Plan 9 from Outer Space

Ed Wood’s 1957 Magnum Opus is the epitomy of the so-bad-it’s-good movie. Far from the worst picture if all time, this is one of the most entertaining films in movie history, and unmistakingly a work of an auteur. 7/10

Plan 9 from Outer Space. 1957, USA. Written & directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. Starring: Gregory Walcott, Criswell, Tor Johnson, Maila Nurmi, Tom Keene, Paul Marco, Bela Lugosi, Dudley Manlove, Joanna Lee, John Breckinridge, Mona McKinnon. Produced by Ed Reynolds. IMDb: 3.9/10. Rotten Tomatoes: 5.7/10. Metacritic: 56/100.

An old man in a black cape (Bela Lugosi) attends his wife’s (Vampira) funeral, then a narrator informs us he is run over by a car. At his funeral he returns from the dead and chases a young woman. When the police investigate, inspector Clay (Tor Johnson) is attacked by the undead couple, which leads to the third funeral of the film’s first ten minutes. Clay also returns from the dead, leading to yet another police investigation at the cemetery, which is disturbed by UFO’s sending out rays that push the police off their feet.

Meanwhile, UFO’s zip across Hollywood en masse, clearly documented by film crews and press photographers, and the US army creates its own UFO defense team that engages in warfare against the alien intruders, led by Colonel Edwards (Tom Keene), despite officially denying that there is any UFO activity going on. Meanwhile, meanwhile, commercial pilot Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) observes a UFO hovering next to his airplane, but returning home, he is told by authorities he can’t speak about it, which makes him angry, and he complains to his wife Paula (Mona KcKinnon). That is, until the couple are knocked over by the alien light beams at their patio, and the army, that is Colonel Edwards and General Roberts (Lyle Talbot) take an interest, and make Jeff their UFO expert number one.

Switching perspective, the film then takes us aboard one of the spaceships, which has landed, and introduce us to alien soldiers Eros and Tanna (Dudley Manlove and Joanna Lee), as well as the Ruler (John Breckinridge). Turns out, the aliens have been trying to contact Earth, but Earth has simply replied with bombs and refusal to acknowledge the aliens’ existence. Eros and Tanna have decided to move on to Plan 9, which concerns “Ah yes, the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary gland of the recently dead”. Apparently, the raising of the dead is supposed to once and for all prove to the earthlings that the aliens do, in fact, exist. However, Jeff and the army men don’t take lightly to this resurrection of the dead business, and break into the landed UFO. Confronted, Eros explains that by creating ever more powerful bombs, the humans are endangering the entire universe, and calls humans “stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Nevermind raising the dead and killing other humans, but being called stupid by some goddamn alien is more than our hero Jeff can take, and he slugs Eros, leading to a fistfight which sets the UFO on fire and destroys it after the humans have made it out. Humanity stands triumphant.

There it is, in a nutshell: the plot for writer/producer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s low-budget classic Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). This is the film lovingly referred to as the worst film ever made, by the worst director in history. This was Wood’s penultimate feature as a “serious” director, before his career imploded into making porn movies. It is the second in the suggested “Kelton Trilogy”, so named because of the appearance of Paul Marco’s character Kelton the Cop in all three of the movies (the other being Bride of the Monster [1955, review] and Night of the Ghouls [1959]).

Background & Analysis

I have seen Tim Burton’s biopic Ed Wood at least 10 times, and re-watching Plan 9 from Outer Space for this review, I realise that over the years, Burton’s recreation of the film have replaced the memories of the real film in my head. It is, in fact, not quite as shoddy as it is portrayed in the Burton movie. Nearly, but not quite. For example, Tor Johnson never knocks over a headstone, but we do see a cardboard cross wobble. The boom mic is not visible on camera in the airplane scene, but its shadow is, etc.

The origins of Plan 9 from Outer Space can be spelled out in two words: Ed Wood. By 1956, Ed Wood had been rattling around Hollywood for eight years, as a theatre usher, stuntman, bit-part actor, writer and director of shorts, a couple of TV episodes and micro-budget westerns, as well as a theatre director and playwright – all to very little acclaim. Wood, a fan of comic books, the occult, horror films, westerns and science fiction, surrounded himself with an eclectic group of characters, like ageing horror icon Bela Lugosi, stage and TV “psychic” Criswell, model/actress/goth icon Maila Nurmi (Vampira), drag artist and Shakespearean actor John “Bunny” Breckinridge, show wrestler Tor Johnson, schlock actor Lyle Talbot, and many others. One of his closest friends and collaborators was Alex Gordon, the young British writer/producer who would go on to co-found American International Pictures, the home of Roger Corman. Wood had produced the main part of what is considered his “classic” ouvre; Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954) and Bride of the Monster (1955). The latter was based on a story by Alex Gordon, and Wood’s second film to feature Bela Lugosi. Bride of the Monster was his first SF/horror film, even if Glen or Glenda incorporated some horror elements. He wanted to follow up with another Bela Lugosi film, an epic science fiction/horror adventure called Grave Robbers from Outer Space.

