Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch all the zombie movies in chronological order. The year is still 1959, and we watch the hilarious Plan 9 From Outer Space, considered the worst movie ever made.

You know, I've seen people act like that in pictures. What do they call them, zombies or something?

Zombie. What's a zombie?

Just what is a zombie?

Hey, everybody. I'm John.

I'm Andy.

I'm Brad.

Hello, everybody. Yeah, exciting news. We're watching an absolutely terrible movie, Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Just to be clear, this is the first terrible movie we've watched, right John? Is that what you're saying?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I think we had an exchange the other day on Discord, Andy, where we were like, it was a movie that a mutual friend, Brad and I have had recommended, The Swordsman and the Enchantress, which is a 1978 Woosher movie. I just said, I love this. He's like, yeah, this podcast has broken us. We have no measure for good or bad anymore. It's just everything's a delight in one way or another. We're like producer Brad now, actually, is what has happened. Producer Brad, the man who can find joy in any movie.

There is nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with watching the films to learn what is good and why they were made and what to look for.

What remains to be seen is could you find joy in Plan 9 From Outer Space? That's the question. However, before we get there, have you consumed any zombie content outside of the confines of our podcast here in the last couple of weeks, Andy?

No, not exactly. But I did recently decide I'm going to reread George Romero's, I think posthumously published novel, The Walking Dead, I think it's called, or The Living Dead, I'm sorry. I read it a couple of years ago. It didn't hit me amazingly, but it has stuck in my head that it kind of maybe merits a reread.

Nice. I got this book somebody recommended. It is called The Art of the Zombie Movie by Lisa Morton. It does offer a brief history of zombie movies. Nothing that you haven't heard here already, but what it does have is all the wonderful posters from all these movies. For example, we recently watched Zombies of Moritao, and there's a two-page spread with at least eight different posters just for that movie and they're glorious. I love movie posters. Yeah, it's really good.

My question would be, John, does that book point out anything that completely sailed over our heads about these early zombie movies?

Not so much. They go and they cover White Zombie and the other things that we covered. I think it's a really great summary, but briefly talks about the origin of the word zombie, and Haitian voodoo. It is a short summary. It's not particularly groundbreaking, but it is very good.

Good to know. All right. Well, hey, before we jump into this movie, shall I do my little content warning section? Please. There's not really a lot in this movie to be too concerned about. This is a movie in the 50s that feels like maybe an artifact from a decade or so earlier. The women in this movie are sort of precious, valuable artifacts that must be shielded from the bad guys and they faint at the first sign of danger and that sort of thing. So there's that sort of-

Except for Vampira.

Well, yes, of course.

Let's just make that clear.

So there's that sort of background layer of sexism or misogyny. But apart from that, it's the flaws you'll find in this movie. There's a lot of flaws to get through before you get to the misogyny flaws.

And like every other movie from this era, it's a complete whitewash.

Yes, absolutely.

At least all the horror movies.

Brad, do you want to give us the background behind how this movie was made?

Well, where to start? Plan 9 From Outer Space was filmed in 1956. And there are conflicting release dates. Wikipedia says the film had a regional release in Texas and southern states in 1958. But IMB Pro lists the release date as 1959. So that's the date I'm using. Movies from this year are North by Northwest, Some Like It Hot, Ben Hur, Anatomy of a Murder, The 400 Blows. Horror movies from 1959 include First Man in Space, The Mummy, Return of the Fly and The Wasp Woman. Now Ed Wood co-produced, wrote and directed the film. Wood's first film released in 1953 was called Glenn or Glenda. He wrote, directed and starred as a man who wears women's clothes and worries that if his fiance finds out, he will lose her. This film, along with Plan 9, is often on lists of the worst movies of all time. Bela Lugosi and Wood were friends and Lugosi appears in Glenn or Glenda as the narrator. Leading up to Plan 9, Wood made a few low-budget films, Jailbait, Bride of the Monster and a TV pilot called Crossroad Avenger, The Adventure of the Two-Sun Kid. This starred Tom Keen, a veteran of western B-movies, who was also in the cast of Plan 9. In the 60s, Wood started making and acting an exploitation film. Two examples are Orgy of the Dead and The Photographer. In the 70s, Ed Wood made some hardcore pornography films and wrote pornographic books. He had little money, and he and his wife were evicted many times. He died of a heart attack at age 54, and he had fallen so low that there were no obituaries for him in the local papers or Hollywood trades. But his fame grew after his death, especially after the Tim Burton biopic Ed Wood, released in 1994, in which Johnny Depp played Ed Wood. Usually you guys interrupt me at least once or twice by now.

