Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and it's
Speaker 1: finally time for our very first Edwood movie on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. Today's selection is perhaps the reigning world champion
Speaker 1: of the schlock to gone. It is the nineteen seven
Speaker 1: undead saucer invasion film Plan nine from Outer Space, a
Speaker 1: movie in which fussy aliens attempt to conquer planet Earth
Speaker 1: by creating approximately three zombies at a local cemetery in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. I've been wondering how long it would take
Speaker 1: us to do an Edward movie, and we debated whether
Speaker 1: we should uh do do this? Do this one or
Speaker 1: Bride of the Monster. They're both fantastic, but I think
Speaker 1: this might be a sort of emotional episode for me
Speaker 1: because Plan nine is not only one of the best
Speaker 1: and most famously bad movies of all time, it also
Speaker 1: played a very special role in my life. So, Rob,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I ever told you this before,
Speaker 1: but when my wife Rachel and I were very first
Speaker 1: hanging out when we were in high school. This was
Speaker 1: before we were technically dating. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: term in your high school time and place was. It
Speaker 1: was going out for us. Before we were going out.
Speaker 1: One of the first times we ever got together was
Speaker 1: to watch Plan nine from Outer Space in the basement
Speaker 1: of my parents house. Oh yeah, so we all we
Speaker 1: already knew each other, we had some friends in common,
Speaker 1: but for some reason we decided we needed to see
Speaker 1: this movie. And I still remember vividly. Uh a bunch
Speaker 1: of failed attempts to acquire a copy. Like we we
Speaker 1: went to Blockbuster Video thinking oh, yeah, okay, it's Blockbuster,
Speaker 1: surely they will have Plan nine from Outer Space and
Speaker 1: what a shock they did not. This would have been
Speaker 1: I think around two thousand two, so they could have
Speaker 1: hooked us up with the thirty seven copies of Mr
Speaker 1: Deed's if we wanted, but they did not have any
Speaker 1: Edward movies in stock. And eventually we figured out that
Speaker 1: one of Rachel's friends had a bootleg VHS tape of it.
Speaker 1: We we finally got our hands on it, and wow,
Speaker 1: it was so perfect, like the aliens wearing the costumes
Speaker 1: with the medieval sigils like you know, Bunny breck and
Speaker 1: Ridge with the ax and uh, the constant switching between
Speaker 1: night and day, the floppy tombstones, the line delivery, but
Speaker 1: I'll be in there. Uh, and it was. It was
Speaker 1: just a magical experience. Uh. I. And now in our house,
Speaker 1: right next to one of our wedding photos, we have
Speaker 1: a framed portrait of Tore Johnson and Vampira from Plan nine. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's sweet. And I have to say this is probably
Speaker 1: the perfect movie to watch on a bootleg VHS in
Speaker 1: a basement somewhere. It's this is a great date movie
Speaker 1: in general. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've watched this
Speaker 1: with my wife before, and it's it's just it is.
Speaker 1: It is NonStop, it is relentlessly what it is, and
Speaker 1: it's I was having trouble coming up with the perfect
Speaker 1: adjective for what this film is, because you can say
Speaker 1: it's cheesy, or it's bad, or it's amateur, or it's
Speaker 1: outsider art. Uh, you know, and it's and it is
Speaker 1: all those things, and yet it it kind of expands
Speaker 1: beyond easy definition. Oh yeah. And I also just want
Speaker 1: to point out that this is another nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 1: sci fi horror movie, which you know, I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of. I have a feeling about this. It's
Speaker 1: kind of ineffable. I was trying to find the best
Speaker 1: way to put it into words, but I think it's
Speaker 1: that I have a sense that like nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 1: to fifty eight was a two year period that was
Speaker 1: a renaissance for sci fi monster trash, like just to
Speaker 1: stick to movies that we've talked about on Weird House,
Speaker 1: fifty seven was the same year as Attack of the
Speaker 1: Crab Monsters and Not of This Earth. Fifty eight was
Speaker 1: the Brain Eaters and Fiend without a Face. I feel
Speaker 1: like something happened during this two year period there was
Speaker 1: a shift in the veltgeist and it gave rise to
Speaker 1: all these emanations, emanations in the gnostic sense, from a
Speaker 1: kind of primeval spirit of B movie weirdness, and the
Speaker 1: world has never been the same. We live in the
Speaker 1: culture that was built by the clumsy, brow furrowing dimmi
Speaker 1: urge that descended from those emanations. It's fifty seven to
Speaker 1: fifty eight, and and it's been monsters ever since. This
Speaker 1: is the air we breathe. Yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: great point. And uh yeah, thinking about my own history
Speaker 1: with with Edwood and Plan nine Matter of Space, I'm
Speaker 1: reminded that I I think I saw my first clips
Speaker 1: from a number of these movies in two It came
Speaker 1: from Hollywood, which somebody in my family had taped off
Speaker 1: of HBO onto VHS, and and for some reason I
Speaker 1: was allowed to watch this over and over again. Um,
Speaker 1: even though you know, it's mostly like a lot of
Speaker 1: fun monster clips, but also some risk a human are
Speaker 1: and also some disturbing content from from Hollywood of Yesteryear.
Speaker 1: But still there's a whole section on there that's that
Speaker 1: is celebrating Edwood and talking about like how great and
Speaker 1: how fun. You know. So much of this content was
Speaker 1: so many of these films, and I guess I kind
Speaker 1: of took all that for granted. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: I was digging into researching a little bit for this
Speaker 1: picture that I realized that like before, like before the
Speaker 1: the early eighties, when this came out and some other
Speaker 1: things were going on with film festivals, uh, like Edwood
Speaker 1: had already drifted into obscurity. Uh. And it was it
Speaker 1: was the memory of these films for that ended up
Speaker 1: resurrecting his spirit. Oh yeah, the weirdness of Plan nine.
Speaker 1: I get the impression that this was not recognized at
Speaker 1: the time as anything great or worthwhile, and it was
Speaker 1: not celebrated, h even in an ironic sense, for a
Speaker 1: long time until like decades after it was made. I
Speaker 1: think the initial reaction was, well, that was weird. Okay,
Speaker 1: I never see that again. But but but to come
Speaker 1: back to what you said, like the classic era, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean they're different. Classic eras in cinema that we
Speaker 1: had that late nineteen fifties era seemed to have produced
Speaker 1: a number of these these ideas, uh, these tropes that
Speaker 1: would continue to resonate throughout our film culture as different
Speaker 1: creators then grew up with those images in their heads
Speaker 1: and then created their own things. I sort of feel
Speaker 1: like this is the era where like the Corman machine
Speaker 1: is finally humming at full output, like it it has
Speaker 1: it's going and uh, and other parallel production machines for
Speaker 1: drive in monster movies are sort of at the at
Speaker 1: their peak output. Yeah. But but but before we get
Speaker 1: too wrapped up in how Plan nine from Outer Space is,
Speaker 1: you know, cranking the gears of history and of our
Speaker 1: personal lives, before we get caught in the wheels of progress,
Speaker 1: we should also describe what this movie is in a
Speaker 1: literal sense. So I have a few categories I think
Speaker 1: it should fit into. One is that it's a fifties
Speaker 1: flying saucer movie. The plot concerns Aliens who fly around
Speaker 1: in saucers that are described both as saucers and as
Speaker 1: quote cigar shaped. Uh that's mutually exclusive, dude. I don't
Speaker 1: know why you say that in the movie, but that's
Speaker 1: what they say. Um, but their saucers. They come to
Speaker 1: Earth to do something something vaguely hostile. It seems their
Speaker 1: main objectives are to make sure that humans acknowledge their
Speaker 1: existence and to keep humans from finding out about them.
Speaker 1: And we find out more about their missions. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so what is their mission? Well, this entails the second thing.
Speaker 1: It's also a zombie movie. The aliens plan involves resurrecting
Speaker 1: the dead from a cemetery and making these revenants wander
Speaker 1: around and scare people. It is also an ed Would movie. Now,
Speaker 1: more about that when we discuss Edward directly. But this
Speaker 1: means a film made with an absolutely irresistible blend of
Speaker 1: overwhelming ineptitude and all inspiring self confidence. And it's it's
Speaker 1: a combination I can't really think of in any other filmmaker.
Speaker 1: It's a movie that is so bad it's unbelievable, and
Speaker 1: it yet it doesn't feel like just check cashing hack work.
Speaker 1: It feels like it was made by someone who thought
Speaker 1: this was a brilliant masterpiece and it might even change
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, there's an audacity to to Edward movies
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, so so we'll get to win into
Speaker 1: that into bed but but yeah, there's nothing quite like
Speaker 1: an Edward film. Also, tying into the cast, which we
Speaker 1: will discuss more in a minute, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to say this is sort of a a bizarro ensemble movie. Like,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that this is a very low budget movie,
Speaker 1: the cast includes a surprising bill of strange but familiar
Speaker 1: faces or what would have been strange but familiar faces
Speaker 1: at the time. You've got Bella Legosi, the legend himself,
Speaker 1: but also Tore Johnson van Hira, the amazing Criswell. It's
Speaker 1: really kind of unusual when you when you stop to
Speaker 1: appreciate how many sort of names ended up in this thing,
Speaker 1: at least names that would have resonated on television in
Speaker 1: l A at the time. Yeah, and and and beyond
Speaker 1: that to some extent, and and who might not necessarily
Speaker 1: be known for acting but who make a very striking
Speaker 1: screen presence. I mean our Vampira and Tore Johnson actors,
Speaker 1: not really, but I mean when they're on screen, it
Speaker 1: looks great. They They're both individuals who had totally nailed
Speaker 1: what they were doing outside of film and in this
Speaker 1: movie though, those skill sets are able to to work
Speaker 1: well on film in kind of an acting space, but
Speaker 1: I would not say they are acting right. Um. What
Speaker 1: one last thing I want to say is that it's
Speaker 1: in a category of a category that doesn't exist as
Speaker 1: much as it used to, uh, and that is the
Speaker 1: thoroughly technically incompetent film. Maybe we don't appreciate this distinction enough,
Speaker 1: but here's my take. I'd be interested to hear from
Speaker 1: people who actually work in the film industry to maybe
Speaker 1: agree or disagree with this. But my feeling is that
Speaker 1: in decades past, bad movies were packed with way, way
Speaker 1: more technical mistakes than bad movies of today. So you
Speaker 1: have everything from you know, continuity failures between shots, obviously
Speaker 1: phony sets. You might see a crew member who wasn't
Speaker 1: supposed to be in the shot standing in the background.
Speaker 1: You know, you see the boom mic decinct audio stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But now the film industry has become much
Speaker 1: more professionalized, and I think there are so many people
Speaker 1: working in the film industry now who know how to
Speaker 1: execute the technical aspects of a film properly. They're good
Speaker 1: at their jobs. There are enough of those people that
Speaker 1: even bad movies today are rarely full of actual technical
Speaker 1: and competence. Even the bad movies of the twenty one
Speaker 1: century are made with a pretty high baseline of technical professionalism.
Speaker 1: And instead now I would say when a movie is
Speaker 1: bad today, I would argue it's almost always bad because
Speaker 1: of the creative elements rather than the technical ones. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in my personal opinion, hands down the most
Speaker 1: common problem for bad movies made this year is going
Speaker 1: to be a bad script, followed by other creative failures,
Speaker 1: you know, failure of like a cinematographer to establish an
Speaker 1: interesting or pleasing visual style. But this will rarely extend
Speaker 1: to like mismatching day night, continuity between shots right right
Speaker 1: or or or one that is also frequently used by
Speaker 1: Edwood jarring use of stock footage. It's like not even
Speaker 1: of apparently the same film grain or whatever right right,
Speaker 1: different film grain, different era, sometimes different continent. It looks
Speaker 1: like there's a really good one. In the other movie
Speaker 1: were thing about doing um Bride and the Monster where
Speaker 1: a character like looks at a tree and then we
Speaker 1: cut two grainy stock footage of a snake and then
Speaker 1: she screams and faints. It's really it's wonderful. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: for the most part that's the pitch, but for just
Speaker 1: to throw out an elevator pitch, I'll use one from
Speaker 1: that is from the trailer that we're about to listen to,
Speaker 1: and that is a terrifying revelation of things to come. Uh.
Speaker 1: We cannot overlook the fact that this is this is
Speaker 1: a movie that is not just about something that could happen.
