Review: Plan 9 from outer space

Dir. Ed Wood: 79 mins

Hello, cinema lovers! Plan 9 from Outer Space is a magnificent mess, and far queerer than Ed Wood ever meant it to be. A so-bad-it's-good classic, perfect for people who like their spooky firmly tongue-in-cheek.

The plot, if you can vaguely call it that, involves aliens led by Eros (Dudley Manlove, no, really) who want to stop humanity from building a deadly bomb that will endanger the universe or something like that. Their super clever answer is Plan 9: raise the dead, but only so they can slowly shuffle around a set. Cue a smoke machine, a cemetery and a ghoul or three, and the fun kicks off.

The adequate cast includes blundering pilot Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott), his slightly dim wife Paula (Mona McKinnon), and Tor Johnson as the barely reanimated Inspector Clay. Maila Nurmi drifts through a single set as Vampira, looking like a woman on xanax that needs a burger.

The legendary horror actor Bela Lugosi, in footage shot before his death, is the grieving old man. Who Lugosi angered in heaven to have ended up here is a mystery. San Francisco icon John “Bunny” Breckinridge plays the alien Ruler. He plays his role as a man truly in on the joke.

Performances? Walcott is a handsome plank. Most of the cast stand still and recite overly padded nonsense. Vampira thankfully says nothing and makes the biggest impression as she wanders around the set, appearing every 7 minutes. That cinched waist, those mad wide eyes, horror glamour incarnate. Wildly out of place but like Bunny, she seems totally in on the joke. Lugosi is silent here too. But his scenes carry real sadness. When his on-screen stand-in arrives, cape raised over his face, the spell breaks. Delightfully awful.

Director Wood has become a folk artist. He wrote, produced, directed and edited. Day turns to night and back again in between shots. Man-made fog lazily rolls across everything. The spaceship interiors are curtains and wooden tables. The saucers are shoddy plastic model kits, according to the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood. Stock footage of Hollywood Boulevard was spliced in. Eros delivers his long, long speech about sunlight and gasoline and sucks the air out of the room. The "score", compiled from stock music, blares over the top. It is awful. It is also strangely impressive given the production's budget.

No openly LGBT characters here. Sex is a quick, tepid kiss between a married couple on a terrace. This is not Shortbus. Nobody wants anybody naked. Leader, Eros, is named after the god of love but spends the film threatening annihilation and being strangely bitchy to his female companion.

And that's surprising when you look at who made this movie. Breckinridge was an openly gay drag and burlesque performer. He announced plans in 1954 to travel to Denmark for gender-affirming surgery so he could marry his male secretary. The trip fell through. Think about that when you see him lounging in the curtained spaceship looking all dry and unbothered, like a bougie queen holding court in a very cheap room. David De Mering, Breckinridge’s secretary and alleged lover, sits in the cockpit as Danny. An alleged couple, hiding in plain sight in a B movie. How marvellous.

Then there is Wood himself. He enjoyed wearing women's clothes and definitely sat on the wider gender spectrum. The withering comments in this article suggest a little contempt, but that's not true; there's real love here for all the low-budget, bonkers decisions made that translate to high camp. Everyone plays their role with such ridiculous sincerity. It feels a little Rocky Horror, a little John Waters. Was Wood winking? Hard to say.

Plan 9 from Outer Space is coming to Blu-ray featuring a new 35mm print from the BFI National Archive, with audio commentaries, documentaries, and an illustrated booklet. The bomb talk runs long, and the middle sags. But I laughed from first fog to last explosion. Gather your chosen family. Pour something. Watch it loud.

Plan 9 from Outer Space is released on Blu-ray in the UK on October 19, 2026.