There's so much I want to say, I was kind of letting you take a break.

Let's go back all the way to like, so if you are faced with two schlocky movies, and one is called Orgy of the Dead, and the other is called The Photographer, which one are you going to watch?

I think it comes down to the poster, right?

Yeah, yeah, it would come down to the poster. Now, I think it's so fascinating, just reading a little bit about Edward, he had trouble with alcohol, he was, I think, a troubled person for a lot of reasons, and I think the movie Edward is absolutely delightful, and probably a little whitewash of his character, too. But what I get from all this is that it's like a man who loves movies and has no interest in the art of film making. He just wants to throw a bunch of stuff together and have it be a movie, and doesn't really have the instincts, desire or intuition to make a good movie. You know what I mean?

He just has the will to get it done.

Yes, that's it. He just has that. That's his one thing.

Now, Brad, and I think I read this, I was reading of his Wikipedia entry. He wrote a lot of sex and crime pulp novels, right? Do you know if he's gotten the same cult following in those circles that he has in the film circles?

That I don't know. I know that some of his unfinished films were completed later, like in the 90s and 2000s. But I'm not aware of what's going on with his writings, his novels.

Okay.

Yeah. I think the rehabilitation of him in film, especially with that biopic, I heard an interview with Quentin Tarantino where he was talking about that movie, and Edward the character delivers the line, worst film you've ever seen? Well, my next film will be better. Tarantino described it as like a gut punch. For every creative person working in Hollywood, everybody's laughing at that and he's going, shut up. That's not funny. Everybody thinks they're one movie away from being Ed Wood. So I think it resonates with artists, but I think filmmakers in particular, as somebody who just really tried and was terrible at it, and I think there's, maybe it's imposter syndrome kicking in or something like that.

Well, he wasn't one of those guys who, like you see this in the 80s, someone will sell a movie, the rights to a movie, to all these foreign territories, bring in a couple million dollars and then make it. And they've already made their money, so the film itself doesn't really matter. So the object is to make money. His object was just to make a movie.

Yeah.

What struck me about this film, and I'm sure we're gonna get into, it's low quality when we discuss it, but it's low quality, but somebody knew how to do all of the things you have to do to at least make a coherent film, right? I mean-

Right, they knew how to film.

They knew how to film, they knew how to direct the actors around, they knew how to edit, they knew how to light. And I'm not saying that they did those well, and we might point out ways where some of those things fall down. But this isn't just a complete, doesn't know anything person picking up the camera and pointing it at his friends. It's right, there is a level of knowledge and a filmmaking ability behind all of this, even if what it produces is pretty laughable in the end.

Yeah, it's like he's competent but not curious or something. You know what I mean? The other thing I'll say about all of this is that the moniker of worst film ever made was given to this movie by film reviewer Michael Medved in a 1980 book that he wrote about Hollywood cinema. I wonder if that's where the resuscitation of Edward's character first came up because then people were like, well, I got to see that now. Yeah. If it reminded me of any other movie we've watched, I'll be honest, it was Maniac, not because of the content but because of the just the shoddiness of the whole thing.

The simplicity of how it was shot, yeah.

Yeah. But I don't know if we were saving this for later in the show, but the phrase worst movie ever made. What does that mean? I saw Transformers Revenge of the Fallen in theaters. I paid money for it. I enjoyed that less than I enjoyed watching this movie. That movie was harder to follow than this movie was. I mean, we can all pick our examples of a movie on which much more money and much more talent was lavished.

Like Amazon's New War of the World starring Ice Cube?

Yeah. That didn't produce a meaningfully better artistic experience. What does it mean? I'm not saying that anyone was wrong to apply that label of this film as we're going to see, but it's a pretty loaded term, I think.

Well, I think we have just discovered how intuitive John's eye is because he brought up Maniac. Now, the cinematographer for Plan 9 From Outer Space did 70 films. One of them was Maniac.

I'm going to dine on that till I die. John has such an intuitive eye for film. He can detect the cinematographer.

He's an intuitive eye for exploitation, low-budget films.

Fair, but you know what? I'll dine out on that too.