Speaker 1: This is not a speculative work. This is about things
Speaker 1: that that have happened, are happening, or definitely will happen
Speaker 1: in near future. Yeah, all right, well, let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and listen to this trailer in full because on its own,
Speaker 1: like if this were a lost film and all we
Speaker 1: had was the trailer, we would still have a masterpiece
Speaker 1: on our hands. It is safe to state that the
Speaker 1: grandchildren of some of the people in this dinner will
Speaker 1: not be on Earth. They come from the bowels of Hell,
Speaker 1: a transformed race of Walking Dead zombies guided by a
Speaker 1: master plan for complete domination of the Earth. Plan nine
Speaker 1: from Outer Space m H starring the most brightmarished past
Speaker 1: ever Fella Legosi, the seductive Vampira, and poor Johnson as
Speaker 1: the Walking Dead. Turn off your electro gun, stop it dead,
Speaker 1: you get it? Cheery Bullets bounce off their bodies, Rockets, missiles,
Speaker 1: Jets cannot stop their death ships. What earthly power can
Speaker 1: stop this terror? What a glimpse of things to come?
Speaker 1: See this blast of screen suspense, or it could be
Speaker 1: happening right now? Alright, I absolutely love that it is
Speaker 1: safe to state that the grandchildren of some of the
Speaker 1: people in this theater will not be born on Earth.
Speaker 1: Can you prove the trailer wrong? I don't think you can.
Speaker 1: You don't even know who was in that theater. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's get into the people a bit more. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're gonna start at the top. We're gonna
Speaker 1: start with Edwood or as as he is credited on
Speaker 1: the film, Edward D. Wood Jr. He is the director,
Speaker 1: He is the writer, he is the producer, he is
Speaker 1: the film editor, and he also has a cameo in
Speaker 1: the picture. You know, I realized that a lot of
Speaker 1: my thoughts about the life of Edward actually are not
Speaker 1: like researched for accuracy, but a lot of them come
Speaker 1: from the nineties Tim Burton movie ed Wood, which I
Speaker 1: think is it's probably my favorite biography movie. It's it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I don't know how true it is to the reality
Speaker 1: of the events it depicts, but uh, it's it's incredibly
Speaker 1: fun and it has a standout performance by Martin Landau
Speaker 1: as Bill Leegosi. Yeah. Yeah, ed Wood. Uh also pretty
Speaker 1: pretty crazy because you know, we've talked about how already
Speaker 1: about how Adwood Edward was a Hollywood outsider, and yet
Speaker 1: through Tim Burton's picture, uh, it becomes an Academy Award
Speaker 1: winning property, like Martin Landau's Bella Leghostie role wins an
Speaker 1: Academy Award. Also, Rick Baker's Makeup wins an Academy Award
Speaker 1: for that picture, and so it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: Hollywood establishment finally has to enshrine woods legacy, which is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. But okay, putting the movie that movie aside,
Speaker 1: I don't know, how do you describe what Edwood was? Yeah? Again,
Speaker 1: it's difficult to sum up. Um you know, it's just
Speaker 1: a low budget legend, counterculture icon overconfident, amateur outsider artists.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think about that. I compare him to someone
Speaker 1: like a Howard Finster in my mind, you know, someone
Speaker 1: who who doesn't have the training that that other individuals
Speaker 1: working in the field have, but they have that that
Speaker 1: there's something going on. This is spark that still manages
Speaker 1: to force its way into the medium inspiration in the
Speaker 1: classic sense, like as in literally meaning divine guidance. I
Speaker 1: when I was looking around for some additional biographical information
Speaker 1: on him, one of the mistakes I made was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: I'll look up to see what the oh bits of
Speaker 1: the day said. And that's one of the things about
Speaker 1: his life is that there weren't really any major oh
Speaker 1: bits about him when he died because he had drifted
Speaker 1: into such obscurity. But I was looking at a review
Speaker 1: that Roger Ebert, the late Rogeriebert wrote for Tim Burton's
Speaker 1: ed Wood movie, and he included, like I thought, what
Speaker 1: was a nice summary of who and what Edwood was? Quote,
Speaker 1: Edward D. Wood Jr. Must have been the Will Rogers
Speaker 1: of filmmaking. He never directed a shot he didn't like it.
Speaker 1: Takes a special weird genius to be voted the worst
Speaker 1: director of all time, a title that would has earned
Speaker 1: by acclamation. He was so in love with every frame,
Speaker 1: of every scene of every film he shot that he
Speaker 1: was blind to hilarious blenders, stumbling in aptitude, and acting
Speaker 1: so bad that it achieved a kind of grandeur. But
Speaker 1: badness alone would not have been enough to make him
Speaker 1: a legend. It was his love of film sneaking through
Speaker 1: that pushes him over the top. You know, I think
Speaker 1: this is a phrase I recall from Roger eberta I
Speaker 1: don't remember the origin of it, but it was Roger
Speaker 1: Ebert talking about some bad movie that he said was
Speaker 1: not just bad, but was awesomely bad. And I think
Speaker 1: that is a good descriptor to apply to the Edwood
Speaker 1: movies I've seen. There. They transcended normal badness. They even
Speaker 1: transcend the normal way that you you appreciate bad movies
Speaker 1: at an ironic level. They become in some genuine sense
Speaker 1: and all inspiring spectacle. It's like, it's, uh, you are
Speaker 1: observing a work of sheer will. It's oh, I guess, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to to quote the title of another podcast,
Speaker 1: you wonder how did this get made? Like, how was
Speaker 1: this pushed through to completion? Yeah, and it's a it's
Speaker 1: it's a rare enough thing just historically, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: rare now. You don't you don't really find examples of
Speaker 1: this as much as one might like, and I feel
Speaker 1: like we're kind of starved for it at times. There
Speaker 1: have been films that have come out in recent years
Speaker 1: where I think people were expecting awesome badness, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: the cases you end up with something that's just bad
Speaker 1: in the n the lackluster, luke warm since of the
Speaker 1: word Plan nine has such a kind of relentless, ludicrous
Speaker 1: unbelievability while you're watching it. That rob before we started recording,
Speaker 1: we were talking off Mike uh about how when you're
Speaker 1: explaining this movie, you want to like quote the weird dialogue,
Speaker 1: but then you can't really end up doing that because
Speaker 1: you end up wanting to quote the entire script. Like
Speaker 1: every scene is just filled with exchanges that that that
Speaker 1: clang and and sound wrong in the most awesomely weird way,
Speaker 1: and and then it never stops. You think like, oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta make a note of that one, But then
Speaker 1: the next one is exactly like it. Yeah, it is relentless.
Speaker 1: It is stupefying. Uh so. So briefly on the bio
Speaker 1: of of Edwood. Here he lived, he was a film
Speaker 1: enthusiast as a child, he had a Kodak centis special.
Speaker 1: He was an usher at a cinema at one point,
Speaker 1: he served in the Marines. He moved to Hollywood to
Speaker 1: pursue his cinematic dreams. He would become a legend, true enough,
Speaker 1: but like we we said, his his star would rise
Speaker 1: after his death in seventy eight. Um, the end of
Speaker 1: his life was one of obscurity. But then you had
Speaker 1: stuff like eight twos that came from Hollywood come out,
Speaker 1: which again featured in edwood tribute section. You had a
Speaker 1: growing cult following of for films of this nature, including
Speaker 1: for instance, Michael Weldon's Psychatronic Film Guide, which started up
Speaker 1: as a magazine in nineteen seventy nine. You know, the
Speaker 1: year after after his death, documentaries would follow film festivals,
Speaker 1: and then by the time you get ninety four's ed
Speaker 1: Wood the Picture by Tim Burton, like the legacy is assured,
Speaker 1: like it's cemented. And again the Hollywood establishment itself kind
Speaker 1: of has to enshrine Wood's legacy. Towards the end of
Speaker 1: his life, Wood's output descended sharply into erotic and adult territory.
Speaker 1: This would be in the seventies, but he's working the fifties.
Speaker 1: Gave us a string of just numerably weird films, including
Speaker 1: the semi autographical fifty three film Glenn or Glinda and
Speaker 1: which would himself plays the titular lead character Uh. He
Speaker 1: also gave us Bride of the Monster in fifty five,
Speaker 1: The Violent Years and fifty six, The Bride and the
Speaker 1: Beast in fifty eight, Nine of the Ghouls and fifty nine,
Speaker 1: and The Sinister Urge in nineteen six. I would say
Speaker 1: he's most remembered I think for for Glenn or Glinda
Speaker 1: and the two big Bella leego see Monster movies, which
Speaker 1: were Bride of the Monster and and Plan nine for
Speaker 1: Outer Space Bride of the Monster. We may have to
Speaker 1: come back and also do on the show UH in
Speaker 1: the future, because it has more Bella leegosie than Plan
Speaker 1: nine does. In fact, Plan nine has almost no bell
Speaker 1: allegotee at all, and that's one of the real core
Speaker 1: paradoxes of Plan nine. I would say that this movie
Speaker 1: seems in a way to be kind of built around
Speaker 1: Bella Llegosie. It might be in modern to use a
Speaker 1: modern expression called a Legosie vehicle. And yet Bella Leegosi
Speaker 1: is almost entire really missing from the movie. He actually
Speaker 1: appears in literally just a couple of shots. Legosi I
Speaker 1: think died before most of the movie was filmed, so
Speaker 1: in most scenes that feature his character, he's played by
Speaker 1: a body double holding a cape over his face. Um,
Speaker 1: And even including the shots with the body double, Legosi's
Speaker 1: character is not really central. He's just one of a
Speaker 1: number of zombies. Yeah. And it's just such a wood
Speaker 1: move right to not let this stand in the way
Speaker 1: of not I not I not only completing the film,
Speaker 1: but also like not reshooting anything they already had. Like
Speaker 1: we already have Bella in in one scene, two scenes,
Speaker 1: Why why reshoot any of that. Let's just keep going
Speaker 1: and we'll just have the cape over the face. It
Speaker 1: looks perfect, no reason, no notes, no reason to change anything.
Speaker 1: It does not look perfect at all. The guy that
Speaker 1: got to replace Bella Leghostie kind of looks like Jared Leto.
Speaker 1: He's just like creeping around with slicked back hair and
Speaker 1: the cape over his like he's you know, his faces
Speaker 1: in the crook of his arm with the cape. There
Speaker 1: no explanation of why he's walking like that. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are some scenes where I'm not even sure it looks
Speaker 1: like it was shot for the movie. There there's like
Speaker 1: one of just Bella kind of standing around. It's hard
Speaker 1: to tell because again there's such such a jarring difference
Speaker 1: between one scene in the next, and and yeah, at
Speaker 1: times it looks like like he's just standing there. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, it's it's a weird paradox of plan nine
Speaker 1: and almost That's one of the reasons I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna go into Bella Llegosi uh too much here because
Speaker 1: this is it's not really a Bella Llegosie film because
Speaker 1: he's in it so briefly. It's still an important part
Speaker 1: of his legacy. It's his final film, but um, but
Speaker 1: still here here the basics Bella Legosi in this place,
Speaker 1: the old Man slashed, the dead man slash the ghoul Man.
Speaker 1: Like several characters in this they're called different things. He
Speaker 1: lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty six, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a titan of classic horror. At the star of
Speaker 1: Dracula Befo is the black Cat and um, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: have to come back to him in a in another
Speaker 1: episode of Weird House Cinema when we can really talk
Speaker 1: about Bella Leghostie as a performer more because again barely
Speaker 1: performs in this at always barely in this movie. But
Speaker 1: he was one of the greats. I love Bella, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but you know who performs in this movie without acting?
Speaker 1: I would say it performs almost entirely with this uh,
Speaker 1: with this kind of uh statue like Grimace is toward Johnson,
Speaker 1: Uh toward Johnson is so good in this playing he
Speaker 1: has basically a dual role here. He gets to play
Speaker 1: a human by the name of Inspector Clay, a policeman.
Speaker 1: Uh he gets so he gets kind of like a
Speaker 1: straight acting part. But then he also plays the main
Speaker 1: undead character, who is sometimes called the Big One or
Speaker 1: sometimes called the Giant um and it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a great physical performance. So towards Johnson lived and apparently
Speaker 1: there's some disagree once on exactly when he was born,
Speaker 1: either nineteen o two or nineteen oh three. Seems this
Speaker 1: seemed to be the prime candidates here. Died in seventy one.
Speaker 1: He was born Carl Eric tor Johansson and uh yeah
Speaker 1: is a is a Swedish born professional wrestler, slash strongman,
Speaker 1: slash actor um and uh quite an interesting character he was.
Speaker 1: He was known in professional wrestling circles of the day
Speaker 1: as Super Swedish Angel and uh and he was Swedish.
