On Friday, May 7, Turner Classic Movies presents Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), often ranked as the worst movie of all time and #1 in my Bad Movie Festival.
This movie is so bad that Tim Burton made a Johnny Depp movie about it – “Ed Wood”, named for its zealously persistent, but pathetic, creator. Ed Wood throws everything at the screen, hoping that something interesting will stick: dying vampire star Bela Lugosi, the TV fortune teller Criswell, the horror movie hostess Vampira, zombie-look-alike pro wrestler Tor Johnson and stock footage of a nuclear explosion. None of it is tied together with any coherence, and it’s all unintentionally funny. This one’s good for the whole family.
Plan 9 from Outer Space can also be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Lugosi died while making this film and was replaced by a taller, non-speaking “double” who stalks about covering his face with his cloak. The double shows up in the trailer.