Several cast members from Bride of the Monster return in the movie, apart from Lugosi and Johnson, Conrad Brooks and Paul Marco also appeared in both films. Marco, who was Wood’s roommate at one time, even reprised his role as Kelton the Cop, which he would play a third time in Night of the Ghouls. Wood had worked with Tom Keene in his unreleased western Crossroad Avenger, with Dudley Manlove and Duke Moore in Final Curtain and with Lyle Talbot in Glen or Glenda, Crossroad Avenger and Jail Bait.

However, the film had a setback when Lugosi died before filming had even begun. Wood had shot a handful of silent scenes with Lugosi for other, unrealised projects, and inserted these clips into the story. These include Lugosi at the funeral of his wife (Maila Nurmi/Vampira), entering and exiting a house and smelling a flower in the garden (the house was actually Tor Johnson’s), as well as a couple of shots of Lugosi by a wooded road. These shots are almost the only shots in Plan 9 from Outer Space filmed on location. The rest is all studio-bound. For scenes where Lugosi’s character interacts with other actors, Wood used a stand-in covering the lower part of his face with his arm and cape. The stand-in actor was Tom Mason, Wood’s wife’s chiropractor, who had almost no resemblance to Lugosi.

Criswell delivers an opening and closing statement in the film, and provides its flowery, purple narration. Although the opening statement, with lines like “future events such as these will affect you in the future” sounds like it comes straight from Ed Wood’s pen, much of it was actually part of Criswell’s schtick on his TV show Criswell Predicts. In fact, Criswell rewrote all of Wood’s narration, as he found it too boring. Tor Johnson, the Swedish show wrestler, has one of his few speaking roles in this movie, and despite a heavy accent, is fully intelligible. Despite popular misconception, he does not play the character Lobo in this film, but a zombified police investigator. Maila Nurmi was down on her luck as her popular TV show The Vampira Show had been cancelled, and took whatever assignments she could get in order to put food on the table. In later years, she claimed she asked the role to be silent because of the silly dialogue, but I think this is a later construction, as all the undead ghouls are mute. Ed Wood had seen Bunny Breckinridge’s drag show and was aware of his background as a Shakespearean actor, and insisted he would be perfect as the alien ruler (after Paul Marco allegedly had asked Wood to include Breckinridge and his secretary/lover David De Mering in the film). Breckinridge’s flamboyant hamming is one of the joys of the movie, and sadly it remained his only film appearance.

As per IMDb and Wikipedia, Plan 9 from Outer Space had a budget of $60,000. This was indeed a minuscule budget for a Hollywood film in the 50’s, but films were being made on a lot less money that that. Roger Corman routinely churned out functioning movies on such a budget, and the subject of my last review, Voodoo Woman (1957, review) had the exact same amount of money at its disposal. Plan 9 from Outer Space was cheap, but it wasn’t necessarily its budget that made it as hilariously bad as it is. For example: it was actually filmed on a sound stage, and sound stages cost money. That the dressing of said sound stage was made of badly masked and fastened plywood and cardboard, and the cemetery ground is represented by a hairy rug which slides and crumples when the actors walk on it is not necessarily a symptom of a low budget, but of carelessness.

According to film historian Tom Weaver’s interview with lead actor Gregory Walcott, Plan 9 from Outer Space was largely funded by Ed Reynolds, a member of a local baptist church across the street from where Walcott lived. Apparently Reynolds was a caretaker of the flats in the building he lived, and Ed Wood was one of the tenants, which is how the two came in contact. Walcott says that Reynolds would often talk to him outside the church about his desire to produce religious films. One day Reynolds said he had found a great director with a great script, that was going to be Bela Lugosi’s last film, and asked Walcott to play the lead. Walcott was hesitant, but agreed to meet Wood and read the script, and in the end agreed to appear in the movie in order to help Reynolds, despite the fact that he thought the script was terrible. Walcott had a decent acting career going, and thought his modest marquee draw might help the movie (as it happened, he wasn’t even billed on the poster, with billings going to Lugosi, Vampira and Lyle Talbot). Apparently, what had happened was that Ed Wood had convinced Reynolds that religious films were expensive to make, and he should start with smaller, profitable movies to build up capital, for example in the popular genre of science fiction. A few other members of the baptist community also put in money, and some of them appear in the film, as does Reynolds, as one of the grave diggers. In order to please the baptists, Wood, Johnson and other members of the cast and crew started showing up at Reynolds’ church and were even baptised.

Walcott tells Weaver the film’s principal photography took only four days. A couple of days were spent on shooting special effects and a couple of days with Wood himself filming silent insert shots on the streets. According to Walcott there was almost no rehearsal on set, and Wood almost never did more than one take. He says that the set looked like a sixth-graders’ theatre play, and that it had a strange vibe because of the weird people Wood worked with. After the first day of shooting Walcott told his wife: “Honey, this has got to be the worst movie of all time”; “I actually said that! And, unfortunately, it turned out to be true.” Walcott was paid the S.A.G. minimum of $200 per day, and didn’t find out until years later that it was a non-union film, which could have caused him a lot of trouble as a union actor.