Speaker 1: But the reason he was an angel, it wasn't angel,
Speaker 1: but the angel thing is interesting. So he's Super Swedish
Speaker 1: Angel because there was already a Swedish Angel wrestling. So
Speaker 1: you can't have two Swedish angels. You gotta mix it up.
Speaker 1: Somebody's got to be like son of the Swedish Angel
Speaker 1: or Swedish Angel too or Super Swedish Angel. There you go.
Speaker 1: And then that's a gimmick. Um, but this whole angel thing,
Speaker 1: but in both cases they're tweaking a gimmick that was
Speaker 1: established by the French angel Maurice Tillott, who was more
Speaker 1: three and died in nineteen fifty four, who was um
Speaker 1: like a big, Brutish strong man with a very interesting look,
Speaker 1: very much you know, a giant uh wrestler of the
Speaker 1: day WHOA yeah, I found an image comparing him to
Speaker 1: Shrek Um, yeah, I've heard that that Shrek, the character
Speaker 1: Shrek was actually patterned after um, after Maurice Tillott. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Now it's hard to find footage of Tour
Speaker 1: Johnson wrestling, or at least it was hard for me
Speaker 1: to find any, but we did find some British footage
Speaker 1: of Tour wrestling some guy. Um. I'll have to include
Speaker 1: a link for this on the blog post for this
Speaker 1: episode at Samuta music dot com. But it's it's it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, I mean, on one hand, it's not Monster Tour.
Speaker 1: I mean, is a big guy, and you get to
Speaker 1: see him moving around, applying headlocks and doing some matt wrestling,
Speaker 1: but he's not like a he's not in monster mode.
Speaker 1: He's not toward Johnson wrestling the way a modern wrestling
Speaker 1: fan might expect towards Johnson to wrestle. Yeah. So is
Speaker 1: this the clip you shared with me that has the
Speaker 1: British narrator on it? Oh? Yeah, just totally trashing the
Speaker 1: whole enterprise. Oh so yeah, so the narrator is like,
Speaker 1: well this professional wrestling, you know, it isn't very serious,
Speaker 1: is it? That is somewhat funny? Yeah, it just really
Speaker 1: rips into it, and then there's all this other weird stuff,
Speaker 1: like the ref is either shirtless at one point or
Speaker 1: the ref has like a very like small undershirt on.
Speaker 1: It was weird. I'm just used to seeing a reff
Speaker 1: in ref's clothing. The ref can't be shirtless. That's weird, right, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's aren't there some cases and like the I
Speaker 1: don't know whatever it's called, the w W or wherever where,
Speaker 1: Like a heel will attack the reff. Maybe the reff
Speaker 1: has to be dressed like a wrestler in case the
Speaker 1: he'll attacks. I don't know, uh, And I don't know
Speaker 1: a lot about this this period of of pro wrestling, though,
Speaker 1: though I have read that it is. It is rare
Speaker 1: to have footage from some of these these earlier eras
Speaker 1: because for one thing, a lot of it wasn't taped,
Speaker 1: and then if it was recorded, those recordings weren't necessarily preserved.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you know, you're essentially taped over, uh, and they
Speaker 1: would be lost to history. According to cage match dot Com,
Speaker 1: Toward Johnson's earliest match was y three and his last
Speaker 1: match was ninety five. The records on this website, I
Speaker 1: don't think are always complete, especially when dealing with older
Speaker 1: stuff like this. But still it seems like a respectable
Speaker 1: era in which to have have applied his trade. And
Speaker 1: he was indeed a big boy build at six three
Speaker 1: forty pounds, he he is massive, and you can see
Speaker 1: why people wanted to put him in monster movies. This
Speaker 1: is not the only one he's uh, He's in a
Speaker 1: number one. Another one that sticks in my mind is
Speaker 1: the Beast of Yucca Flats, where Toward Johnson plays I
Speaker 1: think he uh so, that is, if I'm not wrong,
Speaker 1: a Coleman Francis movie, the same guy who made Red Zone, Cuba,
Speaker 1: which was famously parodied on Mystery Science Theater. Beast of
Speaker 1: Yucca Flats I mainly remember for two things, having a
Speaker 1: really just over the top narrator who you know, every
Speaker 1: time you'd see a character, he would just say something like,
Speaker 1: you know, John Johnson, caught in the wheels of progress. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's almost kind of similar to Criswell's narration
Speaker 1: in Plan nine. We'll get to Criswell in a second.
Speaker 1: But um, the other thing I remember about Beast of
Speaker 1: Bucca Flats is they barely put tour in any makeup
Speaker 1: to make him the Monster. He plays like a Soviet
Speaker 1: scientist who defects to the United States, walks onto a
Speaker 1: nuclear testing range. They blow up a bomb and that
Speaker 1: turns him into a radioactive monster. But they just sort
Speaker 1: of like put some oatmeal on his face, I think,
Speaker 1: and then he's otherwise he's just tour. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: tour was a walking special effect. I mean the physicality,
Speaker 1: the grimace, that was all you needed. So yeah, but
Speaker 1: Basta Jucca flats. That's that's a fun one. I think MST.
Speaker 1: Three K did that one as well. Um, he was
Speaker 1: in such films as nineteen fifties Appen and Costello in
Speaker 1: The Foreign Legion, Bob Hopes, the Lemon Dropped Kid in
Speaker 1: fifty one ed Woods, Bride of the Monster, and Night
Speaker 1: of the Ghouls. But in terms of earlier in his career, uh,
Speaker 1: he he started off doing uncredited strongman type bit parts
Speaker 1: in films back to the mid nineteen thirties, and by
Speaker 1: forty nine he was showing up still uncredited in films
Speaker 1: like Ernest b Showed Sacks Mighty Joe Young. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a scene in that movie where a number of strong
Speaker 1: men are are are playing tug of war with the
Speaker 1: giant ape and uh, and it's it's kind it's not
Speaker 1: a kind of interesting. I didn't work on I being
Speaker 1: all of these guys. But one of them was the
Speaker 1: famous Italian boxer turned professional wrestler Primo Carnera, who is
Speaker 1: a really big guy six six and was you know,
Speaker 1: very much a legendary figure in boxing of that day. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know him. Is is he the last guy
Speaker 1: on the tug on the tub rope here? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: found the still he's the last guy. So he's the
Speaker 1: most enormous and he's like this big, you know, handsome,
Speaker 1: well built Italian gentleman. And I'm not sure exactly. I
Speaker 1: think I think I've pinpointed the individual who's Tore Johnson
Speaker 1: in this, and I think toward Johnson has hair. I
Speaker 1: read somewhere that tor actually had like a full head
Speaker 1: of blonde hair, but he kept it shaved because that
Speaker 1: was the look, you know, that was the look he
Speaker 1: was going for. I can see that. I think he's
Speaker 1: the first guy in the picture you have for me here.
Speaker 1: But this other guy looks like he would definitely be
Speaker 1: cast as Goliath in a bunch of nineteen fifties Italian
Speaker 1: Bible movies. I think he did some sword and sandals work.
Speaker 1: I didn't go go too far into the primo filmography,
Speaker 1: but he was. He was a celebrity of the day
Speaker 1: and uh and may have had some mob ties apparently,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, he was. He was in a number
Speaker 1: of motion pictures himself. But going back to the picture
Speaker 1: on your shelf, Joe, we we we can't just talk
Speaker 1: about Tore Johnson here. We also have to talk about Vampira.
Speaker 1: So Vampira has no lines in this movie, and yet
Speaker 1: I think she is the best actor in it. She
Speaker 1: she well, maybe a tie between her and Tour they
Speaker 1: both need uh. The Tour has lines before he gets killed.
Speaker 1: Both of them spend a number of shots just sort
Speaker 1: of menacing the camera, and they're great in it. Vampira
Speaker 1: is wonderful as like making the creepy face and just
Speaker 1: like flexing her nails. Yes, yes, she has the basically
Speaker 1: has this um Morticia Adams kind of look going on
Speaker 1: what essentially has become an iconic Gothic female vamp look. Right,
Speaker 1: she has the long nails and then she also has
Speaker 1: this um very painful looking corset on that makes her,
Speaker 1: you know, have this kind of almost skeletal appearance. You know,
Speaker 1: she's very made up and she's she's hamming it up
Speaker 1: big time as well. Uh you know, she's really twisting
Speaker 1: her face in a way that she's coming off like
Speaker 1: like the undead. Now something I've always wondered. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know the answer to this. Vampire. We
Speaker 1: we've recently on the show been talking about these horror
Speaker 1: movie hosts, the people who would you know, host a
Speaker 1: TV program where they would show a horror movie and
Speaker 1: then they would interrupt it to do commercial breaks and
Speaker 1: make jokes about the movie. That was Vampira's gig way
Speaker 1: back in the fifties. And so I wonder was she
Speaker 1: the first one or were there other people who did
Speaker 1: this before her. Everything I've read seems to indicate that
Speaker 1: she was the first. She's the matriarch of the entire enterprise.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody else was doing it before her.
Speaker 1: Uh So it's as an interesting story. So Vampire is
Speaker 1: the persona of Malia Nermi, who lived ninety two through
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. And it didn't even have a
Speaker 1: long run. It only ran fifty four throughft but but
Speaker 1: it resonated with with folks, especially apparently in the in
Speaker 1: the l A area. I believe that's where it was
Speaker 1: primarily airing. That's where it was based out of. And
Speaker 1: she also did appearances on some other shows, uh, popping
Speaker 1: up you know, and pretty much always in the persona
Speaker 1: of Empira. So yeah, she was this goffy queen, super narrow, corseted, waste,
Speaker 1: long fingernails, often with a cocktail and some sort of
Speaker 1: in the set, you know, behind her would be something
Speaker 1: atmospheric and goffy, maybe a little um dry ice smoke
Speaker 1: going on, you know. Uh So for the most part, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's always showing up in her persona of Empire. But
Speaker 1: she also pops up as a hag and a sorceress
Speaker 1: in Burt I. Gordon's nineteen sixty two fantasy film The
Speaker 1: Magic Sword, which started Basil Rathbone, Estelle Wynnwood, and Gary Lockwood.
Speaker 1: That is, at least for me, a much below of
Speaker 1: MST three K episode as well. I never seen it.
Speaker 1: Oh it's good. Um Yeah, Croty Robot falls in love
Speaker 1: with Estelle Winwood and has a whole song about how
Speaker 1: much he loves this stell and then the movie itself
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun. It's you know, it's Sword
Speaker 1: and Sorcery from Birdeye Gordon. Oh, I bet the effects
Speaker 1: are just perfect. Um. But you know, so, Vampiro was
Speaker 1: not the only l A Area TV celebrity to appear
Speaker 1: in Plan nine from Outer Space. The other one, the
Speaker 1: other main one, is Chriswell, who planed nine definitely would
Speaker 1: not be the same without Chriswell. Chriswell is the narrator
Speaker 1: in this movie. Criswell was the name of Jared Charles
Speaker 1: Criswell King, also known as the Amazing Chriswell, who was
Speaker 1: an eccentric celebrity psychic who is probably best known for
Speaker 1: making predictions about the future on late night TV shows
Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties. Yeah, yeah, he was. He
Speaker 1: was a psychic for Maywell and was a friend of
Speaker 1: may West's and at one point he was also Vampire's roommate.
Speaker 1: So you do get the sense that like it was
Speaker 1: like a network of of l A weirdos, really, and
Speaker 1: I think that's something that that Tim Burton captured rather
Speaker 1: well in his film, the idea that like these were
Speaker 1: these were the outsiders and they were brought together, uh
Speaker 1: in this strange enterprise. So when we were getting ready
Speaker 1: to do this episode, I got really into doing, uh
Speaker 1: to to reading about the predictions made by Chris Well.
Speaker 1: So that was what he was famous for. He'd come
Speaker 1: on TV and say, you know, I'm a psychic, so
Speaker 1: I predict that. Allegedly, he correctly predicted that John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy would not run for re election because of some
Speaker 1: tragic event in November nineteen sixty three. Uh, that is
Speaker 1: at least what I've seen claimed on his website. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know if that's actually what he said,
Speaker 1: but that's what it says. That's what it claims retroactively.
Speaker 1: But he made all kinds of other predictions that definitely
Speaker 1: did not come true. So there's a there's a website
Speaker 1: called Criswell predicts dot com where you can read a
Speaker 1: bunch of these exerpted from his books, or at least
Speaker 1: from one book of his. I don't even know where
Speaker 1: to start with these. There there are a lot of
Speaker 1: predictions about like Earth being destroyed. So to read one
Speaker 1: passage quote, can our whirling, turning, churning Earth last out
Speaker 1: the night? Our geologists tell us that the danger to
Speaker 1: Mother Earth lies not in the uncharted vast of outer space,
Speaker 1: but from inner Earth. Here is what will more than
Speaker 1: likely happen. According to geologists, small tidal waves will play
Speaker 1: havoc for no reason at all. The surface of the
Speaker 1: Earth will bulge ever so slightly, and highways will slightly buckle.
