Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. Today we
Speaker 1: are bringing you an older episode of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: This one was originally published on August fifth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: And oh boyd, this is the one we did on
Speaker 1: Plan nine from Outer Space. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: And this is Joe McCormick, and it's finally time for
Speaker 1: our very first ed Wood movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Today's selection is perhaps the reigning world champion of the Schlocktagon.
Speaker 1: It is the nineteen fifty seven undead Saucer invasion film
Speaker 1: Plan nine from Outer Space, a movie in which fussy
Speaker 1: aliens attempt to conquer planet Earth by creating approximately three
Speaker 1: zombies at a local cemetery in Los Angeles. I've been
Speaker 1: wondering how long it would take us to do an
Speaker 1: Edwood movie, and we debated whether we should do this,
Speaker 1: do this one or Bride of the Monster. They're both fantastic,
Speaker 1: but I think this might be a sort of emotional
Speaker 1: episode for me because Plan nine is not only one
Speaker 1: of the best and most famously bad movies of all time,
Speaker 1: it also 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.
Speaker 3: Oh well, that's sweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we already knew each other, we had some
Speaker 1: friends in common, and for some reason we decided we
Speaker 1: needed to see this movie. And I still remember vividly
Speaker 1: a bunch of failed attempts to acquire a copy, like
Speaker 1: we 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 of around two thousand and two, so they
Speaker 1: could have hooked us up with thirty seven copies of
Speaker 1: mister Deed's if we wanted, but they did not have
Speaker 1: any Edwood movies in stock and Eventually we figured out
Speaker 1: that one of Rachel's friends had a bootleg VHS tape
Speaker 1: of it. 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 Breckenridge with
Speaker 1: the axe, and the constant switching between night and day,
Speaker 1: the floppy tombstones, the line delivery but I'll be in there,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was just a magical experience. And
Speaker 1: now in our house, right next to one of our
Speaker 1: wedding photos, we have a framed portrait of Tor Johnson
Speaker 1: and Vampira from Plan nine.
Speaker 3: That's sweet. And I have to say, this is probably
Speaker 3: the perfect movie to watch on a bootleg VHS in
Speaker 3: a basement somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's this is a great date movie in general. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I've watched this with my wife before and it's it's
Speaker 3: just it is. It is NonStop, it is relentlessly what
Speaker 3: it is, and it's I was having trouble coming up
Speaker 3: with the perfect adjective for what this film is because
Speaker 3: you can say it's cheesy, or it's bad, or it's amateur,
Speaker 3: or it's outsider art. You know, and it's and it
Speaker 3: is all those things, and yet it it it kind
Speaker 3: of expands beyond easy definition.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And I also just want to point out
Speaker 1: that this is another nineteen fifty seven sci fi horror movie,
Speaker 1: which you know, I was trying to think of it.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling about this. It's kind of ineffable.
Speaker 1: I was trying to find the best way to put
Speaker 1: it into words. But I think I think it's that
Speaker 1: I have a sense that, like nineteen fifty seven to
Speaker 1: fifty eight was a two year period that was a
Speaker 1: renaissance for sci fi monster trash, like just to stick
Speaker 1: to movies that we've talked about on Weird House, fifty
Speaker 1: seven was the same year as Attack of the Crab
Speaker 1: Monsters and Not of This Earth. Fifty eight was The
Speaker 1: Brain Eaters and Fiend Without a Face. I feel like
Speaker 1: something happened during this two year period. There was a
Speaker 1: shift in the veldtgeist, and it gave rise to all
Speaker 1: these emanations, emanations in the gnostic sense, from a kind
Speaker 1: of primeval spirit of B movie weirdness, and the world
Speaker 1: has never been the same. We live in the culture
Speaker 1: that was built by the clumsy brow furrowing Demiurge that
Speaker 1: descended from those emanations. It's fifty seven to fifty eight,
Speaker 1: and it's been monsters ever since. This is the air
Speaker 1: we breathe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a great point. And yeah, thinking
Speaker 3: about my own history with ed Wood and Plan nine
Speaker 3: from Outer Space, I'm reminded that I think I saw
Speaker 3: my first clips from a number of these movies in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty two's it came from Hollywood, which somebody in
Speaker 3: my family had taped off of HBO onto VHS, and
Speaker 3: for some reason I was allowed to watch this over
Speaker 3: and over again, even though you know, it's mostly like
Speaker 3: a lot of fun monster clips, but also some risk
Speaker 3: humor and also some disturbing content from Hollywood of yesteryear.
Speaker 3: But still there's a whole section on there's that is
Speaker 3: celebrating Edwood and talking about like how great and how fun.
Speaker 3: You know, So much of this content was so many
Speaker 3: of these films, and I guess I kind of took
Speaker 3: all that for granted. And it wasn't until I was
Speaker 3: digging in and researching a little bit for this picture
Speaker 3: that I realized before, like before the early eighties when
Speaker 3: this came out and some other things were going on
Speaker 3: with film festivals, like ed Wood had already drifted into obscurity,
Speaker 3: and it was it was the memory of these films
Speaker 3: that ended up resurrecting his spirit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the weirdness of Plan nine. I get the
Speaker 1: impression that this was not recognized at the time as
Speaker 1: anything great or worthwhile, and it was not celebrated even
Speaker 1: in an ironic sense, for a long time until like
Speaker 1: decades after it was made. I think the initial reaction was, well,
Speaker 1: that was weird. Okay, never see that again.
Speaker 3: But to come back to what you said, like the
Speaker 3: classic era, you know, I mean they are different classic
Speaker 3: eras and cinema, but he had that late nineteen fifties
Speaker 3: era seemed to have produced a number of these ideas,
Speaker 3: these tropes that would continue to resonate throughout our film
Speaker 3: culture as different creators then grew up with those images
Speaker 3: in their heads and then created their own things.
Speaker 1: I sort of feel like this is the era where
Speaker 1: like the Corman machine is finally humming at full output
Speaker 1: like it has it's going, and other parallel production machines
Speaker 1: for drive in monster movies are sort of at their
Speaker 1: peak output.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but before we get too.
Speaker 1: 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. That's mutually exclusive, dude. I don't know
Speaker 1: why you say that in the movie, but that's what
Speaker 1: they say. But at their saucers, they come to Earth
Speaker 1: to do something something vaguely hostile. It seems their main
Speaker 1: objectives are to make sure that humans acknowledge their existence
Speaker 1: and to keep humans from finding out about them.
Speaker 3: And we find out more about their missions as we'll
Speaker 3: get into.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so what is their Well, this entails the
Speaker 1: second thing. It's also a zombie movie. The aliens plan
Speaker 1: involves resurrecting the dead from a cemetery and making these
Speaker 1: revenants wander around and scare people. It is also an
Speaker 1: ed Wood movie. Now, more about that when we discuss
Speaker 1: Edwood directly. But this means a film made with an
Speaker 1: absolutely irresistible blend of overwhelming ineptitude and awe inspiring self confidence.
Speaker 1: And it's a combination I can't really think of in
Speaker 1: any other filmmaker. It's a movie that is so bad
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable, and yet it doesn't feel like just check
Speaker 1: cashing hackwork. It feels like it was made by someone
Speaker 1: who thought this was a brilliant masterpiece and it might
Speaker 1: even change the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's an audacity to Edwood movies for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so we'll get it into that in a bed, But yeah,
Speaker 3: there's nothing quite like an ed Wood film.
Speaker 1: Also, tying into the cast, which we'll discuss more in
Speaker 1: a minute, I think it's important to say this is
Speaker 1: sort of a bizarro ensemble movie. Like, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that this is a very low budget movie, the cast
Speaker 1: includes a surprising bill of strange but familiar faces or
Speaker 1: what would have been strange but familiar faces at the time.
Speaker 1: You've got Bella Lagosi, the legend himself, but also Tor Johnson, Vampira,
Speaker 1: the amazing Chriswell. It's really kind of unusual when you
Speaker 1: stop to appreciate how many sort of names ended up
Speaker 1: in this thing.
Speaker 3: At least names that would have resonated on television in
Speaker 3: LA at the time. Yeah, and beyond that to some extent.
Speaker 1: And who might not necessarily be known for acting, but
Speaker 1: who make a very striking screen presence. I mean, are
Speaker 1: Vampira and Tor Johnson actors? Not really, but I mean
Speaker 1: when they're on screen, it looks great.
Speaker 3: They are both individuals who had totally nailed what they
Speaker 3: were doing outside of film, and in this movie though,
Speaker 3: those skill sets are able to work well on film
Speaker 3: in kind of an acting space, but I would not
Speaker 3: say they are acting right.
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, and that is the thoroughly
Speaker 1: 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, my decnct 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 incompetence.
Speaker 1: Even the bad movies of the twenty first century are
Speaker 1: made with a pretty high baseline of technical professionalism. And
Speaker 1: instead now I would say when a movie is bad today,
Speaker 1: I would argue it's almost always bad because of the
Speaker 1: creative elements rather than the technical ones. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in my personal opinion, hands down the most common problem
Speaker 1: for bad movies made this year is going to be
Speaker 1: a bad script, followed by other creative failures, you know,
Speaker 1: failure of like a cinematographer to establish an interesting or
Speaker 1: pleasing visual style. But this will rarely extend to mismatching
Speaker 1: day night, continuity between shots.
Speaker 3: Right right, or or one that is also frequently used
Speaker 3: by Edward Jarring, use of stock footage.
Speaker 1: It's like not even of apparently the same film grain
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right, right, different film, grain, different era, sometimes different continent.
Speaker 3: It looks like.
Speaker 1: There's a really good one in the other movie we
Speaker 1: were thinking about doing Bride of the Monster, where a
Speaker 1: character like looks at a tree and then we cut
Speaker 1: to grainy stock footage of a snake and then she
Speaker 1: screams and faints. It's really it's wonderful.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, for the most part that's the pitch,
Speaker 3: but for just to throw out an elevator pitch, I'll
Speaker 3: use one from that is from the trailer that we're
Speaker 3: about to listen to, and that is a terrifying revelation
Speaker 3: of things to come. We cannot overlook the fact that
Speaker 3: this is a movie that is not just about something
Speaker 3: that could happen. This is not a speculative work. This
Speaker 3: is about things that have happened, are happening, or definitely
Speaker 3: will happen in near future. Yeah, all right, well, let's
Speaker 3: go ahead and listen to this trailer in full, because
Speaker 3: on its own, like if this were a lost film
Speaker 3: and all we had was the trailer, we would still
Speaker 3: have a masterpiece on our hands.
Speaker 4: It is safe to state that the grandchildren of some
Speaker 4: of the people in this dinner will not be born
Speaker 4: on Earth. They come from the bowels of Hell, a
Speaker 4: transformed race of walking dead zombies guided by a master
Speaker 4: plan for complete domination of the Earth. Plan nine from
Speaker 4: Outer Space, starring the most right Marrish past ever, Fella Legosi,
Speaker 4: the seductive Vampira, and poor Johnson as the walking dead.
Speaker 4: Turn your rector gun, No, no starting down, you can't
Speaker 4: get it. Bullets bounce off their buddies, Rockets, missiles, jets
Speaker 4: cannot stop their death shifts. What earthly power can stop
Speaker 4: this terror? Or a glimpse of things to come? See
Speaker 4: this blast of screen suspense, or it could be happening
Speaker 4: right now?
Speaker 3: All right, I absolutely love that it is safe to
Speaker 3: state that the grandchildren of some of the people in
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's get into the people a bit more.