Recounting everything that is shoddy in Plan 9 from Outer Space is a futile exercise. It encompasses everything from the incoherent, the childishly naive script & dialogue and the flimsy, school-play-like sets to the amateurish direction where night switches to daylight several times during a single scene, location shots are supposed to represent the same location as a bare-bones soundstage set, flubbed lines that are left in the finished scene, the static cinematography, the UFOs dangling from fishing rods and the inadequate acting.

One of the talking points of the film’s shoddiness have always the flying saucers. In one scene, Jeff Trent (Walcott) says that they are “cigar shaped”, even though they are very clearly disc-shaped. For a long time, the prevailing truth was that the UFO props were made from paper plates, however, later inspection has revealed that they were in fact plastic over-the-counter UFO model kits.

From a strictly technical point of view Plan 9 from Outer Space is no shoddier than a hundred other B-movies. The cinematography is sharp, there is nothing particularly egregious about the lighting and the sound is crisp and even. The cinematography is mundane, but functioning. Some takes are rather long and static, but Wood knows to switch between wide, medium and close-up shots in order to create dynamic. There is one stand-out shot in the film, portraying Tor Johnson emerging from the grave, which would have felt at home in any expressionist horror classic, but unfortunately it is the movie’s only standout shot. As I wrote in my review of Bride of the Monster, it is clear that Wood was well aware of the fundamentals of movie direction and not a clueless amateur. It wasn’t his technical skill that made his films shoddy, and I would argue that it is precisely his technical skill and the fact that he understood how to compose a scene that make his films enjoyable to watch, despite their flaws. Wood also edited the film, and it is clear he understood this craft as well.

Neither is it the acting that trips up the film. Certainly, nobody is winning any acting trophies for theur work on Plan 9 from Outer Space, but in fact, the acting here is a lot more lively than in many of the contemporary B-movies. Wood cast many people who were larger-than-life characters outside the screen in his roles, which is one of the reasons his films are so fun to watch. Many others are enthusiastic amateurs, and their sincerity, although often misplaced, makes the film rather endearing. Gregory Walcott does his best to keep things professional and grounded in the lead and Mona McKinnon is acceptable in the role as his wife. Lugosi doesn’t get to do very much in this movie, of course, and his previous outing in The Black Sleep (1956, review) had shown that the former icon, ravaged by his morphine addiction, was far from his prime. Tor Johnson and Maila Nurmi are both delightfully outlandish in their roles. Tom Keene, a minor western actor, does what he can in a thankless role. Duke More, Carl Anthony and Paul Marco keep things lively as the comic relief cops and Lyle Talbot is unassumingly professional in his small role as the general. Dudley Manlove and Joanna Lee have a thankless task of delivering stilted exposition as the alien soldiers, but Manlove hits his stride toward the ending as he goes on an unhinged rant against the mind-boggling stupidity of humans. Bunny Breckinridge’s wonderfully campy performance as the Ruler is probably the finest performance of the film, as memorable as it is inapproriate for the the role. Breckinridge was one of the few openly gay performers in Hollywood in the 50’s, and he certainly wasn’t afraid to transmit it from the screen.

The two things that really make this film stand out are the script and the breath taking audacity with which Wood flaunts all quality standards when it comes to set design and visual continuity. The airplane cockpit consists of a plywood wall, a door and even the controls are just planks painted black. The UFO control room looks like it is designed with an office table, a film projector, a cardboard box and a Jacob’s ladder. The team have had no time to design the Ruler’s office, so they simply put Bunny Breckinridge in front of a curtain. Some of the scenes are filmed at the studio where Criswell made his daily TV show Criswell Predicts, which Wood was able to borrow as a thanks for him directing several episodes of the show.

Now, the thing that really makes Ed Wood stand out, in both a positive and a negative way, is his writing. In particular, it seems that Wood didn’t have the slightest understanding of what it would cost to actually bring the ideas he wrote forth onto the screen in a credible way. Here, Wood is gunning for a larger-than-life epic with multiple alien sets, elaborate miniature work and special effects, and is convinced he will be able to bring all this to life on a budget of $60,000. The jarring discrepancy between what Wood is trying to achieve with his bombastic script and what he actually does achieve is one of the things that makes Plan 9 from Outer Space so memorably bad.

The story takes its inspiration directly from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, review), with the initially peaceful aliens bringing a pacifist warning to humanity about the atom bomb, being met with suspicion and hostility. The resurrection of the dead is here used as a variation on Klaatu’s trick of stopping all engines and electrical devices in order to get humanity’s attention. Like Gort, the undead also serve as a threat, as the enforcers of the aliens’ ultimatum. But there is actually a rather original angle in this film, as it directs critique at the military and the US government for covering up UFO sightings and alien visits – quite possibly the first film to actually take this approach, I think. As far as the basic story goes, there is nothing here that couldn’t work, had the film been better realised.

Furthermore, not only the sets seem to belong in a sixth-grade school play, but it seems the sixth-graders have written the dialogue as well. It ranges from the imbecile to the over-explanatory, from the childish to the inexplicable. Some examples:

“Visits? That would implicate visitors.”

“I saw a flying saucer.”
“A saucer? You mean the kind from up there?”*
“Yeah, or its counterpart.”

“For a time we tried to contact them by radio, but no response. Then they attacked a town – a small town, I’ll admit – but nevertheless a town of people, people who died.”

“Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our Earth?”
“Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!”

“Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can *explode* one. A ray of sunlight is made up of *many* atoms!”
“So what if we *do* develop this Solanite bomb? We’d be even a stronger nation than now.”
“Stronger. You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!”

On the other hand, the hilarious dialogue is one of the reasons Plan 9 from Outer Space is so enjoyable. Another reason is the fact that you can clearly see that this is a film that is made with passion. This is not a Sam Katzman cheapo inhabited by slumming character actors by a producer out to make a quick buck, directed by a director who cares for little more than putting together a functioning film in order to get a salary. No, Ed Wood made these films because he wanted to make them, because he believed in them, and believed he had an important story to tell with them. These are films made by a man with a vision. The problem, as one commenter put it, was that Wood cared more about the vision in his head than if he was actually able to transfer that vision to the screen.

As I wrote in my review of Bride of the Monster, I have a suspicion that Wood was a better director than his films give him credit for. Had the idea for Plan 9 from Outer Space been picked up by a studio, been assigned another producer and a screenwriter like, say Charles Griffith, Ed Wood might very well have directed the hell out of the movie, had he had a budget of, say, $200,000. On the other hand, it is the Ed Woodian special madness that makes his films so utterly enjoyable today. In other hands, this film would have been another cheap The Day the Earth Stood Still knock-off, probably better from a technical and artistic point of view, but probably forgettable. Forgettable, however, is not a word associated with Ed Wood. It is his unique vision that comes (or doesn’t) come through the laughable sets and chidishly moronic script. It’s like when your child enthusiastically presents their art project made from pipe cleaners and toilet rolls. You can’t really make any sense of it, but you love it with all your heart.

Reception & Legacy

Plan 9 from Outer Space had a limited release in 1957 and didn’t as much as register as a blip on the radar. In 1959 Wood managed to give it a wider distribution with a small distribution company, but again, to little fanfare. I haven’t been able to find a single review from the film’s 1957 or 1959 release. It was sold to television in 1961. While it didn’t garner much attention on TV either, it must have been seen by enough people to make a general impression, as it was voted “worst film of all time” when writers Michael and Harry Medved announced a poll for their book The Golden Turkey Awards in 1980. The book, which was a follow-up to the authors’ similar The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (in which the film wasn’t even mentioned), was an instant success and gave birth to the enduring cult fame of both Plan 9 from Outer Space and its director. Tragically, this was too late for Ed Wood, who passed away in poverty and obscurity from the effects of his severe alcoholism in 1978.

There is hardly much point in recounting reviews for Plan 9 from Outer Space. But it’s worth noting that Plan 9 from Outer Space is one of a very small handful of 50’s science fiction movies that actually has an entry on Metacritic. The film’s status as “the worst ever” has been thoroughly debunked many times over. On the contrary, it is one of the most beloved films in movie history. Glenn Kenny at Entertainment Weekly calls it “the sine qua non of absurdist angst”, “79 minutes […] jam-packed with insanity”, “schlock at a zenith of relentlessness”. Josiah Teal at Film Threat writes: “I genuinely love this film and, with complete conviction, believe everyone should see this. It is so bad that it’s flawless.” And Richard Brody of The New Yorker says: “Wood lacked both the dramatic sense to unfold his speculations in action and the technique (as well as the money) to embody, in any plausible way, his spectacular fancies, but their crude approximations vibrate with his stifled exaltation. He had the imaginative intensity of an artist with none of the craft, the dreams without the taste; he’s an auteur despite himself.”

Plan 9 from Outer Space has been reimagined a couple of times. In 1993 as a porn movie, Plan 69 from Outer Space and in 2015 as a low-budget zombie invasion film, Plan 9. There’s also been a home video release of a 2006 stage play called Plan Live from Outer Space, which won a Canadian Comedy Award for best play, revue or series.

Cast & Crew

Ed Wood was born in Poughkeepsie, NY (Supernatural fans go wink-wink, nudge-nudge) and started making home videos as a kid. He served in the marine between 1942 and 1946, and would later say he feared being captured because of the panties and bra he wore under his uniform. He arrived in Hollywood in 1947, and wrote plays, short stories, commercials and micro-budget westerns, as stated above, and made his directorial feature debut with Glen or Glenda (1953), in which he also played the cross-dressing protagonist. He followed up the crime programmer Jail Bait and then launched into his horror trilogy consisting of Bride of the Monster, Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls. The latter starred former cowboy star Kenne Duncan, Tor Johnson, Paul Marco and others, and got a nice publicity push when Johnson and his son Karl were guests on Groucho Marx’ quiz show and advertised it heavily. Alas, the film was never released, as Wood’s money ran out before he was able to process the film stock. It wasn’t until 1984, after Wood’s posthumous fame had set in. that the film was again unearthed and finished.

The failure to get The Night of the Ghouls off the ground was more or less the end of Wood’s short-lived career as a feature film maker, a career that basically lasted from 1953 to 1959. He made a last desperate push with the film The Sinister Urge (1960), an exploitation film made for $20,000 about a police taking on a porn and sex crime ring. Despite selling itself entirely on the lurid premise, the movie masquerades as taking the moral high ground against pornography, which was ironic, since Wood was already hard at work writing scripts for early “nudie-cutie” films by this time, and was embarking on a second prolific career as a writer of pulp erotica novels.