Speaker 1: Foundations will tip, and floors will slant. When you pour
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee or a glass of water, the
Speaker 1: rim will not level. Telephone, coin boxes and vending machines
Speaker 1: will refuse to work. Delicate instruments will go haywire elevators
Speaker 1: will go out of whack, jukeboxes will be mute, radio
Speaker 1: and TV will fail. All electric power, gas and water
Speaker 1: service will cease. And then will come the time when
Speaker 1: garbage cans roll across the street for no apparent reason.
Speaker 1: Then and only then will you realize the advanced corrosion
Speaker 1: spelling the end of our earth. The seas will fill
Speaker 1: up quickly with a gooey mass of inner earth rubble.
Speaker 1: Our streets and city lots, farms and deserts will bubble
Speaker 1: up like a festered oil and marking the complete collapse.
Speaker 1: Has this happened before, more than likely, and it will
Speaker 1: happen again in your incredible future. Uh He also predicted
Speaker 1: the assassination of Fidel Castro in nineteen seventy. Uh. He
Speaker 1: predicted that there will be an outbreak of men becoming
Speaker 1: cannibals in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in uh December nineteen eighty and
Speaker 1: he predicts the world will end on August eighteenth nine
Speaker 1: in a sequence of events including a jet black rain bow,
Speaker 1: a huge snake in circling the world, and feeding upon
Speaker 1: the oxygen which we need to exist. Um. Well, oh wait,
Speaker 1: actually sorry, I apologize. The huge snake in circling the
Speaker 1: world is a metaphor he's using. Okay, al right, the
Speaker 1: black a metaphor for the black rainbow that's caused by
Speaker 1: a mysterious force. So it's a black rainbow, but it's
Speaker 1: like a snake eating all of our oxygen. But the
Speaker 1: black rainbow is not a metaphor, it's an actual black rainbow.
Speaker 1: I think so. Uh. Also, several of his predictions are
Speaker 1: about some kind of mass sexual behavior phenomenon, such as
Speaker 1: one he predicts where clouds of afrodisacs substances will take
Speaker 1: over the country in the year's nineteen eighty nine, causing
Speaker 1: people to marry cats and stuff. Okay, well, this reminds
Speaker 1: me one of the things I read about Chris Well
Speaker 1: is that he worked with Edward to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what he was gonna say on this film because there
Speaker 1: were certain words that Chris Well could not really get
Speaker 1: out all that easily kind of a speech impediment kind
Speaker 1: of a situation, and so they kind of like figured
Speaker 1: out how to like figured out what he could say,
Speaker 1: so you know, work it to his his favor here.
Speaker 1: Uh And ultimately I feel like with Tore Johnson with
Speaker 1: a Vampiro, with Chris Well, like these are all examples
Speaker 1: of someone who they'd already figured out their gimmick outside
Speaker 1: of film, and then they're brought into the film world
Speaker 1: and they're just they're continuing to do their thing on
Speaker 1: their terms, and that's why they're they're probably the most
Speaker 1: impressive figures in this picture. Yeah, Uh, there is, there's.
Speaker 1: Tour doesn't really do any wrestling in the movie, except
Speaker 1: there's one moment where he gets a really nice wrestling
Speaker 1: slap down on a cop. He like smacks him on
Speaker 1: the shoulders, you know the part I'm talking about. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does kind of it almost looks like a like
Speaker 1: a double chop, Yeah, situation, almost like a Mongolian chop.
Speaker 1: Or something. But uh, but but the other individual just
Speaker 1: completely collapses if it just instantaneously broke all of the
Speaker 1: bones in their body. All right, Well, onto the rest
Speaker 1: of the cast. Some of these are humans, some of
Speaker 1: these are aliens or celestials, but the first is definitely
Speaker 1: a human man. This is the character Jeff Trent, played
Speaker 1: by Gregory Walcott, who lived through two thousand and fifteen.
Speaker 1: He has our square jaws six four punch first hero.
Speaker 1: This is the lug hero of this monster movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting because he's also He was also more
Speaker 1: of an established actor than many of the folks in
Speaker 1: Plan nine, which isn't saying much obviously, but he'd already
Speaker 1: been in a string of movies and TV shows at
Speaker 1: this point. He mainly went on to do a lot
Speaker 1: of TV after this, but also popped back up on
Speaker 1: the big screen in a trio of Clint Eastwood movies
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Eiger Sanction,
Speaker 1: which I remember is being a pretty fun mountain climbing
Speaker 1: thriller every which way, but Lose, which which some would
Speaker 1: say is a Grade eight movie, and then N's House
Speaker 1: to the second Story. He even has a cameo in
Speaker 1: in in Burton's Edward movie, plays like a potential backer
Speaker 1: for one of the pictures. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: too unkind, but Gregory Walcott this is no John Agar.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've, you know, in fifties sci fi movies,
Speaker 1: You've got your lugs and then you've got your lugs,
Speaker 1: and Walcott is the latter. The best comparison I could
Speaker 1: think of. I don't think I've ever put this together before,
Speaker 1: but on this viewing, I realized that this is what
Speaker 1: you get if you made an alien invasion movie where
Speaker 1: the dashing hero was Putty from Seinfeld. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: what you mean. His voice. He's got a deep voice,
Speaker 1: but it's almost a little too deep, like he's almost
Speaker 1: leaning into lurch territory. Uh. And again he's he's he's
Speaker 1: already six four, Like he's a very tall guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're getting I guess he's taller than than tour Really
Speaker 1: at this point, he's getting up in there into into
Speaker 1: primo territory. And that's that's awfully tall for your for
Speaker 1: your heroes. You're how to pull some apple boxes on
Speaker 1: stat at this point. Yeah, So, actually, you know what
Speaker 1: I think to go even better. I would say he's
Speaker 1: a combination of Putty from Seinfeld and Jack Palance. Oh
Speaker 1: that's good, yeah, yeah, but but without without the the uh,
Speaker 1: the overpowering charisma of either. Oh of course, I didn't
Speaker 1: mean he has the charisma of Jack Palance. He does
Speaker 1: not have that sneer. No, he's He's actually quite appropriate
Speaker 1: though for the role he plays, which is he he
Speaker 1: seems to be playing a man who's supposed to represent
Speaker 1: the stupidity of Earthlings, because the Aliens are like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're going to destroy yourselves by creating weapons that will
Speaker 1: annihilate the entire universe, And he's like, but wouldn't these
Speaker 1: weapons make us stronger? Uh? And he also, I hope
Speaker 1: you'll notice in the later scenes where the aliens are
Speaker 1: calling Earthling stupid, he's the only Earthling who gets offended,
Speaker 1: and I think that tells us something. Alright. So he
Speaker 1: plays Jeff Trent, human man. But then we also have
Speaker 1: the actor Paula Trent, a human woman. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: his wife played by Mona McKinnon, who lived through Tennessee
Speaker 1: born actor who acted in just a handful of movies
Speaker 1: during the nineteen fifties, including Nisa of the Lost Women,
Speaker 1: Jail Bait, Teenage Thunder, and Night of the Ghoules. She
Speaker 1: has some line deliveries in this movie that will leave
Speaker 1: you reeling. Yes, I mean it's you can't blame her
Speaker 1: too much because she's she's using the lines that were
Speaker 1: given to her by ed Wood, but oh, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's beautiful to be held. There's a scene where Jeff
Speaker 1: Trent is, you know, her husband, He's going off to
Speaker 1: fly an airplane and she's like, I wish you'd go
Speaker 1: stay at your mother's house because of all these zombies
Speaker 1: that have been wandering around. And she's like, oh, don't
Speaker 1: worry about things, and he's like, okay, well be careful.
Speaker 1: And then the line she says is, I'm afraid I'm
Speaker 1: getting wrong. I think it's something almost exactly like this.
Speaker 1: The flying saucers are up there, the cemeteries out there,
Speaker 1: but I'll be in there. Yes, Oh my god, Like really,
Speaker 1: she did a great job with what she was given there,
Speaker 1: like what are you? How are you supposed to deliver that?
Speaker 1: And and then there there's so much other weird stuff
Speaker 1: that she's given, Like there's this whole bit where she's
Speaker 1: talking about how with um with lug head away with
Speaker 1: with Jeff away that she's got a pillow that she's
Speaker 1: gonna hold at night, and he's acting a little jealous
Speaker 1: of the pillow, and there's like some at least mild
Speaker 1: pillow eroticism wrapped up in the whole scene, and it's
Speaker 1: just so weird, alright. So so that's that's McKinnon playing Paula,
Speaker 1: a human woman. But our next character is Aros, a
Speaker 1: celestial an alien, which, of course, especially in the film
Speaker 1: like this just looks like a human being accept in
Speaker 1: a funny costume. And this character is played by all
Speaker 1: the brilliant Dudley man Love who live through a California
Speaker 1: radio announcer with a voice of just solid gold and
Speaker 1: also sometimes actor exact opposite end of the spectrum. So
Speaker 1: whereas with Jeff and Paula, both of them have these
Speaker 1: line deliveries that just clang and clunk and like roll
Speaker 1: tumble down the stairs, this guy says every single line,
Speaker 1: no matter how banal, with like like he's giving a
Speaker 1: sort of political announcement, yeah, or the Hindenberg is crashing,
Speaker 1: but he's just he's that that that's the level of
Speaker 1: his Delivery. Yeah, he was not an actor, to be fair,
Speaker 1: sometimes an actor, but this was his first picture. He
Speaker 1: went on to act in nineteen sixty two is the
Speaker 1: Creation of the Humanoids. And he had some roles, uh
Speaker 1: that would pop up here and there on TV shows
Speaker 1: like even Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Dragnet. But this, uh,
Speaker 1: this is his memorable performance. He's just he's a light
Speaker 1: anytime he's on screen, but he's usually not alone on screen.
Speaker 1: There there are two aliens who pilot the main flying
Speaker 1: saucer in the movie, and the other one is Tanna,
Speaker 1: played by Joanna Lee. I lived one through two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, and as an actor, she was mostly active
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, including a role in The Brain
Speaker 1: Eaters from fifty eight, but she more extensively had an
Speaker 1: impact as a producer, a writer, and a director. She
Speaker 1: wrote for a slew of TV comedies, including, just to
Speaker 1: name a few of them, The Jetsons, My Three Sons,
Speaker 1: Johnny Quest, Bewitched, The flint Stones, Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch,
Speaker 1: The Waltons, and then later on Dynasty. Uh So, like
Speaker 1: that alone is pretty impressive, but she also produced and
Speaker 1: directed episodes of CBS School Break Special and ABC After
Speaker 1: School Specials. So seems to seem to me like a
Speaker 1: pretty solid career. Yeah, yeah, broke mainstream YEP. Now, before
Speaker 1: we get to the next celestial, we want to get
Speaker 1: back into the human world for a second, and mentioned
Speaker 1: that we have this patrolman. Patrolman Kelton played by Paul Marco.
