Thanks to several mocking books about terrible movies in general and director Ed Wood in particular, this has become generally accepted as the worst film ever made – though it is, in its own way, certainly no worse than, say, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, The Care Bears Movie, Deep Throat or Top Gun. Actually, it’s not even the worst low-budget science fiction film of the 1950s – as a look at The Astounding She Monster, The Incredible Petrified World or Phantom From 10,000 Leagues will confirm.
The worst sin of these cheapies is that they are excruciatingly dull, but Plan 9 is a rare low-budget turkey which manages to be consistently entertaining, thanks to Wood’s distinctive ranting dialogue (‘wouldn't it be better to kill a few now than, with their meddling, permit them to destroy the entire universe?’), amazing narration from noted psychic Criswell ('can you prove it didn't happen?'), camp performances (weedy alien villain Manlove keeps throwing hissy fits), wobbly graveyard sets, paper-plate flying saucers, a grotesquely ramshackle plot, talking-point weirdnesses like the use of home movie test footage of the late Bela Lugosi posing in a graveyard (then being doubled behind an upflung cape by a chiropractor for the rest of the film), acres of ill-used military stock footage, and the sheer bizarro presence of wasp-waisted Vampira and shambling hulk Tor Johnson as alien-influenced zombies. Even if you're fed up to the back teeth with bad movie faddists, this is worth seeing.