Through cinematic ineptitude and abysmal technicality, this film has all the same epiphanies and humanity as high-art....
The vast undulating ocean of cinema where waves upon waves of films lap over one another rushing to break upon the shores of our attention. Carried by these waves, the detritus of cinema often ends up washed up on these shores in the form of fish heads, broken bottles, a putrefying leg, a rotor blade from a long sunken ship, the list goes on and on. Horrible stories of failure and catastrophe lay behind this flotsam, but the sight of them is the sort of abject disgust mixed in with curiosity of how it ended up here and where it came from. Trash cinema, the refused and rejected dregs of spit that mould at the bottom of the film barrel is that junk that ends up on our beaches. And boy is there such sublimity in its stupidity.
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) is such a champion failure that its boredom inducing aesthetic is transcendental. Born out of the twisted, corrupted swamps of Ed Wood Jr’s mind, this film is about alien grave robbers about as inconspicuous as a neon sign in the night. Afraid that humans are far too immature to be in possession of the weaponry we’ve developed – the first and only thing I agree on with these aliens – their master plan is to resurrect the dead to invade and subdue us. Premise seems about right, who can’t resist a good old science fiction film where the aliens finally grow some balls and make a move. But it didn’t take long for the film to begin testing my patience, by the time I was halfway through my nerves were twanging like harp strings being snipped apart from the scissors of infuriation, by the time the credits rolled, I felt like I was a changed person. My suspension of disbelief has attained free flight at this point and I can send it all the way into interstellar space but still that wasn’t enough to handle this film. The logic of this film isn’t so much logic as it is a plane falling out of the sky. It’s a disaster that you can’t take your eyes away from. I’ve watched ‘so awful they’re good’ films that are definitely more entertaining in their atrocity than this, but in the trash cinema community, this film is a jewel in the shit crown. When watching this you’re constantly debating within yourself whether the people behind this had lost their minds sometime during the production or whether they are subversive artists who are making films against the grain of the Hollywood giant. The secret kick dwells deeper than just the cinematic ineptitude (or ironic mastery) of its failure, it’s what the failure represents which makes it a compelling watch, the product of following the exhausted rules of conventional Hollywood filmmaking and obeying to such rules to such a clueless degree that the effects as strange and unwatchable. I am one of the opinion, that before you subvert the rules, you must know the rules and it seems that these people can’t even spell ‘rule’.
Calling the camerawork, a complete shamble would be an understatement. There is no sense of cinematic space for the camera to move us through, which results in the usage of stock footage and recycled shots – don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind stock footage being used, if it’s used correctly and whether the filmmaker has put a shred of effort in hiding this affront. Some incredibly rough cuts hold this film loosely together as if taped together with pieces of take peeled off a carpet. Objects will appear in frame as if by their own will, characters will turn around and the scene will cut elsewhere before they’ve even finished the blasted action.
Siri, Alexa and Google Translate can deliver more convincing and emphatic dialogue than the actors who all feel wooden and drunk. Their stiff performance as if a spider is crawling up the base of their spine is brilliant, building up this almost surreal perverse reality within which the film is set and that which produced the film. None of the characters are at all engaging, actually they’re all fucking annoying and I’m so goddamn glad. With neither of them would I want to have any emotional identification because they act in such idiotic ways. My appreciation of this film is directly proportional to the distance I keep from the characters and from which I watch it.
The story might as well be non-existent. So, aliens believe that our nuclear age is something that threatens the very existence of the universe for the pace we’re leaping forward at, we’ll be a threat to ourselves and space. I hate to break it to you but we don’t make a lick of difference to the universe, to it, we don’t even exist. The aliens predict that soon us humans will possess the ability to weaponize photons of light which will set off a chain reaction, taking the universe up with it. All the light in the universe, had it turned volatile and corrosive wouldn’t make a difference at all on account of the sheer size of it. Relax, relax, breathe. I must remember that this film isn’t trying to be scientifically accurate so let’s let it off the hook on that one. But apart from that the story makes no sense and there’s more holes in their plan than swiss cheese.
The film feels like it’s toying with your mind as an act of resistance, it doesn’t want to be watched like a depressed animal at the zoo and will, ironically, put up one hell of a lewd display to disgust your eyes. I never thought I needed to watch this film until the credits rolled. It’ll be a while before I’m ready to see this film again, until then I will hold it in the same respect I hold for a plague bearing rat.
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