Speaker 1: Paul Marco lived through two thousand and six. He was
Speaker 1: a three time would actor. He also appears in Bride
Speaker 1: of the Monster and Night of the Ghoules classic Bumbling
Speaker 1: Cop performance. I was trying to find where to insert
Speaker 1: this in our outline, and I feel like maybe the
Speaker 1: best places here. So I came across a record that
Speaker 1: I just have to get a copy of. It is
Speaker 1: let's see what is it called. It came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen five or ninety six, I think, and it's called
Speaker 1: Uncle Dale presents Paul Marco as Kelton the Cop and
Speaker 1: Chris Well Uh, and they're performing two different songs. So
Speaker 1: it's like a single record with a one song on
Speaker 1: each side, and one is performed by Paul Marco singing
Speaker 1: a song called Home on the Strange, which is like
Speaker 1: a sort of monologue song about a bunch of horror
Speaker 1: stuff happening. And then the other side is Chris Well
Speaker 1: doing a song that I have to say Chris Well
Speaker 1: sounds like he's real phoning it in. It's called someone
Speaker 1: Walked Over My Grave and it's just piano playing and
Speaker 1: he's going sub one while walked over my Grave. I
Speaker 1: think I've heard this in a weird mix at some
Speaker 1: point as well. But the Paul Marco song is is better.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's worth a listen. You should look
Speaker 1: it up Home on the Strange. Alright, Well, I'll make
Speaker 1: sure that I did listen to Someone Walk Over My Grave,
Speaker 1: but I'll listen to Home on the Strange as well,
Speaker 1: and I'll put both of these on the page for
Speaker 1: this episode at Samuda music dot Com. All right, now,
Speaker 1: back into the celestial realm. We have the Ruler a
Speaker 1: celestial played by John Breckenridge, who lived fourteen through a
Speaker 1: very fun screen presence in this film, a very very
Speaker 1: sassy performance. Um, but this is a guy who's just
Speaker 1: was a complete non actor making a one time appearance
Speaker 1: in film. He just happened to be a house guest
Speaker 1: of Paul Marco at the time. He's well he's got
Speaker 1: wonderful screen presence. Yeah, he does, because he he has
Speaker 1: he has, he has his performance, his his his performances
Speaker 1: such that I feel like some of his lines are
Speaker 1: legitimately creepy, like he's the he's the the actor who
Speaker 1: gets to deliver the line. Plan nine deals with the
Speaker 1: resurrection of the dead and so forth. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a fun, fun little role. But but yeah, he's
Speaker 1: not an actor at all. And just kind of I
Speaker 1: guess convinced UH to show up and do this. He
Speaker 1: was French born, the great great great grandson of U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney General John Breckenridge, born into a wealthy family, and
Speaker 1: also the great grandson of Wells Fargo Bank founder Lloyd Tavis,
Speaker 1: heir to the dynasty. All Right, and finally, I want
Speaker 1: to just I want to have a note here about
Speaker 1: the music though, because as with Tarantula, we're knee deep
Speaker 1: in fifty stock music here. But I will say, in
Speaker 1: a movie that is so well known for it's an aptitude, uh,
Speaker 1: and it's in its amateur style and the clunkiness of
Speaker 1: pieces coming together, this is a film in which we
Speaker 1: pieces of music from multiple sources compiled by one Gordon Zaler,
Speaker 1: and I feel like some of these are just really
Speaker 1: great pieces of music. You know, they're that classic kind
Speaker 1: of horns, blaring monsters, attacking music from the from the day.
Speaker 1: And when you're watching the film, you may be noticing
Speaker 1: all these other things that don't feel right and are
Speaker 1: coming off weird and amateurish, but the music isn't one
Speaker 1: of them. The music sounds really solid. So I have
Speaker 1: to give Gordon credit for for bringing in these pieces,
Speaker 1: assembling them in such a way that they're able to
Speaker 1: back the film up and make you and you may
Speaker 1: be second guessing everything else, but you're not really second
Speaker 1: guessing the music for the most part. Yeah, I cannot
Speaker 1: hear those horns without thinking of of Tore Johnson's gaping mouth,
Speaker 1: like they're the sounds are coming out of his mouth. Now.
Speaker 1: I think we face a different kind of challenge when
Speaker 1: breaking down the plot of this movie than we normally do,
Speaker 1: which is that there is way too much of a
Speaker 1: temptation to minutely describe and quote every single scene, which
Speaker 1: we're going to try not to do. But this movie,
Speaker 1: like the weirdness and the double take inducing stuff that's happening,
Speaker 1: is just NonStop yeah, it is. It is relentless this film,
Speaker 1: and you definitely should see it. It's one of these.
Speaker 1: It's it's rare to find anyone who is not amused
Speaker 1: by it. Uh, this is this is one that I
Speaker 1: would I would recommend to everyone out there, and it's
Speaker 1: one that that that holds up to repeat viewing. I've
Speaker 1: seen this a few different times. I've I've seen I
Speaker 1: think I saw riff tracks presentation of it many many
Speaker 1: years ago, and and that's fine, or riff tracks can
Speaker 1: it can be a lot of fun. But this is
Speaker 1: a film that doesn't even need the riffing like it is.
Speaker 1: It It's energy is such that that you will do
Speaker 1: the riffing. You know that the riffing occurs in your
Speaker 1: own head. It's brilliant. But one thing we do have
Speaker 1: to talk about is the introduction, because the movie begins.
Speaker 1: This is a fictional movie that begets with a Criswell
Speaker 1: predicts segment like the amazing Criswell did on TV. And
Speaker 1: uh he so it. You know, the lights come up
Speaker 1: on Criswell and he goes into a monologue that is
Speaker 1: so indescribably weird, like the rambling, nonsensical nature of it
Speaker 1: actually reminds me of you know, when you're in high
Speaker 1: school and people have to do class presentations and sometimes
Speaker 1: there's a kid in the class who hasn't done any
Speaker 1: of the homework or any preparation, but they're also kind
Speaker 1: of good at talking, and they just start saying words. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's totally fair. And really it seems
Speaker 1: like it would line up well with with Chris with
Speaker 1: with with Criswell's career here where he's essentially saying nothing,
Speaker 1: but the delivery is good enough that it sounds profound.
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't do the Criswell voice. It is
Speaker 1: famously the adjective I think is stentorian. You know, it's greetings,
Speaker 1: my friend. Uh, And so he begins by saying, greetings,
Speaker 1: my friend. We are all interested in the future, for
Speaker 1: that is where you and I are going to spend
Speaker 1: the rest of our lives. And remember, my friend, future
Speaker 1: events such as these will affect you in the future.
Speaker 1: You with it so far, okay, future events will affect
Speaker 1: even you in the future. Um. You are interested in
Speaker 1: the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. That is why you
Speaker 1: are here. And now, for the first time, we are
Speaker 1: bringing you the full story of what happened on that
Speaker 1: fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence based
Speaker 1: only on the secret testimony of the miserable souls who
Speaker 1: survived this terrifying ordeal, the incidents, the places. My friend,
Speaker 1: we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us
Speaker 1: punish the guilty, let us reward the innocent. My friend,
Speaker 1: can your heart stand the shocking facts about Grave Robbers
Speaker 1: from Outer Space? I absolutely love it, and it's it's
Speaker 1: so ridiculous, and yet at the same time, one thing
Speaker 1: I was thinking about is that if you compare this
Speaker 1: opening narration to the John Leriquette opening narration on the
Speaker 1: original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they have a lot that lines
Speaker 1: up with each other, like they're both presented uh to
Speaker 1: varying degrees of believability um as a statement of that
Speaker 1: what you were about to see is real, this really happened,
Speaker 1: this is really important. And then both examples say the
Speaker 1: name of the picture at the very end, uh the
Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And even though Plan nine from Outer
Speaker 1: Space was the final title for this picture, Grave Robbers
Speaker 1: from Outer Space was was like an alternate title or
Speaker 1: working title or something to that effect. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is historically true, but in the movie Edwood,
Speaker 1: they explained the reason for the change of name was
Speaker 1: that the film was at least partially financed by a
Speaker 1: Baptist church in the Los Angeles area, and they found
Speaker 1: the idea of grave robbing sacrilegious. Uh, it should be
Speaker 1: noted graves aren't really robbed. I mean they're self robbing
Speaker 1: by courses. So it's but but really nitpicking at this point,
Speaker 1: there's so many other glaring errors. Well no, wait, actually
Speaker 1: to that point, there is an absolutely unbelievable scene that
Speaker 1: goes on for minutes of cops talking about standing over
Speaker 1: a grave, of talking about whether or not they can
Speaker 1: go down into the grave to look at it. Right.
Speaker 1: It goes on forever, and they're they're talking about do
Speaker 1: we have jurisdiction to go in there? But also it's
Speaker 1: like can we physically do it? Can all in here?
Speaker 1: And then one guy goes in and he's like, I
Speaker 1: can't read anything. It's like you're in an open grave
Speaker 1: and I think it's supposed to be night, and so
Speaker 1: they're like, well, we better get him a flashlight. And
Speaker 1: we mentioned that we have DeMarco playing a bumbling cop,
Speaker 1: but like all the cops are bumbling, and they're so
Speaker 1: blum bumbling, Like this seems to be a picture in
Speaker 1: which the only understanding of law enforcement was based entirely
Speaker 1: on Laurel and Hardy movies. It's it's incredible, but I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many levels of the Criswell monologue. So yes,
Speaker 1: it is like the Texas Chainsaw. It's like insisting this
Speaker 1: is real even though the events don't don't even have
Speaker 1: internal consistency, but also saying, what what is the relationship
Speaker 1: to time here? It seems to establish that that causality
Speaker 1: is still in effect. Future events will only affect you
Speaker 1: in the future, which I guess is good, Like it's
Speaker 1: good to know there are some rules still in place
Speaker 1: here for this motion picture. But he's also saying that
Speaker 1: the events he's talking about are are happening in the future,
Speaker 1: but also have already happened. Okay, well yeah, now that
Speaker 1: just twists me all up. Okay, So we go from
Speaker 1: Criswell to Boom Thundercrack credits etchings on a tombstone. You
Speaker 1: see tour Johnson Just a little note. I remember thinking
Speaker 1: even back the first time I saw it, Wardrobe on.
Speaker 1: This movie is by someone named Dick Cheney. I think
Speaker 1: it's not the same one. I missed that. But then
Speaker 1: so the credits finish, and then one of the funniest
Speaker 1: things is that it cuts to a funeral and then
Speaker 1: Criswell is still going. You think you're done with him,
Speaker 1: but he just comes back in. You're watching people in
Speaker 1: a graveyard, and he's all of us on earth know
Speaker 1: that there is a time to live and a time
Speaker 1: to die. And uh, we see Bella Lego, see the
Speaker 1: real Bella Lego. See in this sense, he's crying into
Speaker 1: a handkerchief at a grave side and some guys reading
Speaker 1: a Bible and there are two grave diggers nearby who
Speaker 1: look like they belong in a commercial for baked beans,
Speaker 1: and uh. And the Criswell monologue just goes and goes
Speaker 1: and goes. You know, he's talking about like the nature
Speaker 1: of death. He says, when death the proud brother comes
Speaker 1: suddenly without warning. Um, and he says, oh. But he
Speaker 1: also gets very poetic. He's talking about like the sundown.
Speaker 1: You remember, the sundown, last sundown of the day, and
Speaker 1: yet also the sundown of the old man's heart. And
Speaker 1: you're just like you can just a mad j Edwood
Speaker 1: writing this and or Cruswell riding with him, and they're
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, this is so good. It's so good.
Speaker 1: So here's where things begin. Bella Lego sees at a
Speaker 1: funeral for his wife. Uh, it doesn't show us this,
Speaker 1: but we find out later his his wife was Vampira,
Speaker 1: and uh, then the grave diggers start tossing dirt on
Speaker 1: the coffin, and then we cut to an airplane, and
Speaker 1: then we cut inside the airplane and wow, wow this set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a ludicrous set. Um really just so so
Speaker 1: obviously a set, like like Muppet Show level of set.
Speaker 1: It's just a room with an open door and a
Speaker 1: shower curtain and I guess that's supposed to go back
Speaker 1: into out of the cockpit. And then on the wall
Speaker 1: there's a clipboard and what is this circular thing is
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be a thermometer or something. I guess
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be some sort of gauge, but it's
Speaker 1: clearly just some sort of um a circular slidey reference
Speaker 1: tool that's just been pinned to the wall. But they're
Speaker 1: so they're like looking out the window and saying yep,
Speaker 1: that's the old San Fernando Valley right there, right where
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be. And then suddenly, zoom, you got
Speaker 1: a flying saucer goes by out the window and it
Speaker 1: they're showing it off to the flight attendant and uh
Speaker 1: and it kind of rocks the plane and they're like, wow,
Speaker 1: that was nothing from this world. And the pilot here
Speaker 1: is Gregory Walcott. That's uh, Jeff Trent, our our hero,
Speaker 1: and he's immediately very concerned that the passengers not find
Speaker 1: out about the flying saucer. But the flying saucer goes
Speaker 1: by and then it lands at the cemetery from earlier,
Speaker 1: and the grave diggers here something. This is a dialogue
Speaker 1: exchange that must be quoted. Uh so the grave diggers say,
Speaker 1: you hear anything I thought I did? Don't like here
Speaker 1: in noises, especially when there ain't supposed to be any Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of spooky, like maybe we're getting old. Well, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, it's gone now that's the best thing for
Speaker 1: us to gone. Yeah, let's go. It's just And then
Speaker 1: here comes vampire. She shows up, comes lurching out of
Speaker 1: the darkness, and the myths looking just you know, completely
Speaker 1: put together, very much. Has this this gothic queen look down,
Speaker 1: um and uh yeah, we're we're off to the races
Speaker 1: here with the dad rising from the grave. Absolutely flagrant
Speaker 1: inter cutting between night shots and day shots in this sequence,
Speaker 1: continuity does not even seem to be attempted. And so
Speaker 1: Vampira walks up on them, and I was, she kills them,
Speaker 1: But how are you imagining she kills the grave diggers?
