Plan 9 from Outer Space

Plan 9 from Outer Space
July 22, 1959
DCA
Sci-Fi
VHS
B-

This was one of the trickier movies to grade, partly because I want the grades to reflect not how "good" or "bad" a movie is, but rather how entertaining I find it.  Also, I've seen this movie multiple times (although not recently) and it's received so much attention-- especially with the Medveds calling it the worst ever-- it's as difficult to come to it fresh as it is to write about some of the "classics."  Watching this time, I tried just approaching it as a film, admittedly a cheap '50s sci-fi film.

What most struck me is how, intentionally or not, Ed Wood, Jr. (writer/director/producer/plus a cameo role) alienates the audience, pun sort of intended.  This is seen most obviously in the way he plays with time.  TV psychic Criswell speaks of the future and yet claims that the events onscreen have already happened.  We're told at one point that "modern women" have "been like this through the ages."  Wood also goes beyond "day for night" shots and seems to not care that it can be entirely different times of the day depending on whether we're at the Trents' home, the graveyard, or the field in between.  At least I think it's the field in between.  We're also dislocated in space.  In fact, space is dislocated in space, with "cigar-shaped" saucers that look more like paper plates (heck, they look more like sombreros than like cigars) able to travel from Earth to I forget what the planet was called in only one Earth day.  Characters keep contradicting each other and themselves, most notably the alien ironically named Eros, who's simultaneously a pacifist and a mass murderer.  A police officer asks a war veteran if he can handle a gun, after we've been treated to multiple scenes of the cop waving his own gun around and even scratching himself with it!

I was going to give this movie a B but, and I know this is an odd time to bring this up, it's too sexist.  Not only do we have everyone "protecting" Mrs. Trent (and putting her in harm's way), but I don't like the way Tanna (the female alien) is treated, especially by Eros.  (Joanna Lee would go on to much better things, as a TV writer, winning an Emmy for The Waltons.)  Yes, I know it's the '50s, and yes, I know the movie makes no sense anyway, but it bugs me because it seems so unnecessary.  You could argue that Gidget is also a sexist movie, with Grandma's old-fashioned sampler presented as profound wisdom about male-female relationships, but even if you don't like what happens to/with the girls in that movie, at least they're presented as full human beings.  That said, yeah, it's kind of fun to watch Vampira walk around as a sort of zombie, even if I can't believe she'd ever marry Bela Lugosi, living or dead.