Hysterically, the movie I watched earlier today, The 400 Blows, was also made in 1959, the same year as the amazing Ed Wood film I have finally gotten around to seeing: Plan 9 from Outer Space. Ed Wood's "pedigree" is well-established, and this is widely considered to be one of his "finest" films. Far from the wonderful film Truffaut gave us, the steaming pile that Ed Wood gave us is completely unwatchable without some sort of comedy track, be it RiffTrax or a bunch of drunk friends. I only had the former available to me today, so I went with it.
At a mere 78 minutes, one might think that Plan 9 might be a tight movie, concise and tolerable. Instead, it drags on for what seems like four hours, so slowly paced that I had to open up a new window and start typing this review well in advance of finishing the movie, in an attempt to stay focused and actually finish the damn thing. Everything tends to just laze around: the scenery, the acting, the plot, the dialogue. It all falls completely flat. As a matter of fact, if everyone moved and spoke more quickly, the movie could probably have finished in about 37 minutes.
Of all the amazing aspects of this classic film, I think my favorite part is the music. So good. At one point Mike Nelson actually says, "Ow. That actually hurt!" when a particularly harsh and discordant tone sounds. Or possibly, my favorite part is the amazing mispronunciations and word slurs. Or possibly, my favorite part is the re-animated corpses attacking, moving about an 1/8 of one mile per hour toward their victims, who do absolutely nothing to get away. Or, perhaps, my favorite part of the movie is not actually a part of the movie at all, but rather a part of the RiffTrax that is an homage to Waiting for Guffman: "I hate you and your ass face!"
I hate this move and all its ass faces, too.
Score: 1/10
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