Description
As a child I paged through TV GUIDE every week, checking off which horror films to watch, even if they aired at 3 am. It was in Chiller Theater‘s opening montage (now viewable on YouTube) that I first discovered the strikingly thin-waisted Maila Nurmi, a.k.a. Vampira, who opens the montage, staggering towards the camera in the 1959 Ed Wood. Jr. epic PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Chiller Theater had apparently removed it from rotation by then. However, from that brief scene, as well as a quick clip of Vampira with beefy, bald, blank-eyed zombie Tor Johnson, along with photos I’d seen in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, I was convinced that whenever I did actually get to see PLAN 9, it would live up to my expectations as the greatest horror film ever made.
I finally got to enjoy PLAN 9 on Manhattan cable late one night in the 1970s. It wasn’t the greatest horror film ever made, but it was far from the worst-ever film (as unfairly proclaimed in the Golden Turkey Awards book; that distinction, in my opinion, belongs to Last Year at Marienbad). The Wood screenplay and some of the acting is obviously inept, but the film is absorbing and fun, sincere and never boring. The beautifully filmed graveyard scenes with Vampira, Tor, and chiropractor Dr. Tom Mason (a stand-in for Bela Lugosi, who had died prior to the film’s completion), are truly memorable, as is the over-the-top narration by Criswell.
The year 2019 marked the 60th anniversary of everyone’s favorite horror/science fiction camp cult classic. This art was created as a poster for comedian Dana Gould’s live, staged readings of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. The typography below the film title was designed by Laura Lindgren.
— Drew Friedman