Drive-in Double Bill!! Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space

Directed by Edward D Wood, Jr,
Starring Bela Lugosi, Maili Nurmi (aka Vampira), Tor Johnson, Gregory Walcott, Tony McCoy, Loretta King Hadler, George Becwar

Now here’s a treat for those of us who, no matter sophisticated and cultured our film tastes are, still have a weakness for a B-movie. And other than the late, great Corman, they don’t come much more B-movie than Edward Wood Jr. More than a few people would in fact say, you may have to use letters further down the alphabet from B to describe them. But while there is certainly a lot of truth to the criticism – ultra cheap, cardboard sets that make Blake’s Seven look like the cutting edge, often awful acting, major plot discontinuities, yes, all valid criticisms.

But that’s to ignore the sheer delight and joy in these kinds of ultra-cheaply made films (actually the fact they made an entire film on what they had is kind of amazing in itself). Some of us have always known that there are Bad Movies, and then there are Good Bad Movies, the types we cannot defend on quality, yet still love watching. Yes, Starcrash or Hell Comes to Frogtown, or Abominable Dr Phibes, I am looking at you, and yes, I still love you too. And arguably Wood wasn’t inept or trying to make a bad film, he simply hadn’t the time or money to make the much bigger film he clearly saw in his head, and, like an amateur play production, sometimes that enthusiasm is infectious and carries you along despite all the other failings.

Besides, if you are reading this, chances are you know about these films already, and, like me, take a delight in a Good Bad Movie from time to time, so you know exactly what I am talking about.

This really was a blast of a double-bill. Plan 9 I hadn’t seen in many years, and had totally forgotten it opened with Criswell Predicts, a medium talking directly to the camera, about the events we are about to see, which “they” do not want revealed, of course. “Can your heart stand the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space, “ he asks, before we open into the film proper.

Grave Robbers From Outer Space was Wood’s preferred name for the film, he wasn’t happy with the change to the now infamously iconic Plan 9. And yes, it does involve a little bit of grave-robbing (not much though!). The aliens have their Plan 9 which involves resurrecting the recently dead to use as an army against humanity, which they are determined to destroy, not because they are evil conquerors, but because we are developing powerful weapons quicker than we are maturing as a species who can take responsibility for such devices. They foresee us creating the “solaronite” bomb, which will explode the very particles of light from the sun, destroying everything.

It’s a good, 1950s-era hokey plot, and you get the impression Wood is dreaming of it being up there with The Day The Earth Stood Still, but of course it’s not in that league. But it tries its best, and even though that best is pretty weak sauce, you still find yourself rooting for them and wanting to love it anyway. We really only get three resurrected bodies instead of the undead army, but this includes Maili Nurmi, billed under her stage name of Vampira (which she wasn’t happy about, since she wasn’t playing that character), and the formidably hulking former wrestler Tor Johnson.

Infamously, Bela Lugosi passed away before this film was complete, so Wood simply took some previous footage of Lugosi he had already shot for another possible project, added a voice over “the old man weeps by the grave of his beloved wife”, and spliced them in. For later scenes requiring the resurrected Lugosi, who was now no longer available on account of being in the tomb, wrapped in his original Dracula cape, a younger, taller, clearly not-Lugosi stand in appears, holding the cape up across most of his face in the 1930s vampire film style, to hide the fact that, well, he is not Lugosi. It’s all very, very silly, but if you’re in the right mood, it is also a total hoot.

“I will perfect my own race of people! A race of atomic supermen, which will conquer the world!”

Bride of the Monster I actually found to be the more fun of the pair, despite Plan 9’s much greater notoriety. Yes, again it is hokum (no more than many other 1950s films with a better budget, to be fair), but this one holds together a lot more than Plan 9. It’s a classic nuclear-age, mad scientist and monster movie, and, dammit, we just don’t see many of those anymore, and, well, yes, hokey, but darn it, also just fun! And talking of fun, Lugosi is quite clearly loving playing the role of the mad scientist (who utters the wonderful lines above, about his race of atomic supermen – yes, you can see where Futurama’s Professor Farnsworth got some of his ideas!). He’s clearly relishing it, laying into the role at full strength, and despite the cheapness of the production (the stone walls of the lab are clearly a not very good, painted backdrop, the sort of thing you’d see in a travelling carnival’s Ghost Train), and it carries it forward with a spring in its step, even when wrestling with one of the least convincing giant octopus monsters in cinema history, he still gives it his all, and you just shake your head, laugh and think what the hell, go with it!

It’s the sort of film where the bumbling police call in an expert on prehistoric monsters (of course) because of a rash of deaths around a remote home that everyone locally is convinced is home to a monster, but which for some reason, despite many murders around it, the police have never even bothered to knock on the door so far. In addition to the quote above, it also graces us with lines like “but professor, is it your opinion that the Loch Ness Monster may have crossed the Atlantic to here?” I mean how can you not just love that???
Tor Johnson is back once more, this time a mute “Igor” type assistant to Lugosi’s scientist, and frequently beaten by a whip by Lugosi, especially when he doesn’t want Lugosi to hurt the plucky female reporter (shades of the early Tom Baker-era Brain of Morbius there).

There’s a slew of extras included here, so in addition to the restored, 4k versions of the films, we have commentaries, multiple documentaries, including some archive video interviews from a couple of decades ago, with people who worked with Wood, including his one-time girlfriend, who, of course, talks about the Angora sweater fetish, among other things, Mark Kermode introducing the film, a Criswell Predicts piece, a 1950s TV piece on people who are convinced of the reality of flying saucers (the reporter clearly struggling not to laugh in the faces of his interview subjects), to set some context to the period the film was made in, rare footage of Lugosi after he left his his rehabilitation treatment, and a ton more. A great, vintage B-movie double-bill for the Halloween season.

The Blu-Ray is available now from the BFI store and other outlets, and will be streaming online on Prime and Apple from 26th October.