Speaker 3: Of course, we're going to start at the top. We're
Speaker 3: going to start with Edwood or as he is credited
Speaker 3: on the film, Edward D. Wood Junior. He is the director,
Speaker 3: he is the writer. He is the producer, he is
Speaker 3: the film editor, and he also has a cameo in
Speaker 3: the picture.
Speaker 1: You know, I realized that a lot of my thoughts
Speaker 1: about the life of Edward actually are not like researched
Speaker 1: for accuracy, but a lot of them come from the
Speaker 1: nineties Tim Burton movie Edwood, which I think is it's
Speaker 1: probably my favorite biography movie. It's fantastic. I don't know
Speaker 1: how true it is to the reality of the events
Speaker 1: it depicts, but it's incredibly fun and it has a
Speaker 1: standout performance by Martin Landau as Bill a Lagosi.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nineteen ninety four's ed Wood also pretty crazy, because
Speaker 3: you know, we've talked about how already about how Wood
Speaker 3: Edward was a Hollywood outsider. Through Tim Burton's ninety four picture,
Speaker 3: it becomes an Academy Award winning property. Like Martin lan
Speaker 3: Dallasbela Lagosi role wins an Academy Award. Also, Rick Baker's
Speaker 3: makeup wins an Academy Award for that picture, and so
Speaker 3: it's kind of like the Hollywood establishment finally has to
Speaker 3: enshrine Wood's legacy, which is kind of interesting, but.
Speaker 1: Okay, putting the movie that movie aside, I don't know.
Speaker 1: How do you describe what Edwood was?
Speaker 3: Yeah, again, it's difficult to sum up. You know, just
Speaker 3: a low budget legend, counterculture icon, overconfident, amateur outsider artist.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I think about that. I compare him to someone
Speaker 3: like a Howard Finster in my mind, you know, someone
Speaker 3: who doesn't have the training that other individuals working in
Speaker 3: the field have, but there's something going on. There's this
Speaker 3: spark that still manages to force its way into the.
Speaker 1: Medium inspiration in the classic sense, as in literally meaning
Speaker 1: divine guidance.
Speaker 3: When I was looking around for some additional biographical information
Speaker 3: on him, one of the mistakes I made was thinking, well,
Speaker 3: I'll look up see what the obits of the day said.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things about his life is
Speaker 3: that there weren't really any major obits about him when
Speaker 3: he died, because he had drifted into such obscurity. But
Speaker 3: I was looking at a review that Roger Ebert, the
Speaker 3: late Roger Ebert, wrote for Tim Burton's ed Wood movie,
Speaker 3: and he included, like I thought, what was a nice
Speaker 3: summary of who and what Edwood was? Quote, Edward D.
Speaker 3: Wood Junior must have been the Will Rogers of filmmaking.
Speaker 3: He never directed a shot he didn't like. It takes
Speaker 3: a special weird genius to be voted the worst director
Speaker 3: of all time, a title that Wood has earned by acclamation.
Speaker 3: He was so in love with every frame, of every
Speaker 3: scene of every film he shot that he was blind
Speaker 3: to hilarious blenders, stumbling, ineptitude, and acting so bad that
Speaker 3: it achieved a kind of grandeur. But badness alone would
Speaker 3: not have been enough to make him a legend. It
Speaker 3: was his love of film sneaking through that pushes him
Speaker 3: over the top.
Speaker 1: You know, I think this is a phrase I recall
Speaker 1: from Roger Ebert, though I don't remember the origin of it,
Speaker 1: but it was Roger Ebert talking about some bad movie
Speaker 1: that he said was not just bad, but was awesomely bad.
Speaker 1: And I think that is a good descripture to apply
Speaker 1: to the Edwood movies I've seen. There they transcended normal badness.
Speaker 1: They even transcend the normal way that you appreciate bad
Speaker 1: movies at an ironic level. They become, in some genuine sense,
Speaker 1: an awe inspiring spectacle. It's like it's you are observing
Speaker 1: a work of sheer will. It's oh, I guess you know.
Speaker 1: To quote the title of another podcast, you wonder how
Speaker 1: did this get made? Like how was this pushed through
Speaker 1: to completion?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it's it's a rare enough thing just historically,
Speaker 3: but it's certainly rare now. You don't you don't really
Speaker 3: find examples of this as much as one might like,
Speaker 3: and I feel like we're kind of starved for it
Speaker 3: at times. There have been films that have come out
Speaker 3: in recent years where I think people were expecting awesome badness,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately the cases you end up with something that's
Speaker 3: just bad in the and the lackluster, lukewarm sense of
Speaker 3: the word.
Speaker 1: Plan nine has such a kind of relentless, ludicrous unbelievability
Speaker 1: while you're watching it that before we started recording, we
Speaker 1: were talking off Mike about how when you're explaining this movie,
Speaker 1: you want to like quote the weird dialogue, but then
Speaker 1: you can't really end up doing that because you end
Speaker 1: up wanting to quote the entire script. Like every scene
Speaker 1: is just filled with exchanges that that that clang and
Speaker 1: sound wrong in the most awesomely weird way, and and
Speaker 1: then it never stops. You think like, oh, I got
Speaker 1: a make a note of that one, but then the
Speaker 1: next one is exactly like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is relentless, it is stupefying. So briefly on
Speaker 3: the bio of Edward here he lived nineteen twenty four
Speaker 3: through nineteen seventy eight. He was a film enthusiast. As
Speaker 3: a child, he had a Kodak Sinis special. He was
Speaker 3: an usher at a cinema. At one point, he served
Speaker 3: in the Marines. In nineteen forty seventy moved to Hollywood
Speaker 3: to pursue his cinematic dreams. He would become a legend,
Speaker 3: true enough, but like we said, his star would rise
Speaker 3: after his death in seventy eight. The end of his
Speaker 3: life was one of obscurity. But then you had stuff
Speaker 3: like eighty two's that came from Hollywood Come Out, which
Speaker 3: again featured inn Edwood tribute section. You had a growing
Speaker 3: cult following for films of this nature, including for instance,
Speaker 3: Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Film Guide, which started up as a
Speaker 3: magazine in nineteen seventy nine the year after his death.
Speaker 3: Documentaries would follow film festivals, and then by the time
Speaker 3: you get ninety four's ed Wood the picture by Tim Burton,
Speaker 3: like the legacy is assured, like it's cemented, and again
Speaker 3: the Hollywood establishment itself kind of has to enshrine Wood's legacy.
Speaker 3: Towards the end of his life, Wood's output descended sharply
Speaker 3: into erotic and adult territory. This would have been in
Speaker 3: the seventies, but his work in the fifties gave us
Speaker 3: a string of just memorably weird films, including the semiotographical
Speaker 3: fifty three film Glenn or Glinda, in which Would himself
Speaker 3: plays the titular lead character. He also gave us Bride
Speaker 3: of the Monster in fifty five, The Violent Years in
Speaker 3: fifty six, The Bride and the Beast in fifty eight,
Speaker 3: Night of the Ghouls in fifty nine, and The Sinister
Speaker 3: Urge in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: I would say he's most remembered. I think for Glenn
Speaker 1: or Glinda and the two Big Bella to go see
Speaker 1: Monster movies which were Bride of the Monster and play
Speaker 1: nine from outer Space Bride of the Monster. We may
Speaker 1: have to come back and also do on the show
Speaker 1: in the future because it has more bella Legosi than
Speaker 1: Plan nine does. In fact, Plan nine has almost no
Speaker 1: bella legosi at all, and that's one of the real
Speaker 1: core paradoxes of Plan nine. I would say that this
Speaker 1: movie seems in a way to be kind of built
Speaker 1: around Bella Lagosi. It might be in modern to use
Speaker 1: a modern expression called a Legosi vehicle. And yet Bella
Speaker 1: Legosi is almost entirely 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. And
Speaker 1: even including the shots with the body double, Legosi's character
Speaker 1: is not really central. He's just one of a number
Speaker 1: of zombies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's just such a wood move right to
Speaker 3: not let this stand in the way of not only
Speaker 3: completing the film, but also not reshooting anything they already had,
Speaker 3: Like we already have Bella in one scene to scenes,
Speaker 3: why reshoot any of that. Let's just keep going and
Speaker 3: we'll just have the cape over the face looks perfect,
Speaker 3: 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 Lagosi kind of looks like Jared Letto.
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 face
Speaker 1: is in the crook of his arm with the cape.
Speaker 1: There no explanation of why he's walking like that. 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.
Speaker 3: It's hard to tell because again there's such such a
Speaker 3: jarring difference between one scene and the next. Ye and yeah,
Speaker 3: at times it looks like like he's just standing there.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I agree, it's it's a weird paradox of
Speaker 3: planed nine and almost. That's one of the reasons that
Speaker 3: I'm not even gonna go into Bella Lagosi too much here,
Speaker 3: because this is it's not really a Bella Lagosi film
Speaker 3: because he's in it so briefly. It's still an important
Speaker 3: part of his legacy. It's his final film, but still
Speaker 3: here ere the basics. Bella Legosi in this plays the
Speaker 3: old man, slash the dead man, slash the ghoulman. Like
Speaker 3: several characters in this, they're called different things. He lived
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty six, and yeah, he's
Speaker 3: a titan of classic horror. The star of nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: one's Dracula. Nineteen thirty four is the Black Cat. And yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll have to come back to him in another episode
Speaker 3: of Weird House Cinema when we can really talk about
Speaker 3: Bella Lagosi as a performer more, because again barely performs.
Speaker 4: In this at all.
Speaker 3: Is barely in this movie, but he was.
Speaker 1: One of the greats. I love Bella. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: know who performs in this movie without acting, I would
Speaker 1: say performs almost entirely with this, with this kind of
Speaker 1: stack she like Grimace, is Tor Johnson.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: Tor Johnson is so good in this playing He has
Speaker 3: basically a dual role here. He gets to play a
Speaker 3: human by the name of Inspector Clay, a policeman he gets,
Speaker 3: so he gets kind of like a straight acting part.
Speaker 3: But then he also plays the main undead character who
Speaker 3: is sometimes called the Big One or sometimes called the Giant.
Speaker 3: And it's a great physical performance. So Tor Johnson lived,
Speaker 3: and apparently there's some disagreeance on exactly when he was born,
Speaker 3: either nineteen oh two or nineteen oh three, they seemed
Speaker 3: to be the prime candidates here. Died in seventy one.
Speaker 3: He was born Carl Eric tor Johansson, and yeah it
Speaker 3: is a Swedish born professional wrestler slash strongman, slash actor
Speaker 3: and quite an interesting character. He was known in professional
Speaker 3: wrestling circles of the day as Super Swedish aim Angel,
Speaker 3: and he was Swedish. But the reason he was an angel,
Speaker 3: it was an angel. But the angel thing is interesting.
Speaker 3: So he's Super Swedish Angel because there was already a
Speaker 3: Swedish angel wrestling. So you can't have two Swedish angels.
Speaker 3: You got to mix it up. Somebody's got to be
Speaker 3: like son of the Swedish Angel or Swedish Angel too,
Speaker 3: or Super Swedish Angel. There you go. And now that's
Speaker 3: a gimmick. But this whole angel thing, but in both
Speaker 3: cases they're tweaking a gimmick that was established by the
Speaker 3: French angel Maurice Tillett, who was born nineteen oh three
Speaker 3: and died in nineteen fifty four, who was like a big,
Speaker 3: brutish strong man with a very interesting look, very much
Speaker 3: you know, a giant wrestler of the day whoa yeah, sorry.