All right, there's still more to discuss. There's lots of crazy characters in this film. This is Bela Lugosi's fifth zombie film that we have watched. His other zombie films are White Zombie, Bowery at Midnight, Zombies on Broadway, and Buduman. Lugosi died in 1956 before Wood started filming Plan 9. Lugosi's appearance in Plan 9 is made from footage from two unfinished movies Wood and Lugosi were working on. The scenes they shot were mostly unscripted and improvised.

So that relationship, can I just jump in again?

Yeah.

What strikes me is that is Lugosi is like old Hollywood magic, and I don't know what their relationship was. But what it strikes me as is, Ed Wood just wants to make a movie, and somebody he considers an absolute legend has befriended him, and Bela is way on the way down. It just seems like such a strange relationship for both people, but it makes sense in that context. Like Bela needs something, anything, and Ed Wood feels like he won the lottery because he gets Bela to be in his movie.

Yeah, I think that's part of the reason that the 94 movie works so well, is that odd relationship between the two of them.

Yes, and that is just as an aside, the movie Ed Wood by Tim Burton is a great movie, and I recommend you watch it. I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, a great watch.

All right, Gregory Walcott plays Jeff Trent. His film career started in 1952 in the Richard Widmark film Red Skies on Montana, which is strangely timely now. It's a film about smokejumpers battling wildfires.

Oh, wow.

Oh.

Walcott appeared in a lot of TV shows in the 60s, including a leading role on the show 87th Precinct. In the 70s, he acted in four Clint Eastwood films, The Eiger Sanction, Every Which Way But Loose, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and Joe Kidd. And his last role was in the 1994 Ed Wood movie.

Oh, wow.

Okay. Do you know, is his role, is it a deliberate winky cameo or?

In Ed Wood, he is credited as a potential film backer.

Okay.

That must have been a fun role to have, honestly, 40, 50 years after to get invited back to be a part of this. That's fun.

Yeah.

Tor Johnson plays Inspector Clay. He was a Swedish wrestler known as a super Swedish angel. He was a large man, 6'3, and at times over 400 pounds. He appeared in over 50 movies and TV shows, usually playing a wrestler, a strong man, a henchman, or a brute. In the late 60s, a Halloween mask of his face with a bloody scar on his forehead was a best seller.

He does have an iconic look to him, I would say, although he can hardly get his lines out.

Correct, correct.

I'll put a link in the show notes to the mask so you can all see it.

Yeah.

Mona McKinnon plays Paula Trent. This was her fourth film and her fifth and last film was another Ed Wood from 1959 called Night of the Ghouls. All of her films were low budget B movies. Maila Nurmi plays Vampire Girl. Nurmi, I hope I'm saying it right, gained fame as Vampira, hosting late night horror movies on local television in Los Angeles in the 50s. The Vampira character was influenced by Morticia Adams from the Adams family, which at the time were cartoons in the New Yorker. In 1956, she was the model for the Evil Witch Maleficent and Disney Sleeping Beauty. In the early 80s, she sued Elvira believing Elvira stole the Vampira character from her. Then Nurmi lost the case.

But they had invited her in, so just more on her briefly. She is probably though it's hard to say, the first host of a horror movie segment on a local TV station, right? If you're from Ohio, you remember Sir Graves Gastly, we had Bill Kennedy, Brad, but all of these goofy hosts, I think she's the inspiration for that entire genre of weird characters.

Especially the horror where she did puns, ghostly puns and stuff, which they all carried on afterwards.

Yes. But what I had read, and this could be incorrect, is that she was invited to consult on the Elvira show and was excited to be there, but when they realized they were going to make Elvira purely comedic, she objected and quit the project. She was actually part of the development of the project early on, but didn't like the tone because she thought it was-

So I didn't know any of this, but in my notes, I mentioned that she's dressed like Elvira.

Yeah, Elvira is definitely influenced by her.

I would love to see some samples of her hosting some old horror movies, actually.

The saddest thing is, since it was local TV, there's almost no footage left. I wasn't able to find any. There's rumors that there's some, but basically there isn't any.

Tom Keane plays Colonel Tom Edwards. He started his career with leading roles in silent films in 1955 and A Sign of the Times. He appeared in a Bowery Boys movie called Dig That Uranium.

That's another one for our title podcast later, to belong with Pillow of Death and Missile Monsters.

Yeah, the Bowery Boys inherit Uranium Mine and Hilarity and Hygienics ensue.

That's incredible.

Of all the facts, that's the best fact so far.

That's the one. Carl Anthony plays Patrolman Larry. He was only in four movies. His last film, Raw Force, was released in 1982 and is on our Zombie list to watch.