While Wood is best known today as a director, his primary connection to the movie business was, again, ironically, considering the quality of his SF/horror screenplays, as a writer, and he wrote several scripts for other producers and directors during the 50’s, scripts that became ever more exploitative and suggestive as the decade bore on. During the 60’s, he had a number of projects going that he hoped to direct and produce that never got off the ground, but he did churn out a few scripts for exploitation movies, with titles that were mostly more explicit than the actual films. Some were more straightforward teenage dramas, some are more on the bizarre side. A couple of them are worthy of mention, for example the 1965 horror movie Orgy of the Dead, based on Wood’s novel and directed by Stephen C. Apostolof, whose work on the film makes it utterly clear that Ed Wood was nowhere near the destinction of “worst director of all time”. The film stars Criswell as the leader of a gang of ghouls consisting mostly of topless dancers who kidnap an author and his wife spending time at a cemetery. Another one is the SF movie Body of the Prey/The Revenge of Dr. X (1967), following a scientist whose experiments with carnivorous plants go awry.

1969 seems to have been the year when Wood’s literary output and film work finally aligned. Having long made his primary income from sleaze novels, Wood now seems to have abandoned his hopes of making it as a mainstream filmmaker and steps into the world of explicit pornography. Love Feast (1969), featuring Wood now back on the screen in the main role is more of a sexploitation film and the weird monster/softcore comedy One Million AC/DC (1969) features simulated, rather than explicit sex scenes. But 1970’s Take It Out in Trade sees Ed Wood back in the director’s chair, in the lead role and as a screenwriter, and now we’re in undisputed pornography territory, followed up by titles like Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love (1971), Nympho Cycler (1971) and Panty Girls (1972). He also continued to write screenplays for other porn films, In 1973 and 1974 he directed a string of porn shorts, and then seems to have dropped out of filmmaking completely.

Wood battled severe alcoholism and failing health, and died of a heart attack after a night out in 1978, only 54 years old. He left behind a legacy of 80 published sleaze novels, numerous unfilmed movie scripts, dozens of failed movie projects, several dozen porn movies, exploitation films and a small handful of legendarily hilarious horror and SF movies that have built him a massive cult following. It is a shame his alcoholism robbed him of the fame and recognition he so desperately sought, and which came to pass only two years after his death.

Gregory Walcott was the biggest name actor of Plan 9 from Outer Space (beside Vampira and Lugosi), with a number of prominent supporting roles in westerns and war movies, and the odd leading role in minor westerns. His motivation for appearing in the film was, as stated, to help producer Ed Reynolds to get his movie made. Later he regretted his decision and after the film’s popular resurgence tried to distance himself from it. When Tim Burton approached him to play Reynolds in the Ed Wood biopic (1994), he initially declined, but after meeting Burton he agreed to do a cameo as one of Wood’s investors. This remained his last movie role. In the late 50’s Walcott became a sought-after guest star on TV shows, frequently westerns, and had supporting and bit-parts in films. In 1974 he appeared in Steven Spielberg’s feature debut Sugarland Express and Clint Eastwood’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, which led to a long collaboration with Eastwood.

Born Tore Johansson in Sweden in 1903, Tor Johnson embarked on a career as a show wrestler, which brought him to Los Angeles in 1934, and almost immediately he was noticed for his huge bulk and in later years his shaved head. Despite what is stated in Tim Burton’s film, Ed Wood didn’t discover Johnson, in fact he had already been acting for over 20 years in around two dozen dozen films when he was noticed by Wood in 1955. However, he has Wood to thank for his enduring fame and the popular Halloween mask modelled on his face. Off-stage and off-screen, he was the gentlest of men, described by Night of the Ghouls actress Valda Hansen as ”a big sugar bun”. Despite his thick accent, he was often described as eloquent and learned. His wife Greta hated his horror film performances, as they were so far removed from his sweet personality. In 1956 Johnson teamed up with Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Basil Rathbone and John Carradine in The Black Sleep (review), played another character called Lobo, again with Carradine, in The Unearthly (1957, review), and played the titular role in The Beast of Yucca Flats in 1961. After this he more or less retired from acting. He passed away of heart failure in 1971. He was played to perfection by show wrestler George ”The Animal” Steele in Ed Wood.

Paul Marco was one of Wood’s closest friends and one-time roommate. According to himself, he managed to get several of his friends and other roommates cast in Wood’s films, and introduced Wood to characters like Criswell and Bunny Breckinridge. The struggling actor depended on Wood for roles, and more or less retired from acting after Night of the Ghouls. After the newfound notoriety of Ed Wood, Marco experienced an unexpected cult fame, which he tried his best to take advantage of, taking part in numerous conventions and reprising his role as Kelton in the star-studded spoof The Naked Monster (2005). He hoped for a career resurgence with a planned series of short films, of which he finished one before his death in 2006, Kelton’s Dark Corner, which was posthumously released as a straight-to-DVD film in 2009.