Speaker 1: I found an image comparing him to Shrek.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard that that Shrek. The character Shrek was
Speaker 3: actually patterned after after Maurice Tillett, So that's interesting. Now
Speaker 3: it's hard to find footage of Tour Johnson wrestling, or
Speaker 3: at least it was hard for me to find any,
Speaker 3: but we did find some British footage of tour wrestling
Speaker 3: some guy. I'll have to include a link for this
Speaker 3: on the blog post for this episode at somemmutomusic dot com.
Speaker 3: But it's it's it's weird. It's yeah. I mean, on
Speaker 3: one hand, it's not Monster Tour. I mean, he's a
Speaker 3: big guy and you get to see him moving around
Speaker 3: applying headlocks and doing some Matt wrestling, but he's not
Speaker 3: like a he's not in monster mode. He's not Tor
Speaker 3: Johnson wrestling the way a modern wrestling fan might expect
Speaker 3: Tod Johnson to wrestle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so is this the clip you shared with me
Speaker 1: that has the British narrator on it?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, just totally trashing the whole enterprise.
Speaker 1: Oh so yeah, so the narrator is like, well this
Speaker 1: professional wrestling, you know, it isn't very serious, is it?
Speaker 1: It is somewhat funny?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just okay, just just really rips into it.
Speaker 3: And then there's all this other weird stuff, like the
Speaker 3: ref is either shirtles at one point or the ref
Speaker 3: has like a very like small undershirt on. It was weird.
Speaker 3: I'm just used to sitting a ref in ref's clothing.
Speaker 3: The ref can't be shirtless.
Speaker 1: That's weird, right, Well, maybe it's aren't There some cases
Speaker 1: in like the I don't know whatever it's called, the
Speaker 1: WWE or wherever where like a heel will attack the ref.
Speaker 1: Maybe the ref has to be dressed like a wrestler
Speaker 1: in case the heel attacks.
Speaker 3: I don't know, and I don't know a lot about
Speaker 3: this this period of pro wrestling, though I have read
Speaker 3: that is it is rare to have footage from some
Speaker 3: of these earlier eras because, for one thing, a lot
Speaker 3: of it wasn't taped, and then if it was recorded,
Speaker 3: those recordings weren't necessarily preserve. Sometimes're essentially taped over and
Speaker 3: they would be lost to history. According to cagematch dot com,
Speaker 3: Tor Johnson's earliest match was nineteen thirty three and his
Speaker 3: last match was nineteen fifty five. The records on this
Speaker 3: website I don't think are always complete, especially when dealing
Speaker 3: with older stuff like this, but still it seems like
Speaker 3: a respectable era in which to have plied his trade,
Speaker 3: and he was indeed a big boy build at six three,
Speaker 3: four hundred and forty pounds.
Speaker 1: He is massive, and you can see why people wanted
Speaker 1: to put him in monster movies. This is not the
Speaker 1: only one he's He's been in a number. Another one
Speaker 1: that sticks in my mind is the Beast of Yucca Flats,
Speaker 1: where Tour Johnson plays. I think he so, that is,
Speaker 1: if I'm not wrong, a Coleman Francis movie, the same
Speaker 1: guy who made Red Zone, Cuba, which was famously parodied
Speaker 1: on Mystery Science Theater. Beast of yucka Flats. I mainly
Speaker 1: remember for two things, having a really just over the
Speaker 1: top narrator who you know, every time you'd see a character,
Speaker 1: he would just say something like John Johnson caught in
Speaker 1: the wheels of progress. In fact, it's almost kind of
Speaker 1: similar to Kriswell's narration in Plant nine. We'll get to
Speaker 1: Kriswell in a second. But the other thing I remember
Speaker 1: about Beast of Byuacka Flats is they barely put Tour
Speaker 1: in any makeup to make him the monster. He plays
Speaker 1: like a Soviet scientist who defects to the United States,
Speaker 1: walks on to a nuclear testing range. They blow up
Speaker 1: a bomb, and that turns him into a Radioactive Monster.
Speaker 1: But they just sort of like put some oatmeal on
Speaker 1: his face, I think, and then he's otherwise he's just tor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean tour was a walking special effect. I
Speaker 3: mean the physicality, the grimace, that was all you needed.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Beasts of Yaka Flats, that's a fun one.
Speaker 3: I think Mst. Three K did that one as well.
Speaker 3: He was in such films as nineteen fifties Abed and
Speaker 3: Costello in the Foreign Legion, Bob Hopes, the Lemon Drop
Speaker 3: Kid in fifty one Ed Woods, Bride of the Monster,
Speaker 3: and Night of the Ghouls. But in terms of earlier
Speaker 3: in his career, he started off doing uncredited strongman tight
Speaker 3: bit parts in films back to the mid nineteen thirties,
Speaker 3: and by forty nine he was showing uh, still uncredited
Speaker 3: in films like Ernest b showed Sacks Mighty Joe Young.
Speaker 3: There's a scene in that movie where a number of
Speaker 3: strong men are are are playing tug of war with
Speaker 3: the giant ape and uh, and it's it's kind of
Speaker 3: it's not kind of interesting. I didn't work on ibing
Speaker 3: all of these guys, but one of them was the
Speaker 3: famous Italian boxer turned professional wrestler Primo Carnera, who is
Speaker 3: a really big guy six y six and was very
Speaker 3: much a legendary figure in boxing of that day.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know him. Is he the last guy
Speaker 1: on the tug on the tug rope?
Speaker 3: Here? Yeah, I found it. Still he's the last guy.
Speaker 3: So he's the most enormous and he's like this big,
Speaker 3: you know, handsome, well built Italian gentleman. And I'm not
Speaker 3: sure exactly. I think I think I've pinpointed the individual
Speaker 3: who's Tor Johnson in this, and I think Tor Johnson
Speaker 3: has hair. I read somewhere that Tor actually had like
Speaker 3: a full head of blonde hair, but he kept it
Speaker 3: shaved because that was the look, you know, that was
Speaker 3: the look he was going for.
Speaker 1: I can see that. I think he's the first guy
Speaker 1: in the picture you have for me here. But this
Speaker 1: other guy looks like he would definitely be cast as
Speaker 1: Goliath in a bunch of nineteen fifties Italian Bible movies.
Speaker 3: I think he did some sword and sandals work. I
Speaker 3: didn't go too far into the Primo filmography, but he
Speaker 3: was a celebrity of the day and may have had
Speaker 3: some mob ties apparently. But yeah, he was in a
Speaker 3: number of motion pictures himself. But going back to the
Speaker 3: picture on yourself, Joe, we can't just talk about tor
Speaker 3: Johnson here. We also have to talk about Vampire.
Speaker 1: So Vampira has no lines in this movie. And yet
Speaker 1: I think she is the best actor in it. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe a tie between her and Tour. They both need
Speaker 1: the Tour has lines before he gets killed. Both of
Speaker 1: them spend a number of shots just sort of menacing
Speaker 1: the camera, and they're great in it. Hirah is wonderful
Speaker 1: as like making the creepy face and just like flexing
Speaker 1: her nails.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, she has the She basically has this Mortitia
Speaker 3: Adams kind of look going on what essentially has become
Speaker 3: an iconic Gothic female vamp look. Right, she has the
Speaker 3: long nails, and then she also has this very painful
Speaker 3: looking courset on that makes her, you know, have this
Speaker 3: kind of almost skeletal appearance. You know, she's very made up,
Speaker 3: and she's she's hamming it out big time as well.
Speaker 3: You know, she's really twisting her her face in a
Speaker 3: way that she's coming off like like the undead.
Speaker 1: Now, something I've always wondered. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know the answer to this vampire. We've recently on the
Speaker 1: show been talking about these horror movie hosts, the people
Speaker 1: who would you know, host a TV program where they
Speaker 1: would show a horror movie and then they would interrupt
Speaker 1: it to do commercial breaks and make jokes about the movie.
Speaker 1: That was Vampira's gig way back in the fifties, And
Speaker 1: so I wonder was she the first one or were
Speaker 1: there other people who did this before her.
Speaker 3: Everything I've read seems to indicate that she was the first.
Speaker 3: She's the matriarch of the entire enterprise. I don't think
Speaker 3: anybody else was doing it before her, So it's an
Speaker 3: interesting story. So Vampira is the persona of Malia Nurmi,
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen twenty two through two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: And it didn't even have a long run. It only
Speaker 3: ran fifty four through fifty five, but it resonated with folks,
Speaker 3: especially apparently in the LA area. I believe that's where
Speaker 3: it was primarily airing. That's where it was based out of.
Speaker 3: And she also did appearances on some other shows, popping up,
Speaker 3: you know, pretty much always in the persona of Vampira.
Speaker 3: So yeah, she was this gothy queen super narrow, corseted waiste,
Speaker 3: long fingernails, often with a cocktail, and some sort of
Speaker 3: in the set. You know, behind her would be something
Speaker 3: atmospheric and gothy, maybe a little ice smoke going on,
Speaker 3: you know. So for the most part, yeah, she's always
Speaker 3: showing up in her persona of Vampira, but she also
Speaker 3: pops up as a hag and a sorceress in bert
Speaker 3: I Gordon's nineteen sixty two fantasy film The Magic Sword,
Speaker 3: which starred Basil Rathbone, Estelle Winwood, and Gary Lockwood. That is,
Speaker 3: at least for me, a much beloved MST three K
Speaker 3: episode as well.
Speaker 1: Never seen it.
Speaker 3: Oh it's good. Yeah, crote Robot falls in love with
Speaker 3: Estelle Winwood and has a whole song about how much
Speaker 3: he loves Estelle. It's great. And then the movie itself
Speaker 3: is a lot of fun. It's you know, it's Sword
Speaker 3: and Sorcery from Burt Eye Gordon.
Speaker 1: Oh I bet the effects are just perfect, but you
Speaker 1: know so, Vampiro was not the only La Area TV
Speaker 1: celebrity to appear in Plan nine from Outer Space. The
Speaker 1: other one, the other main one, is Chriswell, who Plan
Speaker 1: nine definitely would not be the same without Kriswell. Chriswell
Speaker 1: is the narrator in this movie. Criswell was the name
Speaker 1: of Jaren Charles Criswell King, also known as the Amazing Criswell,
Speaker 1: who was an eccentric, celebrity psychic who is probably best
Speaker 1: known for making predictions about the future on late night
Speaker 1: TV shows in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he was a psychic for May West and
Speaker 3: was a friend of May West's and at one point
Speaker 3: he was also Vampire's roommate. So you do get the
Speaker 3: sense that, like it's like a network of l A weirdos, really,
Speaker 3: and I think that's something that that Tim Burton captured
Speaker 3: rather well in his film, the idea that like these
Speaker 3: these were the outsiders and they were brought together in
Speaker 3: this strange enterprise.
Speaker 1: So when we were getting ready to do this episode,
Speaker 1: I got really into doing to reading about the predictions
Speaker 1: made by Chriswell. So that was what he was famous for.
Speaker 1: He'd come on TV and say, you know, I'm a psychic,
Speaker 1: so I predict that Allegedly he correctly predicts did that
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy would not run for reelection because of
Speaker 1: some tragic event in November nineteen sixty three, that is,
Speaker 1: at least what I've seen claimed on his website. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's actually what he said, but that's
Speaker 1: what it says. That's what it claims retroactively. But he
Speaker 1: made all kinds of other predictions that definitely did not
Speaker 1: come true. So there's a website called Criswell predicts dot
Speaker 1: com where you can read a bunch of these, excerpted
Speaker 1: from his books, or at least from one book of his.
Speaker 1: I don't even know where to start with these. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of predictions about like Earth being destroyed,
Speaker 1: So to read one passage quote, can our whirling, turning,
Speaker 1: churning Earth last out the night? Our geologists tell us
Speaker 1: that the danger to Mother Earth lies not in the
Speaker 1: uncharted vast of outer space, but from inner Earth. Here
Speaker 1: is what will more than likely happen. According to geologists.