Oh, interesting.

He will be back in 25 years. Paul Marco plays Kelton the Cop. Marco played Kelton in three Ed Wood movies, Bride of the Monster, Night of the Ghouls and Plan 9. After the 1994 Ed Wood movie, he played Kelton one more time in the 2005 movie, The Naked Monster. So he tried to make some money at the end with his notoriety from this.

They go for it, is what I saw.

Dudley Manlove plays Eros.

Is that, okay, is that, that's a joke, right?

That's the character's name. So you asked if all his stuff was exploitative. I think naming her character Eros is a hand.

When the actor is Bradley, what was it? Manlove? Come on, come on.

Wikipedia says his given name was Dudley Devere Manlove.

All right.

He was a radio announcer and he performed in radio dramas. So he was a radio guy.

Yeah, he's got a voice for radio. It's big and ridiculous.

Joanna Lee plays Tana, Eros' sidekick.

She might be the most successful person in this group.

Yeah.

She had only 14 acting credits, the last of which was in 74, but she went on to be a successful TV writer and producer. She wrote episodes of Petticoat Junction, I Dream of Jeannie and The Brady Bunch. She wrote the Brady Bunch episode where Greg wants to be the rock star, Johnny Bravo.

Yes.

She won an Emmy in 1974 for writing on the show The Waltons. She also was nominated for four daytime Emmys for writing CBS School Break episodes and ABC after-school specials.

That is definitely the most successful person.

You would not watch this movie and pick her out as the one who is going to make it, would you?

I guess Bela Lugosi is the most famous and successful, but she's the one who had a career after this.

Yeah.

Geron Michael Criswell plays Criswell. Criswell is famous for making predictions. He appeared on TV shows, had a syndicated newspaper column and wrote books. Two of his predictions were in March of 63 on the Jack Parr program. He predicted that John Kennedy wouldn't run for re-election because something was going to happen in November of 63 that would prevent it.

He also predicted that radio waves from space or something was going to happen. It was going to turn roller coasters in Denver, Colorado, into rubber.

That was my second prediction.

Sorry.

His prediction was that a beam from outer space would strike Denver, causing all metal to turn into rubber and leading to chaos.

He was particularly concerned about amusement park rides.

That's his problem. He got too specific. Like the JFK prediction, you're solid, but it's going to turn metal into rubber in Denver. That's arrogance right there.

Now, each episode, we take time to talk about and look at the movie poster for the films. None of the posters we have seen has had an artist credit it. Oh, really? For a film considered one of the worst of all time, the Plan 9 poster is actually really cool. It's really well done. And it's the first poster that has an artist credit it. The artist is Tom Jung. He did posters for Dr. Chivago, Grand Prix, and Gone With the Wind, the re-release from 1967. So when you think of the art for Gone With the Wind, you're thinking of the 1967 that he did, which was sort of that Clark Gable's holding Vivian Ley and it's very grand. That's his artwork.

Okay. Yeah. You know what? That kind of stern looking spaceman, it has real, you know, like Arthur C. Clark Heinlein, iconic space explorer vibes to it.

For sure. And he also did in 1974, The Man with the Golden Gun. He did one of the posters for the James Bond film. In 1978, he did the poster for the animated The Lord of the Rings, which if you recall-

I love that poster.

It's Gandalf in the center and two hobbits with the giant sword. And the giant sword poking toward the viewer.

That is hanging on my wall, you guys. That's great.

I own a copy of the DVD. Yeah. I bought the DVD mostly for the cover. Yeah.

And we're not done with his work. He also did the early Star Wars poster that has Luke standing with the lightsaber over his head and Leia at his knees and the head of Darth Vader in the background.

That's an amazing poster.

And then he did work for The Empire Strikes Back. Some of the styles were his as well.

Nice.

Now, there isn't any good box office tally for Plan 9, like all these films back then. But I found that Variety used to list weekly results for the box office of Theaters by City. And Plan 9 shows up in August 26, 1959, issue of Variety as earning $6,500 for the week at the Archeo Pantages Theater in Minneapolis. And Variety would often do a one word description, meaning it was good or bad, and it called it tall, meaning that this was performing well. As a comparison, a few weeks earlier, Variety listed Woman Eater on a double bill earning $4,800 at the same theater.

Oh, okay.

So, you know, maybe it made money. It's just no one knows how much it made because it went to people who never reported it, but it was showing and it was listed as for teens and kids. It wasn't like, stay away. This was horrible.