The original queen of goth, Vampira, was born Maila Syrjäniemi in 1922 in Gloucester, Massachusetts to Finnish immigrant parents, and her family eventually settled in small town in Oregon with a large Finnish population. Her father was a lecturer and editor, and her mother a journalist and translator. After finishing high shcool, Maila moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting career. She changed her last name from the by American standards impossible Syrjäniemi (the name means approx. “remote penisula”) to the easier-to-remember Mila Niemi. She later changed it again to Maila Nurmi, inspired by Finland’s most famous man at the time, olympic gold medalist runner Paavo Nurmi. She made up a story about being born in Finland as the niece of the more famous Nurmi (her IMDb bio still contains this erranous statement).

During the 40’s and early 50’s Nurmi worked as a stage actress both in Los Angeles and on Broadway, and as a model for photographers like Alberto Vargas and Man Ray. She made a splash in the Broadway grand guignol midnight show Spook Scandals, where she was “discovered” by Howard Hawks, who hoped to groom her as the next Lauren Bacall. He cast her in the lead of RKO’s adaptation of the Russian novel Dreadful Hollow, but the project was put on hold so many times that Nurmi walked out of her contract. She had a few uncredited film roles in the late 40’s, but mainly made her living as a model, dancer and chorus girl. She almost accidentally struck gold in 1953 when attending a socialite masquerade ball in a costume inspired by cartoonist Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons, in particular the then yet unnamed Morticia Addams. She won the prize for best costume of the party and was approached by a producer for the TV station KABC-TV, who was looking for a host to spruce up their late-night offerings of old horror movies. This was the same station, by the way, that hosted Criswell’s prediction show, and the two came to share a studio.

The Vampira Show aired in 1954, with Nurmi decked out as a vampiric femme fatale, mocking the films she presented and making puns and double entendres about cast and characters. This was one of the very first instances of having a host in character presenting films, and Vampira became the very forst horror hostess. The show was an instant hit and Nurmi, or rather Vampira, was catapulted to nationwide fame almost overnight. However, after the first season, ABC wantied to buy the rights to the Vampira character. Nurmi refused to sell, and the show was cancelled, despite its enormous popularity. Nurmi briefly revived the show on another channel in 1956, but her momentum had passed. KHJ-TV wanted to revive the show in 1981, with Nurmi’s involvement as an executive producer. However, the station went over her head and hired comedic actress Cassandra Peterson to take over the character of Vampira. Nurmi had lobbied for another actress, and thought Peterson was not right for the role. When the producers stuck to their guns, Nurmi left the project and took the rights to the character with her. Nonetheless, the studio went ahead with the show, simply changing the character’s name from Vampira to Elvira. Elvira’s Movie Macabre first aired in 1982 and became a huge hit. Nurmi sued the station, but the court ruled that despite the obvious similarities, Peterson was not impersonating Vampira, but rather imitating Vampira, which was fully legal.

After the decline of Vampira’s 15 minutes of fame in 1954-55, Nurmi eked out a living doing modelling and acting in a handful of B-movies, including two Mamie van Doren expolitation films and Bert I. Gordon’s fantasy film The Magic Sword (1962). Although long kept secret, in 1956 Nurmi also modelled for Disney, who used her as the blueprint for the character of Maleficient from the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Dropping out of acting in the early 60’s, she lived a modest live and made her living installing linoleum floors. She also persued a small career as a painter, best known for a couple of Vampira portraits sold as collectors’ items. Later she opened an antique shop in Hollywood and sold handmade jewellery and accessories, which she designed herself. Nurmi also experienced a revival in 1994 with Tim Burton’s film, in which she was portrayed by Burton’s then-girlfriend, model and actress Lisa Marie (Smith, not Presley). Always keeping the Vampira character close to her chest, Nurmi (unlike the Elvira character) has authorised very few merchindising contracts for Vampira, despite a chance to make a decent buck of it. Between 1995 and 2006 Nurmi was the subject of three different documentaries. In 1956 she was nominated for an Emmy for her work as Vampira, despite the show airing only in Los Angeles. Nurmi passed away in 2008.

In 1963 The Amazing Criswell predicted that John F. Kennedy would be prevented by “outside forces” from standing for reelection as the president of the United States in 1963. Criswell foreseeing the assassination of Kennedy is the one prediction of his that people remember. Its impact is somewhat dampened when you learn that a few years earlier Criswell predicted that John F. Kennedy would not run for president in the first place.

Born 1907 as Jeron Criswell Konig (later King) in Princeton, Indiana, Criswell was, for a while, America’s most famous prognosticator. Online sources on Criswell all seem to be based on a single original article that is highly dubious. Even his Wikipedia article mentions nothing about his career prior to his TV show, which he started at the age of 46 in 1953. According to Criswell’s own words (which one should obviously take with a grain of salt) he began making predictions as a child. However, the first mention I can find in newspaper articles about Criswell as a prognosticator is from 1947, when he was 40. Prior to that he studied music and tried to make it on Broadway. Newspaper articles first mention Jeron Criswell as a playwright in New York in 1931, and this is where he seems to have resided at least until 1936, when he had a minor hit with a comedic stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, one which he revived in Los Angeles at least twice. He worked closely with his partner and later wife, whom online biographies of Criswell simply mention in a derogatory manner as a “former speakeasy dancer”. In fact, Myrtle Louise Stonesifer, who worked under the stage name of Louise Howard, was a ab actress, singer, writer, playwright, composer and musician — who also worked as a burlesque dancer under the moniker Halo Meadows, which is the name she was generally known by in the 50’s among Criswell’s entourage. And by all accounts, a woman whose eccentricity matched that of her husband’s.

