"You know, it's an interesting thing when you consider... the earth people who can think are so frightened by those who cannot...the dead."
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) originally titled "Grave Robbers from Outer Space" (which would have been a much better title) is a low-budget science fiction movie about aliens that come to Earth to resurrect the dead in an attempt to control mankind. This film by infamous director Edward Wood, Jr. is often considered one of the worst movies ever made.
One of the things I like about this movie is the editing. It's very straightforward and simple but effective. There's lots of stock footage that's integrated so well you don't wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it.
Likewise I think the soundtrack is, though nothing extraordinary, simple and memorable. It adds a lot of tension and drama to a lot of scenes that would be very flat otherwise.
I'm not even going to try and make excuses for the problems in this film. Let's see, it has horrible sets, most of the acting is just plain bad, the dialogue doesn't even make sense a lot of the time, and almost everything about the aliens is just plain poorly done. There's continuity problems, the effects probably didn't hold up even back then, obvious day for night shots, and even screen direction problems. But my favorites have to be the "logic" problems like cops that don't carry flashlights, the US government developing a language computer to translate the alien transmissions, and the aliens' mind-controlling electron gun jamming! All this adds up to a pretty hilariously bad film.
So after all that, why do I like this film even remotely? This film has a real charm to it. I believe you can tell how passionate the filmmaker was about this film just by watching the end result. There's a lot of really creative things that Ed Wood came up with and did to make things in this movie work and honestly I think as a film, it still holds up for the most part! He was working in the genre of science fiction, and if you compare it to other Sci-Fi films of the 50's, I would argue this one is pretty effective comparatively.
I also want to mention how well thought out the aliens' logic is. This alone can be seen as a testament to Ed Wood's creativity. They aliens have such a well developed and original backstory and motive that it's almost easier to side with the aliens! Really cool.
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) isn't the worst made film by a long shot. Sure it's got a lot technically wrong with it, but it's an interesting example of how to make a film on a practical (small!) budget and I actually find it pretty inspiring believe it or not! 3/5 stars.
Unlike everything else I've reviewed so far on this blog, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) is in the public domain which means you can download it or stream it for free from here thanks to the Internet Archive.