Follow the money

If you believe, as I do, that you can generally tell what a society values by where it spends its money, this is baffling and disturbing: One Year of Prison Costs More Than One Year at Princeton

Worst. Movie. Ever.

Trailer: Plan 9 From Outer Space

Recently, I had the opportunity to see Plan 9 From Outer Space as it was meant to be seen: on the big screen in a full theater. Plan 9, for the uninitiated, is by common consensus the worst movie ever made.

It is, in fact, unspeakably bad. Incoherent, non-sensical, poorly filmed, poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted... It's truly awful. The plot, such as it is, revolves around aliens who have come to earth to implement Plan 9, which will destroy humanity by raising our own dead and unleashing them on us as zombies. One zombie at a time.

The movie, directed by Ed Wood, features some real actors, one professional wrestler (one of the zombies, naturally), a vampy horror movie host, the director's chiropractor, and horror movie legend Bela Lugosi in his final role. And I do mean final: Lugosi died before production on Plan 9 even started. (This is where the chiropractor comes in: he served as the stand in for all the scenes Lugosi was unable to film due to being dead. Unfortunately, the chiropractor looked nothing like Lugosi, so he kept his face hidden whenever he was on screen.)

I could go on. It is a terrible film. But the worst movie ever made? Hardly.

Why not? Simple: it's tremendous fun. Plan 9 is (unintentionally) funny and entertaining. I had a wonderful time watching it, and from their laughter it appeared that the rest of the audience did, too.

It's true that part of the fun was that bit of nasty pleasure you get from from watching something truly inept, like a really good belly flop. But there was something more, something sweeter and more humane. First, there was the sense that Wood really thought he was making a film with an important message; you can tell because there are several laughable speeches advocating peace and harmony. (Ed Wood, Tim Burton's biopic about the director, supports this idea, presenting Wood as a self-delusional dreamer.) Second, there's the fact that you probably couldn't make a better parody of 50s sci-fi horror films if you tried. It's easy to imagine that this film was a very elaborate hoax by the guys from Monty Python, or SCTV, or SNL. It's that hilarious.

I can think of many movies I truly hated, and I bet you can, too. Movies that wasted our time, or were cynical and manipulative. Movies that tried to sell us a false fairy tale about how the good guys always win, or that the boy always gets the girl and everyone lives happily ever after. Movies that pander to the worst in us with gratuitous violence, sex, vengeance and torture.


Plan 9 is none of those things. It's bungling and dopey, but it's sincere: watching it I never felt like I was being cheated or exploited. Wood and his crew were trying, really trying, to entertain us, and I do think he really thought he was delivering an important message. His honest desire to deliver something worthwhile, no matter how thwarted he was by his own lack of skill, shines through. We recognize, and honor, the attempt, even in the face of failure. I think that's why, all these years later, people continue to be entertained by this ludicrous film.