the 1950s, though the genre had experienced significant changes in the post-war period. The Atomic Age, heralded by the development of nuclear weapons and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had inspired science fiction films to deal with the dangers of unrestricted science, while space flight and the existence of extraterrestrial life and civilizations (more “traditional” elements of the genre), seemed to hold a new fascination for audiences at the beginning of the Space Race. On the other hand, the height of Gothic film’s popularity was during the 1930s and 1940s but it was in decline by the 1950s and considered old-fashioned. By 1950s standards, the combination of dated and modern elements gives the film a rather anachronistic quality.

Plan 9‘s script seems to aim at being an epic film, a genre typically requiring a big budget from a major film studio. That Wood made it with minimal financial resources underscores one of the qualities of his work: his ideas tended to be too expensive to film, yet he tried to film them anyway. As Rob Craig argues, Wood’s failed efforts give the film a peculiar charm. Craig finds that Plan 9 has much in common with both epic theatre (“grand melodrama on a minuscule budget”) and the Theatre of the Absurd (characters acting as buffoons, nonsense, and verbosity in dialogue, dreamlike and fantasy imagery, hints of allegory, and a narrative structure where continuity is consistently undermined).

DVD-R comes packaged in full color as shown, in color DVD case, wrapped in plastic. includes 2 pair 3D glasses! it’s so wild!