Speaker 1: What she does is she kind of stands in a
Speaker 1: pose like an idle video game character, like a t pose,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly raises her hands up while standing behind
Speaker 1: a shrub, and then the grave digger scream and die. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's later in the picture we do have
Speaker 1: some police comparing bodies to aunt wild animal kills. So
Speaker 1: I guess she's supposed to have used those really long
Speaker 1: nails of hers. I guess, so, yeah, the nails seem significant.
Speaker 1: But then after that we get the famous shot immortalized
Speaker 1: in Tim Burton's Would of Bella Go See, coming out
Speaker 1: of a little house and standing in his front yard
Speaker 1: and stopping to smell a rose, apparently in grief. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Chriswell is narrating, you know, Chris Well is just going
Speaker 1: on about how the house that they when which they
Speaker 1: shared their love, became a tomb. And then Bella wanders
Speaker 1: just out of frame, and then there is an immediate
Speaker 1: sound cue. He's the second he steps out of out
Speaker 1: of picture. Tire screech, scream, crash, sirens. Though I would
Speaker 1: like to stress obviously we're supposed to believe that Bella
Speaker 1: was crushed by a runaway truck or something right after
Speaker 1: he left the shot, but actually you can see his
Speaker 1: shadow still falling on the grass, not moving, So he's
Speaker 1: just stepped out of you, is standing there casting a shadow.
Speaker 1: Rob I did a picture for you to look at.
Speaker 1: You can see the shadow on the bottom left and
Speaker 1: then the screech and and the scream. Brilliant Again, Edward
Speaker 1: was not going to let the death of a central
Speaker 1: character stand in the way of not only continuing production,
Speaker 1: but also not redoing a single thing that he'd already shot. Right,
Speaker 1: So we go straight onto the funeral and then we
Speaker 1: see people coming out of what they call a cript
Speaker 1: but it's just like it looks like a cardboard box.
Speaker 1: And oh, it is such a clown car situation. Many
Speaker 1: people coming out of this tiny box. We have this
Speaker 1: tiny's and you know, if you've ever been in a crip,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess this is a movie cript This
Speaker 1: is like like a Santo and the Tomb of Dracula
Speaker 1: crypt where I guess there's supposed to be a lot
Speaker 1: going on in there, but we don't see that on screen.
Speaker 1: It looks like a tiny little phone booth made out
Speaker 1: of cardboard that's been sprayed gray to look kind of
Speaker 1: like granite. And is this the scene where they also
Speaker 1: they go ahead and established well, due to their customs,
Speaker 1: um the the the old man's wife was buried in
Speaker 1: the ground, and he was buried inside of a tomb
Speaker 1: inside of this mausoleum type situation, which I love because
Speaker 1: it's clearly a situation where there is they at least realized, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well we have her. Why would we Why would she
Speaker 1: be buried there and he buried here? Should we reshoot anything, No,
Speaker 1: We'll just to have a have a line or two
Speaker 1: that establishes that there is a reason for this. It's cultural.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it, but it makes sense. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the mourners who climb out of the box, and then
Speaker 1: the lady goes first his wife, then he and then
Speaker 1: her husband goes tragic, uh, and that, Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: the conversation about how it's due to due to an
Speaker 1: old family superstition that she had to be in the
Speaker 1: ground and he had to be in a crypt. But
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think it's literally because they just
Speaker 1: already shot some of the shots and then they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we gotta cover for that. I just had so many
Speaker 1: questions about this custom, like why, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, it sounds kind of sexist obviously, but
Speaker 1: like what possible reason would there be, Like well, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't bury the men and the women in the
Speaker 1: same soil. I need the soil. That's where you bury women,
Speaker 1: then you bury in them. It's just ridiculous. But we're
Speaker 1: about to get to the police because some mourners they
Speaker 1: get spooked seeing bodies of the grave diggers and they
Speaker 1: freak out and the police arrive and oh man, this
Speaker 1: is when we first meet Tore Johnson. Before he's a zombie.
Speaker 1: He's a human. He's in fact a police inspector. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: And there's yeah, there's some great dialogue here from him.
Speaker 1: This is a scene where the dialogue like it would
Speaker 1: have been funny even if it had been delivered. Well,
Speaker 1: but it's Tore Johnson saying it. So you know here
Speaker 1: there's one part, I think the very first thing he
Speaker 1: says when he gets there, he's like, melcle Examiner been
Speaker 1: here yet? So it's the Melcle Examiner. And um, there's
Speaker 1: one part where he's like, I'm gonna go walk off
Speaker 1: in the dark and they're like, be careful, it's dark.
Speaker 1: And then he's just like, I'll be big boy now, Johnny.
Speaker 1: Yeah toward Johnson. Yeah, clearly not a not not an
Speaker 1: actor in this sense, is a physical presence. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of cute though, because you get kind of maybe
Speaker 1: a sense of the real tour Johnson in this shot,
Speaker 1: you know, because he was supposedly like just kind of
Speaker 1: a big teddy bear. They didn't say much, but it
Speaker 1: was kind of a nice guy to be around. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so he goes wandering off into the darkness and the
Speaker 1: mist and then we, uh, we finally we meet Paula Trnt.
Speaker 1: So Jeff Trent is back home now and he's hanging
Speaker 1: out on his porch with a bunch of wicker furniture,
Speaker 1: having a drink with his wife Paula, and uh, they're
Speaker 1: commenting on how you remember Jeff Trent was the pilot
Speaker 1: from the plane, and so they're married. They apparently live
Speaker 1: in a house inside the cemetery as best I can tell. Um,
Speaker 1: like they talked about that fact, and uh they are
Speaker 1: no tour Johnson's. But this couple has really weird energy
Speaker 1: and some of the clunkiest dialogue in movie history. Uh
Speaker 1: it's again, it's hard to explain without just watching the movie,
Speaker 1: you know, Like Paula says to him, I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever seen you in this mood before, and he says,
Speaker 1: I guess it's because I've never been in this mood before.
Speaker 1: And uh, Putty here explains that he's in this unfamiliar
Speaker 1: mood because he saw a flying saucer on his flight
Speaker 1: this morning, and she goes, you mean the kind from
Speaker 1: up to the from up there, and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: or it's counterpart. I didn't know what that meant this
Speaker 1: whole sequence. One of the things I love about it
Speaker 1: is that Wood is trying to create what is essentially
Speaker 1: a realistic scene with with with this whole speculati the
Speaker 1: pick aspect to it, where it's a wife asking her husband, like,
Speaker 1: what's bothering you there's something bothering you, and he is
Speaker 1: having to admit that it's something that I don't even feel,
Speaker 1: but that comfortable talking about. And so this has tons
Speaker 1: of real world parallels obviously, and it's one of these
Speaker 1: great moments where it's like the writer director, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: filmmakers almost like aliens, trying to figure out how how
Speaker 1: normal humans interact with each other. And well he yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's trying to show that is the dynamic I
Speaker 1: think it's going for, But instead it just turns into
Speaker 1: Gregory Walcott having this rant about about a cover up.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, big army brass grabbed us and
Speaker 1: made us swear to secrecy about the whole thing. And
Speaker 1: then he's just on the subject of big army brass
Speaker 1: like he he mentions it several more times. He's really upset.
Speaker 1: He's like, people keep seeing these saucers, but but I
Speaker 1: can't say a word. I'm muzzled by army brass. Oh
Speaker 1: and then right then the uh flying saucers zooms over
Speaker 1: them and knocks over all the wicker furniture. Uh. So
Speaker 1: then we get a scene where Tore Johnson is attacked
Speaker 1: by Bella not Bella Legosie by the Bell Legosie body
Speaker 1: double and by Vampira, And I just wondered why. So
Speaker 1: he's supposed to be investigating the graveyard for clues, but
Speaker 1: he's just walking around with his gun pointed in front
Speaker 1: of him. Yeah. Yeah, really, this one, this is just
Speaker 1: a small thing when it comes to the depiction of
Speaker 1: firearms by law enforcement in this picture. Uh yeah, there's nobody.
Speaker 1: Clearly nobody had ever been around a gun before or
Speaker 1: had any idea about what gun safety was or what
Speaker 1: it might look like on the screen. Uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: so ridiculous. Well, so, yeah, tour gets killed by the zombies.
Speaker 1: And then the other main cop who we follow after
Speaker 1: this is the police lieutenant I don't even remember his name,
Speaker 1: the police lieutenant who just uses his gun as like
Speaker 1: a like a pointer stick. So he whenever he's talking
Speaker 1: about something or about someone, he points their gun the
Speaker 1: gun at them. He also scratches his own head with
Speaker 1: the barrel of the gun and like holds it with
Speaker 1: the barrel pointed into his own chest. Yeah, if he
Speaker 1: had picked his nose with the barrel of the gun,
Speaker 1: it would not have been any more outrageous than everything
Speaker 1: else he does with it. But so they're walking around
Speaker 1: they find they find Towards Johnson dead and they observed.
Speaker 1: They said, Inspector Clay is dead, murdered and somebody's responsible.
Speaker 1: So we get a funeral for Inspector Clay and it
Speaker 1: seems vampires attending the funeral. She's just standing there watching. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we got two people seeing flying saucers over
Speaker 1: Hollywood Boulevard, like there's like a car going by in
Speaker 1: a part where like three people suddenly point out the
Speaker 1: windows at the saucer, all in unison. Um. Uh. And
Speaker 1: meanwhile we're getting Criswell monologues over this where Chris wells like,
Speaker 1: there comes a time and each man's life when he
Speaker 1: can't believe his own eyes. And uh. They here's where
Speaker 1: they decided got to pad this movie out. We got
Speaker 1: some stock military stock footage, so they show planes flying,
Speaker 1: rockets launching, just military hardware doing stuff. Yeah. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: all these shots of one Colonel Edwards just standing there
Speaker 1: basically a blank background, staring up supposedly the sky would
Speaker 1: have been poculars and just ordering all the rockets to
Speaker 1: be fired at these three UFOs. He doesn't even seem
Speaker 1: to care what continent. These rockets are on, so we
Speaker 1: just got all the stock footage of rockets firing. What
Speaker 1: is the deal with the secrecy about the UFOs? This
Speaker 1: is completely inconsistent in the movie. So part of the
Speaker 1: movie they're saying Army Brass won't let anybody know that
Speaker 1: UFOs exist. But then also we here we cut to
Speaker 1: Colonel Edwards and he's talking to just some soldier and
Speaker 1: they're talking about the flying saucers and the soldier is like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's the deal with these flying saucers, And the colonels like, well, uh,
Speaker 1: they attacked us. They he says, they attacked the town.
Speaker 1: A small town, I'll admit it, but nevertheless a town
Speaker 1: of people across the line. And he reveals Edwards reveals
Speaker 1: the big Army Brass is covering up the alien menace.
Speaker 1: You know. He says, take any earthquake, any fire, any
Speaker 1: natural disaster. You think that's natural disasters, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's probably actually aliens. Yeah, if you drop aliens in
Speaker 1: the middle of this and everything makes sense. But I
Speaker 1: think it's time to meet some aliens. So let's go
Speaker 1: to the mothership in orbit around the Earth. A mothership
Speaker 1: which really just looks like a breast or a nipple.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's very glaring. But so we meet
Speaker 1: the aliens and these uh they do a salute where
Speaker 1: they like cross their arms on their chest, and that's
Speaker 1: very funny. Kangan Kodos do the same salute when they're
Speaker 1: on The Simpsons. But the Alien boss is played by
Speaker 1: Bunny Breckenridge, and here you he's wearing a medieval times
Speaker 1: tunic with a like a sigil of an ax on it.
Speaker 1: And then we see the underlings Arrow Syntana and they're
Speaker 1: wearing their satin tunics and they have this bizarre conversation
Speaker 1: where they're talking about what plans they are going to
Speaker 1: enact on Earth. Breckenridge says, oh, what plan will you
Speaker 1: follow now? And Arrow says, well, you know, we tried
Speaker 1: to contact Earth leaders, but they reject our existence. You
Speaker 1: just can't talk to these Earth humans. Their soul is
Speaker 1: too controlled, that's what he says. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that means. But here they say it's time to go
Speaker 1: with Plan nine. So what's Plan nine going to be?