Speaker 1: Small tidal waves will play havoc for no reason at all.
Speaker 1: The surface of the Earth will bowl jeffer so slightly,
Speaker 1: and highways will slightly buckle. Foundations will tip, and floors
Speaker 1: will slant when you pour a cup of coffee or
Speaker 1: a glass of water. The rim will not level. Telephone
Speaker 1: coin boxes and vending machines will refuse to work. Delicate
Speaker 1: instruments will go haywire, elevators will go out of whack,
Speaker 1: jukeboxes will be mute, radio and TV will fail. All
Speaker 1: electric power, gas and water service will cease. And then
Speaker 1: will come the time when garbage cans roll across the
Speaker 1: street for no apparent reason. Then, and only then will
Speaker 1: you realize the advanced corrosion spelling the end of our earth.
Speaker 1: The seas will fill up quickly with a gooey mass
Speaker 1: of inner earth rubble. Our streets and city lots, farms
Speaker 1: and deserts will bubble up like a festered oil and
Speaker 1: marking the complete collapse. Has this happened before, more than likely,
Speaker 1: and it will happen again in your incredible future. He
Speaker 1: also predicted the assassination of Fidel Castro in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: He predicted that there will be an outbreak of men
Speaker 1: becoming cannibals in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in December nineteen eighty, and
Speaker 1: he predicts the world will end on August eighteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine, in a sequence of events including a jet
Speaker 1: black rainbow, a huge snake encircling the world and feeding
Speaker 1: upon the oxygen which we need to exist. Well, oh wait,
Speaker 1: actually sorry, I apologize. The huge snake in Circling the
Speaker 1: World is a metaphor he's using, Oh okay, a metaphor
Speaker 1: for the black rainbow that's caused by a mysterious force.
Speaker 1: So it's a black rainbow, but it's like a snake
Speaker 1: eating all of our oxygen.
Speaker 3: But the black rainbow is not a metaphor. It's an
Speaker 3: actual black rainbow.
Speaker 1: I think so. Also, several of his predictions are about
Speaker 1: some kind of mass sexual behavior phenomenon, such as one
Speaker 1: he predict where clouds of afrodisiac substances will take over
Speaker 1: the country in the years nineteen eighty eight to eighty nine,
Speaker 1: causing people to marry kats and stuff.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, this reminds me. One of the things I
Speaker 3: read about Chris Well is that he worked with Edwould
Speaker 3: to figure out exactly what he was going to say
Speaker 3: on this film, because there were certain words that Chris
Speaker 3: Well could not really get out all that easily kind
Speaker 3: of a speech impediment kind of a situation, and so
Speaker 3: they kind of like figured out how to like figured
Speaker 3: out what he could say, so, you know, work it
Speaker 3: to his favor here, and ultimately I feel like with
Speaker 3: Tor Johnson, with a Vampiro with Chris Well, like, these
Speaker 3: are all examples of someone who they'd already figured out
Speaker 3: their gimmick outside of film, and then they're brought into
Speaker 3: the film world and they're just they're continuing to do
Speaker 3: their thing on their terms, and that's why they're probably
Speaker 3: the most impressive figures in this picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is, there's. Tour doesn't really do any wrestling
Speaker 1: in the movie, except there's one moment where he gets
Speaker 1: a really nice wrestling slap down on a cop. He
Speaker 1: like smacks him on the shoulders, you know the part
Speaker 1: I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he does kind of it almost looks
Speaker 3: like a double chop. Yeah situation, almost like a Mongolian
Speaker 3: chop or something. But the other individual just completely collapses
Speaker 3: if it just instantaneously broke all of the bones in
Speaker 3: their body. All right, Well, onto the rest of the cast.
Speaker 3: Some of these are humans, some of these are aliens
Speaker 3: or celestials, but the first is definitely a human man.
Speaker 3: This is the character Jeff Trent, played by Gregory Walcott
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen twenty eight through twenty fifteen. He is
Speaker 3: our square jaws six ' four punch. First hero.
Speaker 1: This is the lug hero of this monster movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's interesting because he's also He was also
Speaker 3: more of an established actor than many of the folks
Speaker 3: and Plan nine, which isn't saying much obviously, but he'd
Speaker 3: already been in a string of movies and TV shows
Speaker 3: at this point. He mainly went on to do a
Speaker 3: lot of TV after this, but also popped back up
Speaker 3: on the big screen in a trio of Clint Eastwood
Speaker 3: movies in the nineteen seventies, Thunderbolten, Lightfoot, the Eiger Sanction,
Speaker 3: which I remember is being a pretty fun mountain climbing
Speaker 3: thriller every which way, but Lose, which some would say
Speaker 3: is a Grade eight movie, and then nineteen eighty seven's
Speaker 3: House to the Second Story. He even has a cameo
Speaker 3: in Burton's Edwood movie. He plays like a potential backer
Speaker 3: for one of the pictures.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be too unkind, but Gregory Walcott
Speaker 1: this is no John Agar. I mean, you've, you know,
Speaker 1: in fifty sci fi movies, You've got your lugs and
Speaker 1: then you've got your lugs, and Walcott is the latter.
Speaker 1: The best comparison I could think of. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever put this together before, but on this viewing,
Speaker 1: I realized that this is what you'd get if you
Speaker 1: made an alien invasion movie where the dashing hero was
Speaker 1: Putty from Seinfeld.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know what you mean. His voice. He's got
Speaker 3: a deep voice, but it's almost a little too deep,
Speaker 3: like he's almost leaning into lurch territory. And again he's
Speaker 3: he's already six y four. Like, he's a very tall guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're getting I guess he's taller than than
Speaker 3: Tor Really at this point, he's getting up in there
Speaker 3: into into primo territory. And that's that's awfully tall for
Speaker 3: your for your heroes. You got to pull some apple
Speaker 3: boxes on set at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, actually, you know what I think, to go even better,
Speaker 1: I would say he's a combination of Putty from Seinfeld
Speaker 1: and Jack Palance.
Speaker 3: Oh that's good. Yeah, yeah, but but without without the
Speaker 3: the uh, the the overpowering charisma of either.
Speaker 1: Oh of course, I didn't mean he has the charisma
Speaker 1: of Jack Palance. He does not have that sneer. No,
Speaker 1: he's he's actually quite appropriate though for the role he plays,
Speaker 1: which is he he seems to be playing a man
Speaker 1: who's supposed to represent the stupidity of Earthlings, because the
Speaker 1: Aliens are like, you know, you're going to destroy yourselves
Speaker 1: by creating weapons that will annihilate the entire universe. And
Speaker 1: he's like, but wouldn't these weapons make us stronger? And
Speaker 1: he also, I hope you'll notice in the later scenes
Speaker 1: where the aliens are calling Earthling stupid, he's the only
Speaker 1: Earthling who gets offended, and I think that tells us something.
Speaker 3: All right. So he plays Jeff Trent, a human man,
Speaker 3: But then we also have the character Paula Trent, a
Speaker 3: human woman. This is his wife, played by Mona McKinnon,
Speaker 3: who live nineteen twenty nine through nineteen ninety Tennessee born
Speaker 3: actor who acted in just a handful of movies during
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, including Mesa of the Lost Women, Jailbait,
Speaker 3: Teenage Thunder, and Knight of the Ghouls.
Speaker 1: She has some line deliveries in this movie that will
Speaker 1: leave you reeling.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, you can't blame her too much because
Speaker 3: she's using the lines that were given to her by
Speaker 3: ed Wood, right, but oh, it's beautiful to behold.
Speaker 1: There's a scene where Jeff Trant is, you know, her husband,
Speaker 1: he's going off to fly an airplane and she's like,
Speaker 1: I wish you'd go stay at your mother's house because
Speaker 1: of all these zombies that have been wandering around. And
Speaker 1: she's like, oh, don't worry about things, and he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well be careful, and then the line she says is,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid I'm getting wrong. I think it's something almost
Speaker 1: exactly like this. The flying saucers are up there, the
Speaker 1: cemeteries out there, but I'll be in there.
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh my god, Like really, she did a great
Speaker 3: job with what she was given there, like what are you?
Speaker 3: How are you supposed to deliver that? And then there's
Speaker 3: so much other weird stuff that she's given, Like there's
Speaker 3: this whole bit where she's talking about how with lghead
Speaker 3: Away with Jeff Away that she's got a pillow that
Speaker 3: she's going to hold at night and he's acting a
Speaker 3: little jealous of the pillow and there's like some at
Speaker 3: least mild pillow eroticism wrapped up in the whole scene
Speaker 3: and it's just so weird, all right. So that's that's
Speaker 3: McKinnon playing Paula, a human woman. Character is Arros, a
Speaker 3: celestial an alien which of course, especially in a film
Speaker 3: like this, just looks like a human being except in
Speaker 3: a funny costume. And this character is played by all
Speaker 3: the brilliant Dudley man Love, who lived nineteen fourteen through
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six, a California radio announcer with a voice
Speaker 3: of just solid gold and also sometimes actor.
Speaker 1: Exact opposite end of the spectrum. So whereas with Jeff
Speaker 1: and Paula, both of them have these line deliveries that
Speaker 1: just clang and clunk and like roll tumble down the stairs,
Speaker 1: this guy says every single line, no matter how banal,
Speaker 1: with like like he's giving a sort of political announcement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or the Hindenburg is crashing. Yeah, that's the level
Speaker 3: of his delivery.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was not an actor, to be fair, sometimes
Speaker 3: an actor, but this was his first picture. He went
Speaker 3: on to act in nineteen sixty two's The Creation of
Speaker 3: the Humanoids, and he had some roles that would pop
Speaker 3: up here and there on TV shows, like even Alfred
Speaker 3: Hitchcock presents in Dragnet. But this, this is his memorable performance.
Speaker 3: He's just he's a light anytime he's on screen, but.
Speaker 1: He's usually not alone on screen. There are two aliens
Speaker 1: who pilot the main flying saucer in the movie, and
Speaker 1: the other one is Tana played by Joanna Lee.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I lived nineteen thirty one through two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: and as an actor, she was mostly active in the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties, including a role in The Brain Eaters from
Speaker 3: fifty eight mm hmm, but she more extensively had an
Speaker 3: impact as a producer, a writer, and a director. She
Speaker 3: wrote for a slew of TV comedies, including, just to
Speaker 3: name a few of them, The Jetsons, My Three Sons,
Speaker 3: Johnny Quest, Bewitched, The Flintstones, Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch,
Speaker 3: The Waltons, and then later on Dynasty. So that alone's
Speaker 3: pretty impressive. But she also produced and directed episodes of
Speaker 3: CBS School Break Special and ABC After School Specials. So
Speaker 3: seem to me like a pretty solid career.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, broke mainstream YEP.
Speaker 3: Now, before we get to the next celestial we want
Speaker 3: to dip back into the human world for a second
Speaker 3: and mention that we have this patrolman. Patrolman Kelton played
Speaker 3: by Paul Marco. Paul Marco lived nineteen twenty seven through
Speaker 3: two thousand and six. He was a three time would actor.
Speaker 3: He also appears in Bride of the Monster and Night of.
