FAQ

No. Plan 9 from Outer Space was both written and directed by American film-maker Edward D. Wood Jr. (1924-1978).

According to His Excellency the Ruler (Bunny Breckinridge), Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead by long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary glands of recent dead. The plan is to use the dead to carry out their bidding because the dead cannot think.

Yes. In fact, Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956, shortly after shooting some unrelated footage. Ed Wood added this footage into Plan 9 from Outer Space and decided to include it so he could bill the movie as "Lugosi's Last", using his wife's chiropractor, Thomas R Mason, as a stand-in for Lugosi, even though Mason is taller, thinner, and considerably younger than Lugosi. The appearance of Mason, with cape held in front of his face, may well be the origin of the 'Stereotype' Dracula image which is now associated with Lugosi.

While Plan 9 from Outer Space has been called a contender for the worst film ever made, it was actually Ed Wood, Jr himself who won the Golden Turkey award posthumously for being the worst director ever. Wood's movies are noted for technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts, and outlandish plot elements.

Plan 9 from Outer Space is full of goofs, some big, some small. Near the start two pilots notice some flying saucers. At one point, the shadow of a boom mike can be seen passing over the top of the screen, and the strings on the flying saucers are clearly visible. Viewers have complained that the headstones in the graveyard appear to be made of some lightweight material like cardboard or Styrofoam, as they sometimes wobble when someone walks by. In one case, a cross on the right side of the screen even topples over. The scene where Inspector Clay (Tor Johnson) rises from his grave starts with a teeny tiny gravestone and ends with a much larger one. Viewers laugh at attempts to hide Tom Mason standing in for Bela Lugosi by covering his face with his cape. In the scene where the policeman is shooting the old man, Mason's cape starts to fall off, and he can be seen quickly pulling it back over his shoulders. When destroyed by the "Decomposer Ray" the skeleton can be seen with obvious wingnuts holding the bones together. Also of note is how night and day shots are constantly interspersed within the same scene. For example, a saucer begins to land during the daylight, the landing is shown during a night shot with stars in the sky, and then it is suddenly daylight again. Viewers have counted as many as nine switches between night and day in the scenes where the old man's corpse chases Paula Trent (Mona McKinnon) through the cemetery. There are plenty of others: mostly visual, but also some memorable dialogue goofs, such as Jeff Trent describing the alien ships as 'cigar-shaped' when they are obviously saucers, and Air Traffic Control responding to conversations in the cockpit before the radio microphone is keyed.

Maila Nurmi, born 1922 as Maila Syrjäniemi in Finland (she later changed her name to Maila Nurmi), became noted for her 17 inch waist and her pioneering role as a TV horror movie hostess during the mid-1950s. Inspired by Morticia Addams from the New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams, pale-skinned and black-haired Vampira, dressed in a tight black dress, led viewers through a hallway of mist and cobwebs while spouting graveyard puns and introducing the movie to follow. In 1954, she was nominated for an Emmy award as "Most Outstanding Female Personality" on TV. Because she retained the rights to the Vampira character even after the series ended, Nurmi attempted (unsuccessfully) to sue Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson, because she felt the Elvira character was too similar to that of Vampira. Nurmi died of natural causes on 10 January, 2008 at age 85.

Besides the obvious difference that the movie is now being shown in color some minor changes were done by adding different pictures or adding some inscriptions that are not featured in the original b/w version.

"Criswell Predicts" was at the time of the movie's production a local TV show which ran on the KLAC network in Los Angeles, though by the time of the film's eventual release the show had become nationally syndicated. It ran for five minutes per episode, and would have Criswell and occasionally a guest (among them Criswell's Plan 9 co-star Vampira) making and discussing predictions for the future. Criswell and Ed Wood were friends in real-life, though supposedly he agreed to star in this film's intro and allowed Wood to use the actual "Criswell Predicts" set as thanks for directing several episodes of the show. Notably, Criswell's intro line "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives" was in fact from the show and in use for several years before this movie was filmed, though it appears that the rest of the introductory speech was written by Wood.