Speaker 1: He says, oh, yes, Plan nine deals with the resurrection
Speaker 1: of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pinnial
Speaker 1: and pituitary glands of recent dead. Okay, I guess that
Speaker 1: would explain the zombies we've seen. But what what we're
Speaker 1: Plans one through eight? I was thinking about this, so
Speaker 1: I guess Plan one was evidently just buzz major cities
Speaker 1: with UFOs and just kind of like freak people out
Speaker 1: a little bit. And I'm guessing that plans too. Through
Speaker 1: eight we're just kind of the stock plots of any
Speaker 1: other nineteen fifties film, you know. So it's like Plan
Speaker 1: two's giant animals attack, Plan three animals attack, Yeah, giants, scorpions,
Speaker 1: probably throw some robots and monsters in there. Maybe they
Speaker 1: get up to something like superviruses and space religion eventually,
Speaker 1: but by the time you get to Plan nine, it's
Speaker 1: the resurrection of the Dead. Well, it's it's a great plan,
Speaker 1: and Dudley man Love really sells it. He's like, we
Speaker 1: have risen too so far, we shall be just as
Speaker 1: successful on more. I do actually buy into Plan nine
Speaker 1: a bit when this scene in Others where they discussed
Speaker 1: that the aliens are discussing it because it's kind of
Speaker 1: like they won't see this coming. This is going to
Speaker 1: freak them out, like there's a there's a sense of
Speaker 1: psychological warfare to it that sounds sensible, like if if
Speaker 1: aliens had the ability to do this and they wanted
Speaker 1: to mess with us, Yeah, make make our dead come
Speaker 1: back to life. Now, maybe resurrect more than three of them.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't know. They had to scale
Speaker 1: up from somewhere right. Well, So they explained that the
Speaker 1: purpose of Plan nine is to make the humans acknowledge
Speaker 1: their existence. They say, like, they won't accept that we exist. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they just shoot at us when we come
Speaker 1: down there, and then they believe that we're not real.
Speaker 1: So we have to make them accept our existence by
Speaker 1: raising the dead. I don't know why that would be
Speaker 1: more effective than the flying saucers. Yeah, I don't have
Speaker 1: an answer to that, but I like, I like, if
Speaker 1: I lean into it and I think about it, I
Speaker 1: can think of it as kind of a psychological attack
Speaker 1: as a way of of causing um panic among the humans,
Speaker 1: like more panic than just the UFOs. The UFOs are
Speaker 1: up there, but the dead are down here. There's a
Speaker 1: great scene Aero Syntanna like walk out of the room
Speaker 1: that they leave Breckinridge behind and uh arrows says, you know,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting thing the earth people who can think
Speaker 1: are so frightened by those who cannot. The dead. Yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: they go back to Earth. We get another porch dialogue
Speaker 1: scene between Paula and Jeff. You know, they're he's leaving.
Speaker 1: This is the scene with the whole like the saucers
Speaker 1: are up there and the cemeteries out there, but I'll
Speaker 1: be locked up in there and um oh man. This
Speaker 1: is also the scene where they have the pillow conversation.
Speaker 1: She's like, when you're gone, I need your pillow here
Speaker 1: because I can touch your pillow and and he he
Speaker 1: seems kind of weirded out by it, you know. He
Speaker 1: he leaves being like, well, I love you, darling, but
Speaker 1: you're off your rocker. And then he gets back in
Speaker 1: the airplane and leaves. It's awesome. Uh so what we
Speaker 1: get a bunch of other shenanigans with Jeff on the
Speaker 1: plane and the co pilot and the stewardess talking about
Speaker 1: going to Albuquerque and trying to party there. I don't
Speaker 1: even will skip over all that. So we get belle
Speaker 1: Lego see in some actual shots where it's really him,
Speaker 1: but then other shots where it's the body double showing
Speaker 1: back up and essentially like creeping into the Trent house. Oh.
Speaker 1: I love this scene because he's creeping around and then
Speaker 1: he's like coming up to the door and sort of
Speaker 1: jiggling it a little bit. But no, no, no, he
Speaker 1: rings the doorbell and then he comes inside like he's
Speaker 1: just not cut out for this, uh, this breaking and
Speaker 1: entering thing. Yeah, So Paul is in bed and then
Speaker 1: the old man walks into her bed room. She screams,
Speaker 1: and then she just runs past him out the door.
Speaker 1: He's very slow moving. Uh it makes me think of
Speaker 1: Night of the Living Dead. Actually, you know, like are
Speaker 1: these creatures slow moving? Oh? Yeah, they're dead. They're all
Speaker 1: missed up. I think that applies to Bella in this.
Speaker 1: And so she just runs past him and then runs
Speaker 1: out into the cemetery. We get a great shot of
Speaker 1: Tour Johnson rising from the grave and it does look
Speaker 1: pretty creepy. I remember seeing this as a kid and
Speaker 1: finding it pretty creepy, pretty disturbing, because yeah, we've got
Speaker 1: the blaring horn music tour is just touring it up
Speaker 1: to eleven here. It looks really good. We get a
Speaker 1: bunch of chasing around in the cemetery. The zombies are
Speaker 1: chasing Paula, cutting randomly back and forth between nighttime and daytime.
Speaker 1: And then eventually a random cowboy hat man in a
Speaker 1: in a convertible rescues Paula. She like faints by the road.
Speaker 1: He picks her up, puts her in the car, and
Speaker 1: drives away. For some reason, he knows who she is.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever met this character, but for oh,
Speaker 1: but next we get a scene where okay, so Aero Santana,
Speaker 1: the aliens now they're landing in the cemetery and they're
Speaker 1: gonna check out their monsters because they're gonna take them
Speaker 1: up to show Breckon Ridge up in the mother ship.
Speaker 1: And there's a great scene where like toward Johnson and
Speaker 1: Vampire are trying to kill them, Like they walk in
Speaker 1: the door and they're like reaching for them, and and
Speaker 1: Arrows has to be like turn off the electrodes quickly.
Speaker 1: They can't tell us from anyone else. And this is
Speaker 1: not the only time they lose control of the zombies.
Speaker 1: The zombies are frequently just attacking the aliens themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this and you know this scene, I feel like man
Speaker 1: Love is able to really sell the threat, Like I
Speaker 1: buy into the fact that he's panicking, like he's he's
Speaker 1: losing it. He's a he's at crashing Hindenburgh level when
Speaker 1: it comes to his fear over the big one, the
Speaker 1: giant toward Johnson, Uh, coming after his throat, and then
Speaker 1: afterwards he's he's still had a breath and he's like
Speaker 1: that that was too close. Yes. Uh. And then there's
Speaker 1: also a scene in here where the cops are bumbling
Speaker 1: around in the graveyard. This is the one we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier where they spend a long time talking about whether
Speaker 1: they can climb down into an open grave or not. Uh.
Speaker 1: And eventually one of them does get in there. I
Speaker 1: think it's Paul Marco and he goes it's Inspector Clay's grave,
Speaker 1: but he ain't in it. Uh. There's a oh. So
Speaker 1: we go to a totally different scene when in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Where it's time for more big army brass
Speaker 1: and this scene was also dumbfounding. So there's like a
Speaker 1: big commander and he gets Colonel Edwards, the guy who
Speaker 1: we met earlier in there and he's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: so you've been in charge of fighting off all these
Speaker 1: flying saucer attacks, but do you really believe there are
Speaker 1: such things as flying saucers? And Colonel Edwards says, yes,
Speaker 1: I do, And then the boss is like, you can't
Speaker 1: say you believe in them. You'll be court martialed for
Speaker 1: believing in flying saucers. And then Colonel Edwards does some
Speaker 1: real like logic twisting on him. He's like, how could
Speaker 1: I defend the Earth against flying saucers if I didn't
Speaker 1: believe in what I saw and shot at. It's like,
Speaker 1: Mike drop, you can't. You can't beat that. It's the
Speaker 1: patriotism shining through, but I don't even understand. So his
Speaker 1: boss was trying to get him to say, well, you
Speaker 1: have to fight off the flying saucers, but you also
Speaker 1: can't tell me you believe in them. Anyway, This scene
Speaker 1: leads into a long aeros monologue where they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we have a language computer that allows us to decode
Speaker 1: messages from the aliens, and so let's listen to Arrows
Speaker 1: talk for ten minutes. Uh So it's a very He's
Speaker 1: giving this whole conversation monologue about how do you still
Speaker 1: believe it impossible we exist? You didn't actually think you
Speaker 1: were the only inhabited planet. You are stupid. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very smug, and it's all about just dissing on humanity.
Speaker 1: Uh something he does quite a bit. First of all,
Speaker 1: you're the worst. Secondly, you're the worst, and and then
Speaker 1: the third important fact here is you're on the verge
Speaker 1: of just destroying being tire universe. So late fifties Earth
Speaker 1: technology is on the verge of of creating a catastrophe
Speaker 1: that will destroy the known universe. And you might think, well,
Speaker 1: they're not going to explain this, right they have, Well,
Speaker 1: but they will. They will explain it, and it is dumbfounding. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we get some technical details on this, but he's like,
Speaker 1: you're about to do it. Your juvenile, stupid minds are
Speaker 1: are creating too many explosives and you're going to blow
Speaker 1: up the universe. Uh and uh oh. And then later, um,
Speaker 1: let's see we get a we get a big army
Speaker 1: brass scene where it's Colonel Edwards and his boss again,
Speaker 1: and Colonel Edwards is like, oh, his I think his
Speaker 1: boss says to them these flying saucers they're attacking the Earth,
Speaker 1: and Colonel Edwards says yes, and then he says, you
Speaker 1: think they mean business? So uh, so he sends Colonel
Speaker 1: Edwards to Los Angeles to the cemetery to investigate the
Speaker 1: zombies and the saucer attacks there, and then we get
Speaker 1: the scene where where Breckinridge choose out Arrows and they
Speaker 1: do the demonstration of Tour Johnson where he is like
Speaker 1: choking Arrows again. They're constantly losing control of him, um
Speaker 1: and uh, and this demonstration scene is a lot of fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also gets some of his ships taken away, right, uh,
Speaker 1: like you don't need all all three UFOs now you're
Speaker 1: down to one. Yeah. Yeah. Arrows gets chewed out big time,
Speaker 1: like it's a real dressing down by his boss. Um,
Speaker 1: but he is impressed by Tour when he sees him.
Speaker 1: He goes, yes, he's a fine specimen. Are they all
Speaker 1: this powerful on planet Earth? He literally says, well, actually
Speaker 1: the other two are a woman and an old man.
Speaker 1: And he's like, okay, all right, but they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know a good idea with the old man, so
Speaker 1: he has the The boss has the idea, what if
Speaker 1: you take Bella Legosi and you make him He literally
Speaker 1: explains that they should do all this, you should make
Speaker 1: him walk into somebody's house. And then instantly decompose in
Speaker 1: front of them and that will convince them that aliens exist.
Speaker 1: That'll do it. Yes, that has to work. Uh. So
Speaker 1: here we get the big army brass shows up at
Speaker 1: the Trent's house. So it's another porch scene. They're hanging
Speaker 1: out in the wicker furniture and Colonel Edwards walks in
Speaker 1: and it's like, uh, hello, how are you doing? And uh,
Speaker 1: Bella Legosie walks up on them while they're on the
Speaker 1: porch and they shoot at him to no avail. But
Speaker 1: then suddenly a ray is emitted from the spaceship at
Speaker 1: Bella lagos See and he just instantly turns into a skeleton.
Speaker 1: So turbo rot. Yeah, and it's one of those great
Speaker 1: scenes where he just turns into a like a high
Speaker 1: school science classroom skeleton. Yeah, it's it's beautiful and in
Speaker 1: a way, Plan nine kind of works because that makes
Speaker 1: everybody be like, wow, I guess we better go and investigate.
Speaker 1: I assume everybody else at this meeting already did believe
Speaker 1: in aliens. Maybe not the police lieutenant, but Edwards did
Speaker 1: and Jeff Trent did. Yeah, and now they really I
Speaker 1: mean it kind of backfires on him because they're like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we gotta do something about this. Now, let's
Speaker 1: go arrest those aliens. Yeah, the police lieutenants like, we
Speaker 1: haven't seen the last of those weirdies. So um, they
Speaker 1: wander into the graveyard to investigate. They leave Paula in
Speaker 1: the car uh, and the aliens. Meanwhile, we see Aero
Speaker 1: Santana talking about how their ship is about to be
Speaker 1: discovered and they can't allow that. So, like the purpose
Speaker 1: of creating the zombies is to get the Earth Links
Speaker 1: to accept the existence of aliens, but they also can't
Speaker 1: allow the humans to see them or know about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they leave Paula in the car, but then Tour
Speaker 1: attacks the car. He knocks down paul Marco by slapping
Speaker 1: him on the shoulders. I think this is what you
Speaker 1: called the double chop. Uh. And then he grabs Paula
Speaker 1: and carries her to the ship. So we do get
Speaker 1: the classic scene that's on the poster of Tore Johnson
Speaker 1: carrying Paula unconscious. Yeah. Like we said on the show before,
Speaker 1: this is an iconic image of the classic monster, the
Speaker 1: monster carrying the unconscious woman. Yeah, And of course Edward
Speaker 1: does not shy away from creating this tableau for us.