Speaker 1: The Ghoules classic Bumbling Cop performance. I was trying to
Speaker 1: find where to insert this in our outline, and I
Speaker 1: feel like maybe that the best place is here. So
Speaker 1: I came across a record that I just have to
Speaker 1: get a copy of. It is Let's see what is
Speaker 1: it called. It came out in nineteen ninety five or
Speaker 1: ninety six, I think, and it's called Uncle Dale presents
Speaker 1: Paul Marco as Kelton the Cop and Chriswell, and they're
Speaker 1: performing two different songs. So it's like a single record
Speaker 1: with a one song on each side, and one is
Speaker 1: performed by Paul Marco singing a song called Home on
Speaker 1: the Strange, which is like a sort of monologue song
Speaker 1: about a bunch of horror stuff happening, and then the
Speaker 1: other side is Chris Well doing a song that I
Speaker 1: have to say Criswell sounds like he's real phoning it in.
Speaker 1: It's called someone Walked Over My Grave and it's just
Speaker 1: piano playing and he's going sub one walked over my Grave.
Speaker 3: I think I've heard this in a weird mix at
Speaker 3: some point as well.
Speaker 1: But the Paul Marco song is better. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's worth a listen. You should look it up Home
Speaker 1: on the Strange.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I'll make sure I did listen to
Speaker 3: someone Walk Over My Grave, but I'll listen to Home
Speaker 3: on the Strange as well, and I'll put both of
Speaker 3: these on the page for this episode at Sumuda music
Speaker 3: dot com. All right, now, back into the celestial realm.
Speaker 3: We have the Ruler a celestial played by John Breckinridge
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety six. A very
Speaker 3: fun screen presence in this film, a very very sassy performance.
Speaker 3: But this is a guy who's just was a complete
Speaker 3: non actor making a one time appearance in film. He
Speaker 3: just happened to be a house guest of Paul Marco
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 1: He's, well, he's got wonderful screen presence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he does, because he has he has he has
Speaker 3: his performance, his his uh, his performance is such that
Speaker 3: I feel like some of his lines are legitimately creepy,
Speaker 3: like he's the he's the the actor who gets to
Speaker 3: deliver the line.
Speaker 4: H uh.
Speaker 3: Plan nine deals with the resurrection of the dead and
Speaker 3: so forth. So it's a it's a fun little role.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, he's not an actor at all, and
Speaker 3: just kind of, I guess, convinced to show up and
Speaker 3: do this. He was French born, the great great great
Speaker 3: grandson of US Attorney General John Breckenridge, born into a
Speaker 3: wealthy family, and also the great grandson of Wells Fargo
Speaker 3: Bank founder Lloyd Tevis.
Speaker 1: Heir to the dynasty.
Speaker 3: All right, and finally I want to just I want
Speaker 3: to have a note here about the music, though, because
Speaker 3: as with Tarantula, we're knee deep in fifty stock music here.
Speaker 3: But I will say, in a movie that is so
Speaker 3: well known for its ineptitude and in its amateur style
Speaker 3: and the clunkiness of pieces coming together, this is a
Speaker 3: film in which we have pieces of music from multiple sources,
Speaker 3: compiled by one Gordon Zalar, and I feel like some
Speaker 3: of these are just really great pieces of music.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: They're that classic kind of horns blaring, monsters attacking music
Speaker 3: from the day. And when you're watching the film, you
Speaker 3: may be noticing all these other things that don't feel
Speaker 3: right and are coming off weird and amateurish, but the
Speaker 3: music isn't one of them. The music sounds really solid.
Speaker 3: So I have to give Gordon credit for bringing in
Speaker 3: these pieces, assembling them in such a way that they're
Speaker 3: able to back the film up and make you and
Speaker 3: you may be second guessing everything else, but you're not
Speaker 3: really second guessing the music for the most part.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I cannot hear those horns without thinking of Tor
Speaker 1: Johnson's gaping mouth, like the sounds are coming out of
Speaker 1: his mouth.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, I think we face a different kind of challenge
Speaker 1: when breaking down the plot of this movie than we
Speaker 1: normally do, which is that there is way too much
Speaker 1: of a temptation to minutely describe and quote every single scene,
Speaker 1: which we're gonna 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 non stop.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It is relentless this film, and you definitely should
Speaker 3: see it. It's one of these films it's rare to
Speaker 3: find anyone who is not amused by it. This is
Speaker 3: one that I would I would recommend to everyone out there,
Speaker 3: and it's one that holds up to repeat viewing. I've
Speaker 3: seen this a few different times. I've seen I think
Speaker 3: I saw a riff track's presentation of at many many
Speaker 3: years ago, and that's fine, or retracts. It can be
Speaker 3: a lot of fun. But this is a film that
Speaker 3: doesn't even need the riffing. Like it is, its energy
Speaker 3: is such that you will do the riffing. You know
Speaker 3: that the riffing occurs in your own head. It's brilliant.
Speaker 1: But one thing we do have to talk about is
Speaker 1: the introduction, because the movie begins. This is a fictional
Speaker 1: movie that begins with a Chriswell predicts segment like the
Speaker 1: Amazing Criswell did on TV, and he so it, you know,
Speaker 1: the lights come up on Criswell and he goes into
Speaker 1: a monologue that is so indescribably weird, Like the rambling,
Speaker 1: nonsensical nature of it actually reminds me of you know,
Speaker 1: when you're in high school and people have to do
Speaker 1: class presentations and sometimes there's a kid in the class
Speaker 1: who hasn't done any of the homework or any preparation,
Speaker 1: but they're also kind of good at talking, and they
Speaker 1: just start saying words.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's totally fair. And really it
Speaker 3: seems like it would line up well with with Chriswell's
Speaker 3: career here where he's essentially saying nothing, but the delivery
Speaker 3: is good enough that it sounds profound.
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't do. The Criswell voice is famously
Speaker 1: the adjective I think is stentorian. You know, it's greetings,
Speaker 1: my friend, and so he begins by saying, greeting's my friend.
Speaker 1: We are all interested in the future, for that is
Speaker 1: where you and I are going to spend the rest
Speaker 1: of our lives. And remember, my friend, future events such
Speaker 1: as these will affect you in the future. You with
Speaker 1: it so far, okay? Future events will affect even you
Speaker 1: in the future. You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious,
Speaker 1: the unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now,
Speaker 1: for the first time, we are bringing you the full
Speaker 1: story of what happened on that fateful day. We are
Speaker 1: bringing you all the evidence based only on the secret
Speaker 1: testimony of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal,
Speaker 1: the incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this
Speaker 1: a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty, let
Speaker 1: us reward the innocent, my friend, Can your heart stand
Speaker 1: the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space?
Speaker 3: I absolutely love it, and it's so ridiculous, and yet
Speaker 3: at the same time, one thing I was thinking about
Speaker 3: is that if you compare this opening narration to the
Speaker 3: John Leroquet opening narration on the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Speaker 3: they have a lot that lines up with each other,
Speaker 3: like they're both presented to varying degrees of believability as
Speaker 3: a statement of what you're about to see is real,
Speaker 3: this really happened, this is really important. And then both
Speaker 3: examples say the name of the picture at the very end,
Speaker 3: the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And even though Plan nine from
Speaker 3: Outer Space is the final title for this picture, Grave
Speaker 3: from Outer Space was like an alternate title or a
Speaker 3: working title or something to that effect.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is historically true, but in
Speaker 1: the movie Edwood, they explained the reason for the change
Speaker 1: of name was that the film was at least partially
Speaker 1: financed by a Baptist church in the Los Angeles area,
Speaker 1: and they found the idea of grave robbing sacrilegious.
Speaker 3: And it should be noted graves aren't really robbed. I
Speaker 3: mean they're self robbing by real corpses. So it's really
Speaker 3: nitpicking at this point, there's so many other glaring errors.
Speaker 1: Well no, wait, actually to that point, there is an
Speaker 1: absolutely unbelievable scene that goes on for minutes of cops
Speaker 1: talking about standing over a grave, talking about whether or
Speaker 1: not they can go down into the grave to look
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 3: Right. It goes on forever and they're talking about do
Speaker 3: we have jurisdiction to go in there? But also it's
Speaker 3: like can we physically do it? Can't in here? And
Speaker 3: then one guy goes in and he's like, I can't
Speaker 3: read anything. It's like you're in an open grave and
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to be night, and so they
Speaker 3: are like, well, we better get him a flashlight. And
Speaker 3: we mentioned that we have DeMarco playing a bumbling cop,
Speaker 3: but like all the cops are bumbling, and they're so
Speaker 3: blumb bumbling, Like this seems to be a picture in
Speaker 3: which the only understanding of law enforcement was based entirely
Speaker 3: on Laurel and Hardy movies.
Speaker 1: It's incredible, but I mean, there's so many levels of
Speaker 1: the Criswell monologue. So yes, it is like the Texas Chainsaw.
Speaker 1: It's like insisting this is real even though the events
Speaker 1: don't even have internal consistency, but also saying what is
Speaker 1: the relationship to time here?
Speaker 3: Like it seems to establish that causality is still in
Speaker 3: effect future events will only affect you in the future,
Speaker 3: which I guess is good, Like it's good to know
Speaker 3: there are some rules still in place here for this
Speaker 3: motion picture.
Speaker 1: But he's also saying that the events he's talking about
Speaker 1: are happening in the future, but also have already happened.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, yeah, now that just twists me all up.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we go from Criswell to Boom thundercrack credits
Speaker 1: etchings on a tombstone. You see tour Johnson. Just a
Speaker 1: little note. I remember thinking even back the first time
Speaker 1: I saw it. Wardrobe on this movie is by someone
Speaker 1: named Dick Cheney. I think it's not the same one.
Speaker 3: I miss that.
Speaker 1: But then so the credits finished, and then one of
Speaker 1: the funniest things is that it cuts to a funeral
Speaker 1: and then Criswell is still going. You think you're done
Speaker 1: with him, but he just comes back in. You're watching
Speaker 1: people in a graveyard, and he's all of us on
Speaker 1: earth know that there is a time to live and
Speaker 1: a time to die. And we see Bela Legosi, the
Speaker 1: real Bella Legosi in the sense he's crying into a
Speaker 1: handkerchief at a graveside and some guy's reading a Bible,
Speaker 1: and there are two grave diggers nearby who look like
Speaker 1: they belong in a commercial for baked beans. And the
Speaker 1: Criswell monologue just goes and goes and go. You know,
Speaker 1: he's talking about like the nature of death. He says, look,
Speaker 1: when death the proud brother comes suddenly without warning, and
Speaker 1: he says, oh. But he also gets very poetic. He's
Speaker 1: talking about like the sundown. You remember the sundown line.
Speaker 3: The sundown of the day, and yet also the sundown
Speaker 3: of the old man's heart, and you just like, you
Speaker 3: can just imagine Edward riding this and or Criswell riding
Speaker 3: with him, and they're just like, yeah, this is so good.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 1: So here's where things begin. Bell Legosi's at a funeral
Speaker 1: for his wife. It doesn't show us this, but we
Speaker 1: find out later his wife was Vampira. And then the
Speaker 1: grave diggers start tossing dirt on the coffin, and then
Speaker 1: we cut to an airplane, and then we cut inside
Speaker 1: the airplane and wow, wow, this set.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a ludicrous set, they just said, so
Speaker 3: obviously a set like like Muppet Show level of set.
Speaker 1: It's just a room with a 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 supposed to be a thermometer or something.
Speaker 3: I guess it's supposed to be some sort of gauge,
Speaker 3: but it's clearly just some sort of a circular slidey
Speaker 3: reference tool that's just been pinned to the wall.
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: it's supposed to be. And then suddenly, zoom, you get
Speaker 1: a flying saucer goes by out the window and they're
Speaker 1: showing it off to the flight attendant and it kind
Speaker 1: of rocks the plane and they're like, wow, that was
Speaker 1: nothing from this world. And the pilot here is Gregory Walcott.
