Running time 1 hour and 19 minutes of Dali time, rated at 4.0/10 from 31,671 time wasters.
Conceived, written, directed, produced, and loved by Ed Wood, Jr. Because it is excruciatingly bad, it has attracted a following as witnessed by the extraordinary number of votes on the IMDb. This for a movie without a theatrical release.
DVD cover.
Leaving that reputation aside for the moment, here is the set-up. The aliens have tried eight times to communicate with Earthlings. Each attempt has failed. Even when contact is established Earthings simply deny the reality of flying saucers and aliens despite the evidence in front of their eyes. Hmm. That has a contemporary ring. Climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, Tony Abbotts, unite!
Using non-Aristotelean logic, the aliens give up on living humans and decide to raise the dead (using John 11:38-44 as a manual) and work with them! Work with them? Yes, to destroy the Earth! Egads, why? Because Earthlings are violent, destructive, hostile, and aggressive.
The aliens declare that the Earthlings will not be satisfied with blowing each other up but as technology develops they will start blowing up other worlds. Does that sound like GOP foreign policy? I could not possibly say. That aliens have come to stop Earthlings from destroying the Earth, the solar system, the galaxy, or the universe is a theme in Sy Fy. Wonder why?
Since Earthlings will not negotiate, it is time for the final solution: Plan 9. Vampires provide the creatures for this feature in the dark and misty graveyard where much of the film is set. Though some scenes switch, inexplicably, between day and night and back. Is this post-modernism at work, refusing to privilege continuity!
The flying saucer makes little effort to conceal itself relying for concealment on the delusions that explain the Republican Party today.
First they iron the shirts and then shine them.
These technologically superior aliens in shiny sateen rigs are defeated by a couple of muscle men who are violent, destructive, hostile, and aggressive, in other words, typical Earthlings. That’ll show ‘em to call us names!
But it ends on a note of caution that they, the aliens, will be back and we have to be ready for them. What does that mean, ready? When they say Earthlings know nothing but violence, just blast them. That works. We’re already NRA-ready!
The production is amateurish. The cardboard walls shake when someone touches them. The flying saucer is sometimes called a cigar (and later it is lit) but it is always shown as what it was, a spinning top. The acting is painful to watch as the players struggle to remember their lines and deliver then slowly with no inflection. The sets are empty, e.g., the cockpit of the passenger aircraft shown twice is two folding chairs, confirming some perceptions of American Airlines.
There are voiceovers that are mawkish and confusing. It is introduced and concluded by a reincarnation of Charles Fort, the favourite author of the fraternity brothers.
Of the cast only Gregory Walcott seems to have had a film career, mostly in television, especially westerns when they were the fashion.
Gregory Walcott
Perhaps his North Carolina accent made producers think he was from the west. West, south, there is no difference when viewed from Hollywood.
The gossip on the web is that Ed Wood started this project as a biography of Bela Lugosi, who figures in about two minutes of the film, and then Lugosi died. Had he seen the rushes? Nothing stopped Ed Wood. He hired his wife’s doctor to stand-in for Lugosi hiding behind the cloak held to his face.
Is there a doctor in the cape? Yes.
That the good doctor was a foot taller than Lugosi with a different colour of hair was ignored. For all of this and more see ‘Ed Wood’ (1994), a biopic
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