Speaker 1: So when Bride of the Monster on the poster, it
Speaker 1: shows bell Lego see carrying the lady, and he does
Speaker 1: not do that in the movie. I think Tore Johnson
Speaker 1: does in that one as well. Well, if you need
Speaker 1: somebody to carry another body around, I mean towards your
Speaker 1: man like, that's what he's been doing. That's that he
Speaker 1: has a career based on carrying very large humans around
Speaker 1: and uh and uh, and and also being carried himself
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. So he can probably help you
Speaker 1: out if you did need a scene where somebody's carrying
Speaker 1: an unconscious tour around. So three lugs go into the spaceship.
Speaker 1: You got, you got Jeff Trent, You've got the police
Speaker 1: inspector or, the police lieutenant and Colonel Edwards, and they
Speaker 1: all have revolvers and they go into the spaceship and
Speaker 1: point them at the aliens um. And then we get
Speaker 1: some villain monologue where Arrows he winds a lot about
Speaker 1: how human governments refused to accept their existence um, and
Speaker 1: he says uh, and it's like why And they ask, well,
Speaker 1: why do you care so much about governments of Earth
Speaker 1: accepting you? And he says, because of death, because all
Speaker 1: you of Earth are idiots. And then he goes into this, uh,
Speaker 1: this crazy series of monologues about how the Earthlings are
Speaker 1: building a bigger, bigger, and bigger bombs. He says, first
Speaker 1: was your firecracker, a harmless explosive, Then your hand grenade.
Speaker 1: You began to kill your own people a few at
Speaker 1: a time, Then the bomb, then a larger bomb, many
Speaker 1: people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled
Speaker 1: upon the atom bomb, split the atom, then the hydrogen bomb,
Speaker 1: where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can
Speaker 1: arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by
Speaker 1: our son. The only explosion left is the solar night uh.
Speaker 1: And this, he explains, is a bomb that will explode
Speaker 1: the sunlight itself. And of course Jeff Trent likes that idea.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, if we had that, we'd then we'd
Speaker 1: be an even stronger nation than we are now. And
Speaker 1: this is where Aeros responds with the most maybe the
Speaker 1: most famous line of the movie. He says, stronger you
Speaker 1: see you see your stupid minds, stupid, stupid, and Jeff,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, he gets offended when Earthlings are called stupid.
Speaker 1: He says, that's enough out of you, and he slugs it.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a great moment in an interplanetary um
Speaker 1: communication here. Yuh, everyone is really terrible at it. We
Speaker 1: get a long explanation of how the solar night bomb
Speaker 1: works using metaphors of a can of gasoline. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to try to reproduce all of that, but they
Speaker 1: say it's actually that it's a bomb that will allow
Speaker 1: you to blow up sunlight, and it will blow up
Speaker 1: the sun and then it will blow up everything that
Speaker 1: the sunlight has ever touched. Yeah, like you split a
Speaker 1: photon and it's going to cause like a photon splitting
Speaker 1: chain reaction where it's going to follow a beam of
Speaker 1: light back to its source, which is the Sun, but
Speaker 1: also travel out on the starlight from the Sun, and
Speaker 1: I guess reach anywhere that the light of our sun reaches.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, well, okay, if this, if I
Speaker 1: and I am being generous here, if this were going
Speaker 1: to happen, that would still take a very long time.
Speaker 1: Like it's not going to be an instantaneous destroy the
Speaker 1: universe situation. Uh, people with better astrophysics knowledge, please correct me,
Speaker 1: because I haven't researched this. But my my gut understanding
Speaker 1: of this, I think is that that would mean the
Speaker 1: it would take a long time, but it would mean
Speaker 1: the eventual destruction of our entire local galaxy. But I
Speaker 1: would also think that at this point, other galaxies are
Speaker 1: moving away from us at such a rate that it
Speaker 1: would actually never catch up to them. So I think
Speaker 1: other galaxies might be Okay, Well, maybe if we're to
Speaker 1: take everything that Aros says here is truth, like maybe
Speaker 1: maybe other cultures have developed this technology and have used it,
Speaker 1: and so you have you have whole pockets of the
Speaker 1: universe that have been wiped out by it, and so
Speaker 1: they just want don't want to see large chunks of
Speaker 1: the universe continue to go this route. But I suspect
Speaker 1: that we would actually never be able to know that
Speaker 1: something like this was happening, because if the destruction is
Speaker 1: traveling at the speed of light, you would have no
Speaker 1: forewarning of it, right Like, you wouldn't be by the
Speaker 1: time you saw it it would arrive at you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. They're they're very advanced, these celestials,
Speaker 1: so they have they have tools. We don't have resources,
Speaker 1: we don't have um again, one wonders what would have
Speaker 1: happened if they had a little more tact in approaching
Speaker 1: this instead of just showing up, insulting us, buzzing our city.
Speaker 1: He's been raising are dead? Come on, we're a sensitive people.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, so they have a big fight, big fist fight,
Speaker 1: uh Jeff Trand is like punching arrows, and they slam
Speaker 1: and they they like they're smashing the equipment on the table.
Speaker 1: The ship is on fire, and eventually the humans get
Speaker 1: out of it. They're all right, and the aliens try
Speaker 1: to take off in their flying saucer but it's on
Speaker 1: fire and then it explodes. And I found this to
Speaker 1: be kind of a like a hauntingly nice scene. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: the UFOs effects in this film are what they are,
Speaker 1: but the scene of the flying saucer on fire over
Speaker 1: the over the Hollywood lights at night and then it explodes,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's something kind of poignant about it.
Speaker 1: Can you guess how the movie ends? It's all monologue,
Speaker 1: go back to Chriswell. He's gonna tie it all up
Speaker 1: in a neat little bow. He's gonna make sense of
Speaker 1: all this. Um So, Chriswell says, my friend, you have
Speaker 1: seen this incident based on sworn testimony. Uh no, I
Speaker 1: can't do the voice the whole time, he says, can
Speaker 1: you prove it didn't happen. Perhaps on your way home,
Speaker 1: someone will pass you in the dark and you will
Speaker 1: never know it, for they will be from outer space.
Speaker 1: Many scientists believe that another world is watching us at
Speaker 1: this moment. We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane,
Speaker 1: the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television,
Speaker 1: and now some of us laugh at outer space. God
Speaker 1: help us in the future the end. I love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: prove that it didn't happen. The burden of proof is
Speaker 1: on you, audience. Yes, yes, disprove or except oh yeah.
Speaker 1: There's just there's there's so much to love in this picture.
Speaker 1: Like even if you took out everything we mentioned, there's
Speaker 1: still like three more bad movies worth of stuff here,
Speaker 1: you know, three more psychatronic films worth of of like
Speaker 1: strange line deliver ease and weird ideas and and jarring
Speaker 1: use of footage. It's just it's a gold mine. This
Speaker 1: picture one of the best of the best of all time.
Speaker 1: Uh I love Plan nine. Yeah, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. But at the same time you have these
Speaker 1: scenes that these kind of like very dry looking exterior
Speaker 1: shots in um in in in los in the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles area, you know, tombstones and uh in in these
Speaker 1: you know, these very scraggly looking plants and trees. I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's there's there is some authenticity sprinkled in
Speaker 1: there as well that kind of gives you a little
Speaker 1: peek into the world out of which it emerged. You know,
Speaker 1: one last question, do you think Edward when he wrote
Speaker 1: this sympathized with the aeros monologue about our stupid earth minds?
Speaker 1: Was he expressing his point of view or was Arrows
Speaker 1: supposed to be the bad guy representing an incorrect point
Speaker 1: of view. I feel like he had to be sympathetic
Speaker 1: to this cause, I mean, it's given so much monologue
Speaker 1: time in the picture, and there's this, and then of
Speaker 1: course we have the Chriswell stuff that is treating the
Speaker 1: film like prophecy. So yeah, he had to be. There
Speaker 1: is this kind of cautionary tale that seems to be
Speaker 1: present no matter how you know, poorly it's ultimately presented,
Speaker 1: or how whackadoodle the the speculative science is that's wrapped
Speaker 1: up in it. Um. But yeah, and and also I
Speaker 1: guess to be fair, this is also an idea that
Speaker 1: we see just spread out across science fiction in general.
Speaker 1: That's something maybe watching us and Something may have an
Speaker 1: outsider perspective on where we are as a culture, and
Speaker 1: it may realize the the the errors of our way,
Speaker 1: the dangers that we're bound to encounter, and that we're
Speaker 1: kind of looking to UFOs as kind of a a
Speaker 1: divine entity or or or conversely an infernal entity that
Speaker 1: will either help us and help us choose the right
Speaker 1: direction or judge us for the direction we've chosen thus far. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I can get down with that. Another last
Speaker 1: thing I will have to say this time is that
Speaker 1: I really think you can't overstate the importance of the
Speaker 1: Criswell framing in establishing the self important tone of the movie.
Speaker 1: Uh that like that, like the movie thinks that it
Speaker 1: is powerful and perhaps world changing. It's like I'm trying toine,
Speaker 1: like imagine if um the room started and ended with
Speaker 1: monologues about how this movie will change the world, and
Speaker 1: the monologues are from like the Long Island Medium. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a self importance to the picture. It feels like
Speaker 1: it's tapping into the now that it's you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: this is stuff that's happening, and people are talking about UFOs.
Speaker 1: There's something going on. Um. You know, we we have
Speaker 1: issues with UH, with where we are as a people.
Speaker 1: We have concerns about the future and about the state
Speaker 1: of technology, and so this this film is like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're really tapping into all that. We have something to say.
Speaker 1: Get Deadly Man Love on the phone. We're gonna cast
Speaker 1: him in this picture. Okay, I think that's We've got
Speaker 1: to We've got to end. Yeah, there's so much here
Speaker 1: and and we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: Everyone who has loved Plan nine from Outer Space in
Speaker 1: the past, and perhaps you haven't seen it before, like
Speaker 1: now is the time, and maybe you're inspired by our
Speaker 1: thoughts here. We would love to hear your thoughts on
Speaker 1: it as well. Perhaps there's some particular UH moment or
Speaker 1: line in the picture that really UH is close to
Speaker 1: your heart that we didn't mention right in. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you, and we'll discuss this UH in
Speaker 1: a future episode of Listener Mail. Oh and I should
Speaker 1: point out when it comes to where to find Plan
Speaker 1: nine from outer space. Luckily, you can find it a
Speaker 1: lot of places these days, the various DVD and perhaps
Speaker 1: even Blu ray releases that are available. I know that
Speaker 1: there was a recent colorization of the picture, but I
Speaker 1: rewatched it in black and white. I feel like it
Speaker 1: needs to be in black and white. But but hey,
Speaker 1: if if colorization is what gets you there, then fair enough,
Speaker 1: go ahead and do it. Now. I'm a purist about this.
Speaker 1: Don't meddle with Plan nine. Yeah, I mean there's something
Speaker 1: about those gothic of scenes in the cemetery, right, I
Speaker 1: mean those those have to be in in black and white.
Speaker 1: I mean I assume Vampira and Tour we're in black
Speaker 1: and white in real life. I can't imagine them as
Speaker 1: flesh and blood color uh entities. It's certainly not in
Speaker 1: this picture, alright. As always, you can check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Weird House Cinema in the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind podcast feed every Friday. We're primarily a science podcast,
Speaker 1: but Fridays are our time to set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns and just talk about a weird film. Again. I'll
Speaker 1: post some of the various multimedia uh tie ins that
Speaker 1: we discussed here on the blog post for this episode
Speaker 1: at SMUTA music dot com. Also, if you were on Letterbox,
Speaker 1: and I recommend you get on there because it's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. If you're a film fan, we are
Speaker 1: on letterbox as well. Our user name is weird House,
Speaker 1: so you can follow us there. You can also pull
Speaker 1: up a cool list that has all of the movies
Speaker 1: that we've watched in order. You can you can do
Speaker 1: things like divide them up and look at them by
Speaker 1: genre and decade and so forth, and you can often
Speaker 1: get a little peek ahead and see what we're discussing next.
Speaker 1: Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.