Speaker 1: That's Jeff Trent, our hero, and he's immediately very concerned
Speaker 1: that the passengers not find out about the flying saucer.
Speaker 1: But the flying saucer goes by and then it lands
Speaker 1: at the cemetery from earlier, and the grave diggers hear something.
Speaker 1: This is a dialogue exchange that must be quoted so
Speaker 1: the Grave Diggers say, you hear anything odd?
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 1: Don't like here and noises, especially when there ain't supposed
Speaker 1: to be any Yeah, kind of spooky like maybe we're
Speaker 1: getting old. Well, whatever it is, it's gone now that's
Speaker 1: the best thing for us too, gone. Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 3: It's just oh and then here comes Vampira. She shows up,
Speaker 3: comes lurching out of the darkness, and the mist looking
Speaker 3: just you know, completely put together, very much, has this
Speaker 3: this gothic queen looking down and yeah, we're off to
Speaker 3: the races here with the dead rising from the grave.
Speaker 1: Absolutely flagrant inner cutting between night shots and day shots
Speaker 1: in this sequence, continuity does not even seem to be attempted.
Speaker 1: And so Vampire walks up on them and 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 te 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.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's later in the picture we do have
Speaker 3: some police comparing bodies to wild animal kills, So I
Speaker 3: guess she's supposed to have used those really long nails
Speaker 3: of hers.
Speaker 1: I guess, so, yeah, the nails seem significant. But then
Speaker 1: after that we get the famous shot immortalized in Tim
Speaker 1: Burton's ed Wood of Bella Goosi coming out of a
Speaker 1: little house and standing in his front yard and stopping
Speaker 1: to smell a rose, apparently in grief. Meanwhile, Criswell is narrating,
Speaker 1: you know. Criswell's just going on about how the house
Speaker 1: that they win which they shared their love became a tomb.
Speaker 1: And then Bella wanders just out of frame, and then
Speaker 1: there is an immediate sound cue. He's the second he
Speaker 1: steps out of picture. Tire screech, scream, crash, sirens. Though
Speaker 1: I would like to stress obviously we're supposed to believe
Speaker 1: that Bella was crushed by runaway truck or something right
Speaker 1: after he left the shot, but actually you can see
Speaker 1: his shadow still falling on the grass, not moving, so
Speaker 1: he's just stepped out of view, is standing there casting
Speaker 1: a shadow. Robi 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 the scream.
Speaker 3: Brilliant Again, ed Wood was not going to let the
Speaker 3: death of a central character stand in the way of
Speaker 3: not only continuing production but also not redoing a single
Speaker 3: thing that he'd already shot.
Speaker 1: Right, So we go straight onto the funeral and then
Speaker 1: we see people coming out of what they call a crypt,
Speaker 1: but it's just like it looks like a cardboard box,
Speaker 1: and ooh, it is such a clown car situation. Many
Speaker 1: people coming out of this tiny box.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this tiny and you know, if you've ever been
Speaker 3: in a crib, I mean, I guess this is a
Speaker 3: movie crip. This is like like a Santo in the
Speaker 3: Tomb of Dracula crypt where I guess there's supposed to
Speaker 3: be a lot going on in there, but we don't
Speaker 3: see that on screen. It looks like a tiny little
Speaker 3: phone booth out of cardboard that's been sprayed gray to
Speaker 3: look kind of like granite. And is this the scene
Speaker 3: where they also they go ahead and establish well, due
Speaker 3: to their customs, the old man's wife was buried in
Speaker 3: the ground and he was buried inside of a tomb
Speaker 3: inside of this mausoleum type situation, which I love because
Speaker 3: it's clearly a situation where there was they at least realized, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: well we have her. Why would why would she be
Speaker 3: buried there and he buried here. Should we reshoot anything, No,
Speaker 3: We'll just have a line or two that establishes that
Speaker 3: there is a reason for this. It's cultural. Don't worry
Speaker 3: about it. But it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the mourners who climb out of the box
Speaker 1: and then the lady goes first, his wife, then he
Speaker 1: and then her husband goes tragic and yeah, they have
Speaker 1: the conversation about how it's due to an old family
Speaker 1: superstition that she had to be in the ground and
Speaker 1: he had to be in a crypt. But I think
Speaker 1: I think it's literally because they just already shot some
Speaker 1: of the shots and then they're like, we got to
Speaker 1: cover for that.
Speaker 3: I just had so many questions about this custom, like why,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's you know, it sounds kind of
Speaker 3: sexist obviously, but like what possible reason would there be,
Speaker 3: Like like, oh, you can't bury the men and the
Speaker 3: women in the same soil. It needs the soil that's
Speaker 3: where you bury women and men you bury in the TOEMM.
Speaker 3: It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Uh. But we're about to get to the police because
Speaker 1: some mourners they get spooked seeing bodies of the grave.
Speaker 1: Diggers and they freak out and the police arrive and
Speaker 1: oh man, this is when we first meet Tor Johnson.
Speaker 1: Before he's a zombie. He's a human. He's in fact
Speaker 1: a police inspector.
Speaker 3: Yes, 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 Tor Johnson saying it, so you know. He
Speaker 1: there's one part where I think the very first thing
Speaker 1: he says when he gets there, he's like a Melcal Examiner,
Speaker 1: been here yet, so it's the Melcal Examiner. And 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 3: Yeah, Tor Johnson. Yeah, clearly not a not an actor
Speaker 3: in this sense. Why is a physical presence. But it's
Speaker 3: kind of cute though, because you get kind of maybe
Speaker 3: a sense of the real Tod Johnson in this shot,
Speaker 3: you know, because he's was supposedly like just kind of
Speaker 3: a big teddy bear. They didn't say much, but it
Speaker 3: was kind of a nice guy to be around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he goes wandering off into the darkness in
Speaker 1: the mist and then we finally we meet Paula Trant.
Speaker 1: So Jeff Trant 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 they're commenting
Speaker 1: on how you remember Jeff Trant was the pie from
Speaker 1: the planet. So they're married. They apparently live in a
Speaker 1: house inside the cemetery. That's best I can tell, Like
Speaker 1: they talk about that fact and they are no Tor Johnson's.
Speaker 1: But this couple has really weird energy and some of
Speaker 1: the clunkiest dialogue in movie history. Uh it's again it's
Speaker 1: hard to explain without just watching the movie. But you know,
Speaker 1: like Paula says to him, I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: seen you in this mood before, and he says, I
Speaker 1: guess it's because I've never been in this mood before.
Speaker 1: And Putty here explains that he's in this unfamiliar mood
Speaker 1: because he saw a flying saucer on his flight this morning,
Speaker 1: and she goes, you mean the kind from up to
Speaker 1: the from up there, and he goes, yeah, or it's counterpart,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what that meant this sequence.
Speaker 3: One of the things I love about it is that
Speaker 3: he Wood is trying to create what is essentially a
Speaker 3: realistic scene with a with with this whole speculative of
Speaker 3: the pic aspect to it, where it's a why fast
Speaker 3: her husband like, what's bothering you? There's something bothering you?
Speaker 3: And he is having to admit that it's something that
Speaker 3: I don't even feel but that comfortable talking about. And
Speaker 3: so this has tons of real world parallels obviously, and
Speaker 3: it's one of these great moments where it's like the writer, director,
Speaker 3: you know, filmmakers almost like aliens, trying to figure out
Speaker 3: how normal humans interact with each other. And then you
Speaker 3: kicked it on screen.
Speaker 1: Well he yeah, So it's trying to show that is
Speaker 1: the dynamic I think it's going for, but instead it
Speaker 1: just turns into Gregory Walcott having this rant about about
Speaker 1: a cover up. He's like, you know, big army brass
Speaker 1: grabbed us and made us swear to secrecy about the
Speaker 1: whole thing. And then he's just on the subject of
Speaker 1: big army brass, like he mentions it several more times.
Speaker 1: He's really upset. He's like people keep seeing these saucers,
Speaker 1: but but I can't say a word. I'm muzzled by
Speaker 1: army brass. Oh and then right then the flying saucers
Speaker 1: zooms over them and knocks over all their wicker furniture.
Speaker 1: So then we get a scene where Tor Johnson is
Speaker 1: attacked by Bella not Bela Lagosi, by the bell Legosi
Speaker 1: body double, and by Vampira. And I just wondered, what.
Speaker 1: So he's supposed to be investigating the graveyard for clues,
Speaker 1: but he's just walking around with his gun pointed in
Speaker 1: front of him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well, and really this one, this is just
Speaker 3: a small thing when it comes to the depiction of
Speaker 3: firearms by law enforcement in this picture. Yeah, there was nobody.
Speaker 3: Clearly nobody had ever been around a gun before or
Speaker 3: had any idea about what gun safety was or what
Speaker 3: it might look like on the screen. It's so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Well, so, yeah, Tour gets killed by the zombies. And
Speaker 1: then the other main cop who we follow after this
Speaker 1: 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, so he whenever he's talking about
Speaker 1: something or about someone, he points then the gun at them.
Speaker 1: He also scratches his own head with the barrel of
Speaker 1: the gun and like holds it with the barrel pointed
Speaker 1: into his own chest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if he had picked his nose with the barrel
Speaker 3: of the gun, it would not have been any more
Speaker 3: outrageous than everything else he does with it.
Speaker 1: But so they're walking around and they find they find
Speaker 1: Tor Johnson dead and they observe they said, Inspector Clay
Speaker 1: is dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible. So we get a
Speaker 1: funeral for Inspector Clay, and it seems Vampire is attending
Speaker 1: the funeral. She's just standing there watching, and then we
Speaker 1: cut to people seeing flying saucers over Hollywood Boulevardly there's
Speaker 1: like a car going by in a part where like
Speaker 1: three people suddenly point out the windows at the saucer,
Speaker 1: all in unison. And meanwhile we're getting Chriswell monologues over
Speaker 1: this where Qriswell's like, there comes a time in each
Speaker 1: man's life when he kind believe his own eyes. And
Speaker 1: here's where they decided got to pad this movie out.
Speaker 1: We got some stock military stock footage, so they show
Speaker 1: planes flying, rockets, launching, just military hardware doing stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, there's all these shots of one Colonel Edwards
Speaker 3: just standing there basically a blank background, staring up supposedly
Speaker 3: the sky with the binoculars and just ordering all the
Speaker 3: rockets to be fired of these three UFOs. He doesn't
Speaker 3: even seem to care what continent these rockets are on.
Speaker 3: So we just get all this stock footage of rockets firing.
Speaker 1: What is the deal with the secrecy about the UFOs?
Speaker 1: This is completely inconsistent in the movie. So part of
Speaker 1: the movie they're saying Army Brass won't let anybody know
Speaker 1: that UFOs exist. But then also we hear we cut
Speaker 1: to Colonel Edwards and he's talking to just some soldier
Speaker 1: and they're talking about the flying saucers and the soldier
Speaker 1: is like, hey, what's the deal with these flying saucers
Speaker 1: And the Colonel's like, well, they attacked us. He says,
Speaker 1: they attacked a town, a small town, I'll admit it,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless a town of people. And he revealed, Edwards
Speaker 1: reveals that big Army Brass is covering up the alien menace.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: He says, take any earthquake, any fire, any natural disaster.
Speaker 1: You think that's natural disasters? You know what it's probably
Speaker 1: actually aliens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you drop aliens in the middle of this and
Speaker 3: everything makes sense.
Speaker 1: But I think it's time to meet some aliens. So
Speaker 1: let's go to the mothership in orbit around the Earth.