During his first years in Hollywood, Criswell shows up in newspaper articles primarily for two books that the couple co-wrote about how to make it in the NY showbusiness, and beacuse of his revivals of his Oscar Wilde play. It is in the mid-forties that Criswell’s career as a consummate showman seems to start adapting eccentric forms. In a small newspaper ad from 1942 there is a mention of a service at the Hollywood Hotel by the “Church of the Inner Voice”, presided over by “Dr. Jeron Criswell” and “Rev. Louise Howard“. In 1942 he was also a speaker at the “Spritualist Science Church”. In 1943 he is presented as a “Reverend at the Liberal Methodist Church”. Criswell also, according to himself, worked as a newspaper writer and a radio announcer. And in 1947 there is a newspaper ad for a prediction showdown between two prognosticators, Leo Guild (who later embarked on a career as “the worst pulp novelist in history” and Criswell at the Warner-owned radio station KFWB, the first mention I can find of his career as a prognosticator. The next year he received a syndicated newspaper column where he started making predictions of the future, partly about future Hollywood events, but also political, scientific and social developments. As time went by, the predictions became increasingly outlandish, as one where he predicted that at a certain date all the women of Hollywood would lose their hair, that Denver would be destroyed by an earthquake and that in 1999, a black rainbow would suck all the oxygen out of Earth’s atmosphere. In 1950 he was already making public appearances as a predictor, and by 1952 his persona seems to have been fully formed, as newspapers wrote of his famous “87 percent accuracy” and noted that “film stars, bankers and businessmen” all employed his services. He also sold his book Criswell Predicts to 1999, and had started using his catchphrase “We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to live the rest of our lives”.

So in 1953 Criswell got his own 15-minute TV slot on a local Los Angeles TV station for his program Criswell Predicts. Wikipedia claims that Criswell bought airtime in order to advertise his “Criswell Family Vitamins”, and started making predictions in order to “fill out time”. However, I can find zero evidence that Criswell ever sold any vitamins. No, most likely, the show was a prognostication show from the start. The show ran between 1953 and 1961, and Criswell and Halo Meadows became a fixture on the Hollywood social scene, organising legendary parties in their penthouse apartment, with guests like Liberace and Mae West. West became very close with Criswell, and called him her “personal psychic”. At one point Criswell predicted that West would be elected president of the US, and fly by rocket to the moon with Criswell and Liberace’s brother. In the 50’s and 60’s Criswell became a national celebrity when he guested a number of talk shows, including Johnny Carson’s. Carson even spoofed him with his own character “Carswell”. However, Criswell’s star waned in the early 70’s, partly because of his drinking, which made him an unreliable talk show guest, and the power of his predictions were lessened by him reading them from cards and flubbing his lines. He made his last TV appearance in 1972, and seems to have fallen off the public radar after that. He passed away in 1982, 75 years old. Despite sometimes being labelled as a psychic, Criswell never claimed to have actual psychic powers, but said that he did his predictions nwere based on “trends, statistics and data”.

John “Bunny” Breckinridge was born to a wealthy Californian family in Paris, France in 1903, and was educated at Eton and Oxford, and acted in Shakespeare plays during his time in England. His family descended from a prominent line of US politicians and military figures – he was the great-great-grandson of vice president John C. Breckinridge. Openly queer at a time when this was highly unusual, he returned to Paris after his education, where he performed in drag at night clubs and married Roselle du Val de Dampierre, with whom had a child. The union didn’t last long, and Breckinridge relocated to San Francisco in the late 30’s (after inheriting a hotel), where he became a local character, and performed in fringe theater, nightclubs and held soirées at his home. Breckinridge could afford to be openly gay, despite being arrested twice for “perversion” and even placed in an asylum.

In the mid-fifties he lived for a while in Hollywood, as one of Paul Marco’s many roommates. Also living here was Breckinridge’s secretary and alleged lover David De Mering, who plays the co-pilot in Plan 9 from Outer Space. Inspired by Christine Jorgensen’s gender correction in 1952, Breckinridge had planned to travel to Denmark in the 50’s for a sex change, but was prevented by legal trouble. Instead, he planned to undergo the procedure in Mexico, but was thwarted this time by a car accident, and then gave up on the idea. After his one and only film appearance, he continued his small-scale theatre career and in 1959, after being released from the Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, relocated to his San Franscisco home. In 1960 he gave Gore Vidal permission to write what he thought would be a biography of him, but which turned out to be the novel Myra Breckinridge, which borrowed some details from Breckinridge’s life, but was a wholly fictional story. Little is known of his later life, but he did live long enough to see himself portrayed (marvellously!) by Bill Murray in the film Ed Wood in 1994. However, he was too ill to take part in any of the publicity around the movie. He passed away in 1996.

