Ed Wood: The Worst Movie Director Ever

Plan 9 From Outer Space is cult director Ed Wood's "cinematic masterpiece" - and also regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. Plan Nine is so bad it's good!

Alien invaders use their dreaded "Plan Nine" to re-animate dead earthlings. They wreak havoc and unleash a host of things bizarre, macabre, horrific, and just plain horrible. Using footage from a Bela Lugosi movie he was unable to finish (due to Lugosi's untimely death), Wood proved again he would and could make a film under any circumstances. Hubcaps on wires doubling for flying saucers, stumbling living dead, concrete visible beneath fake grass, and mattresses visible for actors to fall on are just a few of the unbelievable gaffes and goofs you'll see.

The result is a comical and campy spoof of science fiction movies themselves. The cast includes TV horror queen Vampira, a host of zombies, military buffoons, and Lugosi in his last performance. Plan Nine has taken on a legendary status of its own and is a MUST for any serious cult film fan.

For years, conventional wisdom has had it that Ed Wood Jr.'s Plan 9 from Outer Space is the ultimate "bad movie," a sort of Holy Grail of cinematic ineptitude. Often lost in the shuffle, though, is Bride of the Monster.

Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Vornoff, a mad scientist working on a race of superbeings in his lab. His process of clamping a metal lampshade onto the heads of his subjects and zapping them with radiation usually kills them, but the monstrous Lobo (Tor Johnson) survives and becomes Vornoff's assistant. Vornoff's plans go awry, though, when he tries to get a nosy reporter to mate with Lobo and winds up being given the atom treatment himself. Suffice it to say that there's a grappling match between Vornoff and Lobo until the evil doctor falls into a pit and wrestles a rubber octopus. Stock footage of lightning and an atomic explosion round things out for a great non sequitur of an ending.

Knowing Bela Lugosi's sad state by the time that he and Ed Wood had teamed up makes it hard to watch this movie without feeling a pang of pathos for the 73-year-old actor; indeed, Bride was his last speaking role. Still, any movie with as many obvious gaffes in direction, editing, set design, narrative (heck, take your pick) as Bride is a must for any connoisseur of bad movies. And of course, the gargantuan Tor Johnson gets to utter the deathless line: "Time for... go to bed." --Jerry Renshaw

For many years I have told the almost unbelievable, related the unreal, and showed it to be more than fact," drones Ed Wood's favorite host, platinum-coifed "psychic" Criswell, from his coffin. More than fact, possibly, but less than credible and rather far from competent--but then that's why we watch Wood's movies.

This pseudosequel to Bride of the Monster refers back to the story of a mad scientist and his monster often enough, but this time the old house is home to a phony spiritualist named Dr. Acula (former B-movie heavy Kenne Duncan) bilking thousands from rich, gullible clients. Opera-loving Lieutenant Bradford (Duke Moore) is sent out in his tuxedo to investigate and tangles with the scarred, angora-loving brute Lobo (Tor Johnson, the only survivor from Bride of the Monster), while the real dead rise to take their revenge on the charlatan Acula.

It's a true Wood production, shot on cramped sets the size of a closet and filled with unrelated stock footage (the prologue is dedicated to the dangers of juvenile delinquency because Wood had leftover scenes from an unfinished film). The part of Acula was originally written for Bela Lugosi, whose hamminess would have brought a touch of theatrical camp to the part, but Criswell's inflated narration adds just the right touch of histrionics.

It's not as much absurd fun as Bride of the Monster or Wood's masterpiece Plan 9 from Outer Space, but it has its moments. -- Sean Axmaker.