Speaker 3: A mothership which really just looks like a breast or
Speaker 3: a nipple. I mean, it's very glaring.
Speaker 1: But so we meet the aliens and these they do
Speaker 1: a salute where they like cross their arms on their
Speaker 1: chest and that's very funny. Kang and Codos do the
Speaker 1: same salute when they're on The Simpsons. But the Alien
Speaker 1: boss is played by Bunny Breckenridge, and here you he's
Speaker 1: wearing a medieval times tunic with a like a sigil
Speaker 1: of an axe on it. And then we see the
Speaker 1: Underling's Aerosentana and they're wearing their satin tunics and they
Speaker 1: have this bizarre conversation where they're talking about what plans
Speaker 1: they are going to enact on Earth. Breckenridge says, oh,
Speaker 1: what plan will you follow now? And Aero says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we tried to contact Earth leaders, but they
Speaker 1: reject our existence. You just can't talk to these Earth humans.
Speaker 1: Their soul is too controlled, that's what he says. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that means. But here they say it's
Speaker 1: time to go with Plan nine. So what's Plan nine
Speaker 1: going to be?
Speaker 3: He says, Ah, Yes, Plan nine deals with the resurrection
Speaker 3: of the dead, long distance electrodes shot into the pinial
Speaker 3: and pituitary glands of recent dead.
Speaker 1: Okay, I guess that would explain the zombies we've seen.
Speaker 1: But what were Plans one through eight?
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this, so I guess Plan one
Speaker 3: was evidently just buzz major cities with UFOs and just
Speaker 3: kind of like freak people out a little bit. And
Speaker 3: I'm guessing that Plans two through eight were just kind
Speaker 3: of the stock plots of any other nineteen fifties film,
Speaker 3: you know. So it's like Plan two's giant animals attack,
Speaker 3: Plan three animals attack. Yeah, giant scorpions probably throw some
Speaker 3: robots and monsters in there. Maybe they get up to
Speaker 3: something like superviruses in space religion eventually, but by the
Speaker 3: time you get to Plan nine, it's the resurrection of
Speaker 3: the dead.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a great plan, and Dudley Manlove really sells it.
Speaker 1: He's like, we have risen two so far, we shall
Speaker 1: be just as successful on more.
Speaker 3: I do actually buy into Plan nine a bit when
Speaker 3: this scene and others where they discuss it, the aliens
Speaker 3: are discussing it because it's kind of like they won't
Speaker 3: see this coming. This is going to freak them out.
Speaker 3: Like there's a sense of psychological warfare to it that
Speaker 3: sounds sensible, Like if aliens had the ability to do
Speaker 3: this and they wanted to mess with us, yeah, make
Speaker 3: our dead come back to life now, maybe resurrect more
Speaker 3: than three of them, but you know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: They had to scale up from somewhere right.
Speaker 1: Well, So they explain that the purpose of Plan nine
Speaker 1: is to make the humans acknowledge their existence. They say,
Speaker 1: like they won't accept that we exist. You know, they
Speaker 1: just shoot at us when we come down there, and
Speaker 1: then they believe that we're not real. So we have
Speaker 1: to make them accept our existence by raising the dead.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that would be more effective than
Speaker 1: the flying saucers.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, yeah, I don't have an answer to that, okay,
Speaker 3: but I like, if I lean into it and I
Speaker 3: think about it, I can think of it as kind
Speaker 3: of a psychological attack as a way of causing panic
Speaker 3: among the humans, like more panic than just the UFOs.
Speaker 3: The UFOs are up there, but the dead are down here.
Speaker 1: There's a great scene aosentana like walk out of the room.
Speaker 1: They leave Breckinridge behind, and Aero says, you know, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing the earth. People who can think are
Speaker 1: so frightened by those who cannot the dead. Yes, well, anyway,
Speaker 1: they go back to Earth. We get another porch dialogue
Speaker 1: scene between Paula and Jeff. You know he's leaving. This
Speaker 1: is the scene with the whole like the saucers are
Speaker 1: up there and the cemeteries out there, but I'll be
Speaker 1: locked up in there and oh man. This is also
Speaker 1: the scene where they have the pillow conversation, because she's like,
Speaker 1: when you're gone, I need your pillow here because I
Speaker 1: can touch your pillow. And he seems kind of weirded
Speaker 1: out by it, you know. He he leaves being like, well,
Speaker 1: I love you, darling, but you're off your rocker. And
Speaker 1: then he gets back in the airplane and leaves Awome.
Speaker 1: So what We get a bunch of other shenanigans with
Speaker 1: Jeff on the plane and the co pilot and the
Speaker 1: stewardess talking about going to Albuquerque and trying to party there.
Speaker 1: I don't even we'll skip over all that, so we
Speaker 1: get Bella Lagosi 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.
Speaker 3: Oh I love this scene because he's creeping around and
Speaker 3: then he's like coming up to the door and sort
Speaker 3: of jiggling it a little bit, but the no, no,
Speaker 3: he rings the doorbell and then he comes inside like
Speaker 3: he's just not cut out for this breaking and entering thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Paula's in bed and then the old man
Speaker 1: walks into her bedroom. She screams, and then she just
Speaker 1: runs past him out the door. He's very slow moving.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of Night of the Living Dead actually,
Speaker 1: you know, like are these creatures slow moving? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're dead, they're all missed up. I think that applies
Speaker 1: to Bella in this, and so she just runs past
Speaker 1: him and then runs out into the cemetery. We get
Speaker 1: a great shot of Tor Johnson rising from the grave
Speaker 1: and it's actually so good. Yeah, it does look pretty creepy.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing this as a kid and finding it
Speaker 3: pretty creepy, pretty disturbing because yeah, we've got the blaring
Speaker 3: horn music tour is just touring it up to to eleven.
Speaker 3: Here looks really good.
Speaker 1: We get a bunch of chasing around in the cemetery.
Speaker 1: The zombies are chasing Paula, cutting randomly back and forth
Speaker 1: between night time and daytime. And then eventually a random
Speaker 1: cowboy hat man in a convertible rescues Paula. She like
Speaker 1: faints by the road. He picks her up, puts her
Speaker 1: in the car, and drives away. For some reason, he
Speaker 1: knows who she is. I don't think we've ever met
Speaker 1: this character before. Oh but next we get a scene
Speaker 1: where okay, so Aerosentana the aliens. Now they're landing in
Speaker 1: the cemetery and they're gonna check out their monsters because
Speaker 1: they're going to take them up to show Breckinridge up
Speaker 1: in the mothership. And there's a great scene where like
Speaker 1: Tor Johnson and Vampire are trying to kill them, like
Speaker 1: they walk in the door and they're like reaching for them,
Speaker 1: and 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is and you know this scene, I feel
Speaker 3: like man Love is able to really sell the threat,
Speaker 3: Like I buy into the fact that he's panicking, like
Speaker 3: he's losing it. He's at crashing Hindenburg level when it
Speaker 3: comes to his fear over the big one, the giant
Speaker 3: tor Johnson coming after his throat, and then afterwards he's
Speaker 3: still had a breath and he's like, that was too close.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: And there's also a scene in here where the cops
Speaker 1: are bumbling around in the graveyard. This is the one
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier where they spend a long time talking
Speaker 1: about whether they can climb down into an open grave
Speaker 1: or not, and eventually one of them does get in there.
Speaker 1: I think it's Paul Marco and he goes it's Inspector
Speaker 1: Clay's grave, but he ain't in it. There's a oh.
Speaker 1: So 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 we
Speaker 1: 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 beat that.
Speaker 3: It's the patriotism shining through, but I don't even understand.
Speaker 1: So his boss was trying to get him to say, well,
Speaker 1: you have to fight off the flying saucers, but you
Speaker 1: also can't tell me you believe in them. Anyway, This
Speaker 1: scene 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 aeros
Speaker 1: talk for ten minutes. So it's a very he's giving
Speaker 1: this whole conver monologue about how do you still believe
Speaker 1: it impossible we exist? You didn't actually think we were
Speaker 1: the only inhabited planet. You are stupid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very smug, and it's all about just dissing
Speaker 3: on humanity, something he does quite a bit. First of all,
Speaker 3: you're the worst. Secondly, you're the worst. And then the
Speaker 3: third important fact here is you're on the verge of
Speaker 3: just destroying the entire universe. So late fifties Earth technology
Speaker 3: is on the verge of creating a catastrophe that will
Speaker 3: destroy the known universe. And you might think, well, they're
Speaker 3: not going to explain this, right, Oh, but they will.
Speaker 3: They will explain it, and it is dumbfounding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we get some technical details on this, but
Speaker 1: he's like, you're about to do it. Your juvenile, stupid
Speaker 1: minds are creating too many explosives and you're going to
Speaker 1: blow up the universe. And oh and then later, let's
Speaker 1: see a big army brass scene where it's Colonel Edwards
Speaker 1: and his boss again, and Colonel Edwards is like, oh,
Speaker 1: his I think. His boss says to them these flying
Speaker 1: saucers they're attacking the Earth, and Colonel Edwards says yes,
Speaker 1: and then he says, you think they mean business. So
Speaker 1: he sends Colonel Edwards to Los Angeles to the cemetery
Speaker 1: to investigate the zombies and the saucer attacks there, and
Speaker 1: then we get the scene where where Breckinridge choose out
Speaker 1: arrows and they do the demonstration of tour Johnson where
Speaker 1: he is like choking arrows again. They're constantly losing control
Speaker 1: of him, and this demonstration scene is a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He also gets some of his ships taken away, right,
Speaker 3: the rule is like, you don't need all three UFOs
Speaker 3: now down to one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Arros gets chewed out big time, like it's a
Speaker 1: real dressing down by his boss, but he is impressed
Speaker 1: by Tor when he sees him. He goes, yes, he's
Speaker 1: a fine specimen. Are they all this powerful on planet Earth?
Speaker 3: He literally says, well, actually the other two are a
Speaker 3: woman and an old man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He's like, oh okay, but they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: know a good idea with the old man, so he
Speaker 1: has the The boss has the idea, what if you
Speaker 1: take bela Lagosi and you make him He literally explains
Speaker 1: that they should do all this. You should make him
Speaker 1: walk into somebody's house and then instantly decompose in front
Speaker 1: of them, and that will convince them that aliens exist.
Speaker 3: That'll do it. Yes, that has to work.
Speaker 1: So here we get the big army brass shows up
Speaker 1: at the Trent's house. So it's another porch scene. They're
Speaker 1: hanging out in the wicker furniture and Colonel Edwards walks
Speaker 1: in and is like, hello, how are you doing? And
Speaker 1: Bella Lagosi 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 Legosi and he just instantly turns into a skeleton.
Speaker 1: So turbo rot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's one of those great scenes where he
Speaker 3: just turns into like a high school science classroom skeleton. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: And in a way, Plan nine kind of works because
Speaker 1: that makes everybody be like, wow, I guess we better
Speaker 1: go investigate that. I assume everybody else at this meeting
Speaker 1: already did believe in aliens. Maybe not the police lieutenant,
Speaker 1: but Edwards did, and Jeff Trent did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now they really I mean it kind of
Speaker 3: backfires on him though, because they're like, well, I guess
Speaker 3: we got to do something about this. Now, let's go
Speaker 3: arrest those aliens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the police lieutenants like, we haven't seen the last
Speaker 1: of those weirdies. So they wander into the graveyard to investigate.