Playing the colonel in charge of the US army’s anti-saucer squad, Tom Keene was one of the handful of actors in Plan 9 from Outer Space with a substantial movie background. Keene appeared in close to 100 films between 1923 and 1958, under three different monikers; his birth name George Dureya, Tom Keene and Richard Powers. He made a strong impression when he arrived in Hollywood in the silent era, commanding leads in numerous RKO low-budget westerns, and went on to appear in similar films for Crescent and Monogram. In the early 40’s he made his third name change and tried, with little success to escape his two-fisted western image, appearing in a wider range of genre films, including modern comedies, crime dramas, adventure movies and the odd horror ans SF pic. His SF credits include small roles in Jungle Woman (1944, review), Red Planet Mars (1952, review), Mesa of Lost Women (1953, review) and Plan 9 from Outer Space. The two middle ones are actual contenders for worst movie ever made.

Lyle Talbot, in a small role as a general, was one of Hollywood’s most prolific supporting actors, appearing on over 300 films of TV shows. Talbot was an actor who was seen as having his best days behind him, although he was still very active, appearing in almost a dozen productions in 1956 alone. His long and chequered career lasted from 1931 to 1987, and he appeared indistriminately in any type of project. In later years he said that he never once turned down a role, no matter how small or bad. Stage magician and actor Talbot got called into Hollywood in the early days of sound cinema, when the studios needed ”actors who could talk”, and was quickly established as a ”matinee idol” and leading man of B movies, and was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild. His activity in the union angered studio brass, who quit offering him leading roles, and he instead transformed himself into a sought-after character actor for B films. In film, he is probably best known for having appeared in three Ed Wood movies: Glenn or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).

Dudley Manlove, playing Eros, was primarily a radio actor who also appeared in the underrated SF movie Creation of the Humanoids (1962). Joanna Lee, playing Tanna, had a short and undistinguished acting career before a car accident necessitated a career change. She then embarked on a highly successful career as a writer, primarily comedy, but later also drama and documentaries. One of her early jobs was writing 20 episodes for the animated show The Flintstones, and is credited for essentially the character of The Great Gazoo. She won an Emmy in 1972 for best teleplay for the Thanksgiving episode of The Waltons, and a Golden Globe for best TV Movie for the documentary film Babe, which she both wrote and produced. As an actress she appeared in Corman alumn Bruno VeSoto’s SF movie The Brain Eaters (1958).

Conrad Brooks and Duke Moore, both playing policemen in the film, were Ed Wood regulars, in fact Brooks appeared in more Wood films than any other actor. Both dropped out of acting when Wood took a hiatus from directing in the 60’s. However, Brooks made a roaring comeback after the Wood revival of 1980, appearing almost exclusively in super-low-budget films, many of them straight-to-video releases. Among the 80-something titles he appeared in between 1987 and his death in 2017 we find six that have lower audience ratings on IMDb than 2.0/10, which must be close to a record. These titles are: Rollergator, Brain Robber from Outer Space, Toad Warrior, Toilet Gator, Crimes of the Chupacabra, and Soul Robbers from Outer Space. In the 90’s he took on the mantle of his mentor, and began writer/producing/directing and acting in his own super-low-budget movies, such as the Jan-Gel trilogy, a cult classic among bad movie aficionados. Conrad also had cameos in Burton’s biopic, and in the 2015 remake Plan 9. he passed away in 2017, but because of the often long production times of no-budget movies, as of 2023 there are still films in which he appears that are slated for future release.

One of the mourners at one of the funerals is Gloria Dea, born Gloria Metzner, a stage magician, in fact the first stage magician to perform on the Las Vegas Strip. As her career as a magician waned in the 40’s, she moved to Hollywood to try her luck as an actress. She was put under contract with Columbia, but mainly received bit-part roles, often as a dancer. One notable exception was the jungle adventure King of the Congo (1952), in which she played the female lead as the native Princess Pha opposite Buster Crabbe. Dea left showbiz in the 50’s for insurance and later car sale. She was active in the labour movement and several community groups. She passed away in March, 2023 at 100 years old.

Cinematographer William C. Thompson was a silent movie veteran who worked on most of Ed Wood’s early films. Makeup artist Harry Thomas worked on several low-budget SF and horror “classics”, many of them for AIP. The film did not have an art director, which is hardly surprising. The wardrobe man was called Dick Chaney.

Janne Wass

Plan 9 from Outer Space. 1957, USA. Written & directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. Starring: Gregory Walcott, Criswell, Tor Johnson, Maila Nurmi, Tom Keene, Duke Moore, Paul Marco, Bela Lugosi, Dudley Manlove, Joanna Lee, John Breckinridge, Mona McKinnon, Carl Anthony, Lyle Talbot, David De Mering, Norma McCarty, Bill Ash, Lynn Lemon, Ben Frommer, Gloria Dea, Conrads Brooks, Tom Mason. Cinematography: William Thompson. Editing: Ed Wood. Makeup: Harry Thomas. Sound: Dale Knight. Wardrobe: Dick Chaney. Produced by Ed Reynolds for Reynolds Pictures.