Speaker 1: They leave Paula in the car and the aliens. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we see Aeros Andtana talking about how their ship is
Speaker 1: about to be discovered and they can't allow that. So,
Speaker 1: like the purpose of creating zombies is to get the
Speaker 1: Earthlings to accept the existence of aliens, but they also
Speaker 1: can't allow the humans to see them or know about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they leave Paula in the car, but then Tor
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. And then he grabs Paula and
Speaker 1: carries her to the ship. So we do get the
Speaker 1: classic scene that's on the poster of Tor Johnson carrying
Speaker 1: Paula unconscious.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like we said on the show before, this is
Speaker 3: an iconic image of the classic monster, the monster carrying
Speaker 3: the unconscious woman. Yeah, And of course Edwood does not
Speaker 3: shy away from creating this tableau for us.
Speaker 1: Though when Bride of the Monster on the poster, it
Speaker 1: shows Bella Lagosi carrying the lady, and he does not
Speaker 1: do that in the movie. I think Tor Johnson does
Speaker 1: in that one as well.
Speaker 3: Well. If you need somebody to carry another body around,
Speaker 3: I mean, Tour is your man, like, that's what he's
Speaker 3: been doing. He has a career based on carrying the
Speaker 3: very large humans around and also being carried himself to
Speaker 3: a certain extent, so he can probably help you out
Speaker 3: if you did need a scene where somebody's carrying an
Speaker 3: unconscious Tour around.
Speaker 1: So three lugs go into the spaceship. You got Jeff Trant,
Speaker 1: you got the police inspector or, the police lieutenant and
Speaker 1: Colonel Edwards, and they all have revolvers and they go
Speaker 1: into the spaceship and point them at the aliens. And
Speaker 1: then we get some villain monologue where Arrows he whinds
Speaker 1: a lot about how human governments refuse to accept their existence,
Speaker 1: and he says, 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
Speaker 1: this this crazy series of monologues about how the Earthlings
Speaker 1: are building a bigger, bigger and bigger bombs. He says,
Speaker 1: first was your firecracker, a harmless explosive, then your hand grenade.
Speaker 1: You begin 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 sun. The only explosion left is the solar night
Speaker 1: and this, he explains, is a bomb that will explode
Speaker 1: the sunlight itself. And of course Jeff Trant likes that idea.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, if we had that, then we'd be
Speaker 1: an even stronger nation than we are now. And this
Speaker 1: is where Aros responds with the most maybe the most
Speaker 1: famous line.
Speaker 3: Of the movie.
Speaker 1: He says, stronger you see you see your stupid minds, stupid, stupid,
Speaker 1: And Jeff, as I mentioned, he gets offended when Earthlings
Speaker 1: are called stupid. He says, that's enough out of you.
Speaker 3: And it's a great moment in interplanetary communication. Here everyone
Speaker 3: is really terrible at it.
Speaker 1: We get a long explanation of how the solar night
Speaker 1: bomb works using metaphors of a can of gasoline. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to try to reproduce all of that. But
Speaker 1: they say essentially 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you split a photon, and it's going to
Speaker 3: cause like a photon splitting chain reaction where it's going
Speaker 3: to follow a beam of light back to its source,
Speaker 3: which is the Sun, but also travel out on the
Speaker 3: starlight from the Sun, and I guess reach anywhere that
Speaker 3: the light of our sun reaches. And I was thinking, well, okay,
Speaker 3: if this, if I am being generous here, if this
Speaker 3: were going to happen, that would still take a very
Speaker 3: long time. It's not going to be an instantaneous destroy
Speaker 3: the universe situation.
Speaker 1: People with better astrophysics knowledge, please correct me, because I
Speaker 1: haven't researched this, But my gut understanding of this, I
Speaker 1: think is that that would mean the it would take
Speaker 1: a long time, but it would mean the eventual destruction
Speaker 1: of our entire local galaxy. But I would also think
Speaker 1: that at this point other galaxies are probably moving away
Speaker 1: from us at such a rate that it would actually
Speaker 1: never catch up to them. So I think other galaxies
Speaker 1: might be Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe we're to take everything that Aeros says here
Speaker 3: is truth, Like maybe other cultures have developed this technology
Speaker 3: and have used it, and so you have whole pockets
Speaker 3: of the universe that have been wiped out by it,
Speaker 3: and so they just want don't want to see large
Speaker 3: chunks of the universe continue to go this route.
Speaker 1: But I suspect that we would actually never be able
Speaker 1: to know that something like this was happening, because if
Speaker 1: the destruction is traveling at the speed of life, you
Speaker 1: would have no forewarning of it, right, Like, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be by the time you saw it. It would arrive
Speaker 1: at you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but I don't know. They're very advanced, these celestials,
Speaker 3: so they have tools we don't have. Resources we don't have. Again,
Speaker 3: one wonders what would have happened if they had a
Speaker 3: little more tact in approaching this instead of just showing up,
Speaker 3: insulting us, buzzing our cities and raising our dead. Come on,
Speaker 3: we're a sensitive people.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, so they have a big fight, big fist fight,
Speaker 1: Jeff Trend is like punching arros, and they slam and
Speaker 1: they like, they're smashing the equipment on the table. The
Speaker 1: ship is on fire, and eventually the humans get out
Speaker 1: of it. They're all right, and the aliens try to
Speaker 1: take off in their flying saucer, but it's on fire
Speaker 1: and then it explodes.
Speaker 3: And I found this to be kind of like a
Speaker 3: hauntingly nice scene. I mean, yes, the UFO's effects in
Speaker 3: this film are what they are, but the scene of
Speaker 3: the flying saucer on fire over the Hollywood lights at
Speaker 3: night and then it explodes, I don't know, there's something
Speaker 3: kind of poignant about it.
Speaker 1: Can you guess how the movie ends. It's a chrism
Speaker 1: Well monologue.
Speaker 3: I gotta go back to Criswell. He's gonna tie it
Speaker 3: all up in a neat little bow.
Speaker 1: He's gonna make sense of all this. Yeah, so Criswell says,
Speaker 1: my friend, you have seen this incident based on sworn testimony. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't do the voice all the time, he says,
Speaker 1: can 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.
Speaker 3: That yeah, prove that it didn't happen. The burden of
Speaker 3: proof is on you, audience.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, disprove or except.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's just there is there's so much to
Speaker 3: love in this picture. Like, even if you took out
Speaker 3: everything we mentioned, there's still like three more bad movies
Speaker 3: worth of stuff here, you know, three more psychotronic film's
Speaker 3: worth of of like strange line deliveries and weird ideas
Speaker 3: and and jarring use of footage. It's just it's a
Speaker 3: gold mine.
Speaker 1: This picture one of the best of the best of
Speaker 1: all time. I love playing nine Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's you know, it's ridiculous. But at the same
Speaker 3: time you have these scenes of these kind of like
Speaker 3: very dry looking exterior shots in in in Lost in
Speaker 3: the Los Angeles area, you know, tombstones and uh in
Speaker 3: in these you know, these very scraggly looking plants and trees.
Speaker 3: I don't know, there's there's there is some authenticity sprinkled
Speaker 3: in there as well, that kind of gives you a
Speaker 3: little peak into the world out of which it emerge.
Speaker 1: You know, one last question, do you think Edward when
Speaker 1: he wrote this sympathized with the Aeros monologue about our
Speaker 1: stupid Earth minds? Was he expressing his point of view
Speaker 1: or was Aero supposed to be the bad guy representing
Speaker 1: an incorrect point of view.
Speaker 3: I feel like he had to be sympathetic to this cause,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's given so much a monologue time in
Speaker 3: the picture, and there's this, and then of course we
Speaker 3: have the Chris Well stuff that is treating the film
Speaker 3: like prophecy. So yeah, he had to be There is
Speaker 3: this kind of cautionary tale that seems to be present,
Speaker 3: no matter how poorly it's ultimately presented or how whack
Speaker 3: adoodle the speculative of science is that's wrapped up in it.
Speaker 3: And also, I guess to be fair, this is also
Speaker 3: an idea that we see just spread out across science
Speaker 3: fiction in general. That's something maybe watching us and something
Speaker 3: may have an outsider perspective on where we are as
Speaker 3: a culture, and it may realize the the errors of
Speaker 3: our way, the dangers that we're bound to encounter, and
Speaker 3: that we're kind of looking to UFOs as kind of
Speaker 3: a divine entity or conversely an infernal entity that will
Speaker 3: either help us and help us choose the right direction
Speaker 3: or judge us for the direction we've chosen thus far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I could get down with that. Another
Speaker 1: last thing I will have to say this time is
Speaker 1: that I really think you can't overstate the importance of
Speaker 1: the Chriswell framing in establishing the self important tone of
Speaker 1: the movie that like, the movie thinks that it is
Speaker 1: powerful and perhaps world changing. It's like I'm trying to imagine,
Speaker 1: like imagine if the Room started and ended with monologues
Speaker 1: about how this movie will change the world, and the
Speaker 1: monologues are from like the Long Island Medium.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, there's a self importance to the picture. It
Speaker 3: feels like it's tapping into the now that it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's like, this is stuff that's happening, and people are
Speaker 3: talking about UFOs. There's something going on. You know. We
Speaker 3: we have issues with with where we are as a people.
Speaker 3: We have concerns about the future and about the state
Speaker 3: of technology, and so this film is like, yeah, we're
Speaker 3: really tapping into all that. We have something to say.
Speaker 3: Get Dudley Man love on the phone. We're going to
Speaker 3: cast him in this picture.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that's we've got to We've got to end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so much here, and we'd love to hear
Speaker 3: from everyone out there, everyone who has loved plann NINGE
Speaker 3: from Outer Space in the past, and perhaps you haven't
Speaker 3: seen it before, like now's the time, and maybe you're
Speaker 3: inspired by our thoughts here. We would love to hear
Speaker 3: your thoughts on it as well. Perhaps there's some particular
Speaker 3: moment or line in the picture that really is close
Speaker 3: to your heart that we didn't mention write in. We'd
Speaker 3: love to hear from you, and we'll discuss this in
Speaker 3: a future episode of Your Male. Oh and I should
Speaker 3: point out when it comes to where to find Plan
Speaker 3: nine from Outer Space, Luckily you can find in a
Speaker 3: lot of places these days. There are various DVD and
Speaker 3: perhaps even Blu ray releases that are available. I know
Speaker 3: that there was a recent colorization of the picture, but
Speaker 3: I rewatched it in black and white. I feel like
Speaker 3: it needs to be in black and white. But hey,
Speaker 3: if colorization is what gets you there, then fair enough,
Speaker 3: go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1: I'm a purist about this, don't meddle with Plan nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's something about those gothic scenes in
Speaker 3: the cemetery, right, I mean those have to be in
Speaker 3: black and white. I mean I assume Vampira and Tor
Speaker 3: were in black and white in real life. I can't
Speaker 3: imagine them as flesh and blood color entities. It's certainly
Speaker 3: not in this picture, all right. As always, you can
Speaker 3: check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema in the
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed every Friday. We're
Speaker 3: primarily a science podcast, but Fridays are our time to
Speaker 3: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 3: weird film again. And I'll post some of the various
Speaker 3: multimedia tie ins that we discussed here on the blog
Speaker 3: post for this episode at simmutemusic dot com. Also, if
Speaker 3: you are on letterboxed, and I recommend you get on
Speaker 3: there because it's a lot of fun. If you're a
Speaker 3: film fan, we are on letterboxed as well. Our user
Speaker 3: name is weird House, so you can follow us there.
Speaker 3: You can also pull up a cool list that has
Speaker 3: all of the movies that we've watched in order. You
Speaker 3: can do things like divide them up and look at
Speaker 3: them by genre. And decade and so forth, and you
Speaker 3: can often get a little peek ahead and see what
Speaker 3: we're discussing next.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks 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 Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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