Okay. All right.

That's all I got. And I hope that's enough.

That is so much. Thank you, Brad. That's amazing.

You know, and I'm gonna do a ton of historical context here. We're in the late 50s. We talked about it recently. You know, the space race is on, the atomic race is on, civil rights is gaining momentum. All the things we've sort of been talking about for the last three movies. I think in the previous two, I did a pretty in-depth, you and I did pretty in-depth context. So I think I'll just leave it at that.

Yeah. I mean, the specific things this movie is reacting to are like five years old. It feels like kind of five or more years old. It feels like sort of a sluggish response to like the H-bombs development and stuff like that. Things that had been discussed and people had wrangled over for quite a while by the time this movie landed.

But did you notice the plot and vibe in terms of the peacenik elements? It was a lot to like invisible invaders or perhaps vice versa. Who knows? They both have that we got a peacenik message.

Yes. There's a ton of time spent in this movie talking about the government being suppressing the truth and stuff. I don't know exactly when the government is hiding the truth of UFOs from you. Stuff got started, but this movie doubles down on it.

It is also similar to Invisible Invaders because it presents itself as a documentary after the fact.

Yes.

The story is being recounted, which is the same thing that happened in Invisible Invaders.

All right. Well, let's do this. So short summary of the film. It's about aliens who've come to Earth. They're concerned that the Earthlings are becoming too powerful, but heedless of the power of their weapons. So they've come to convince them to get rid of them. In coming to Earth, they cause mayhem, and people start investigating them. There are a series of murders which the police investigate. In the end, the police, the army, and the aliens have a confrontation where one of the alien spaceships is destroyed. Well, all this is going on, the aliens are reanimating corpses and meeting with their leader on a mothership and a variety of other things, but that's roughly the plot of this movie.

That's about as good a plot overview as you could really ever ask for for this movie.

I just want to say, I spent less time summarizing that than the repeated speeches where the aliens are talking about their plan and what they're going to do next. I can't even follow them, but they're throughout this film. Everyone in this film says, this is what we're going to do, and then goes and does it, and then they say, and then we're going to do this. Everything is explained to a T, so nobody misses it. It's bananas.

We have some great audio queued up for some of those plans.

Yes. All right, Andy, start us off here.

Where do we start? I want to start us off. If me and John and Brad had to sit through this, you get listeners, so do you. There's only one way to start off a discussion of Plan 9 From Outer Space, and that is to hear the over-the-top.

Can I ask a question real quick first?

By all means.

Had you guys seen this film before?

I had seen it multiple times.

I have never seen it, but I've seen tons and tons of clips from it, like in presented in Comedia.

Same here. I had never actually sat and watched the whole thing.

Really? Because I watched it either before or after I saw Ed Wood back in the 90s, and I'm pretty sure I watched it before that.

Well, as I was saying, there's really only one way to start talking about this, and that is to share the opening monologue so that listeners, you have to sit through what we did. So let's go ahead and hear Criswell's ominous opening narration to Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Greetings, my friend. You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now for the first time, we are bringing to you the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are giving you all the evidence based only on the secret testimony of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places, my friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent, my friend. Can your heart stand the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space?

Amazing.

You guys are all here in recording, so your hearts could withstand the news. Is that right? Did anyone have to do a visit to the ER?

No, it was all right. So I guess Grave Robbers From Outer Space was the original title of the movie.

Oh, that would be a good title. I put my stamp of approval on that. The only thing I wanted to pull out of this besides the, there's a lot of comical lines that I will trust you to enjoy. But this is framing this movie similarly to the way the Invisible Invaders did, as I think Brad already mentioned, as a documentary of something that has already happened in the past. Right.

Which by the way is the way that Weapons opens as well.

Oh, hey. All right. Well, the legacy of Plan 9 lives on, of Invisible Invaders. But among other things, this framing of the film as a documentary causes the narration to tie itself in knots when it comes to verb tense. And we're going to get into that much later. But after this dramatic opening we get, so I was a little surprised we have a kind of diegetic presentation of credits, right? Because the stars and the big names are shown as headstones, which that was, I mean, not having seen this movie knowing really only its reputation as the worst movie ever, that was more effort already in the first 90 seconds than I expected out of this movie. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I was a little surprised too, but also with very sort of dramatic music over the credits and then that flute that plays as that follows, like it's not showing you that it's a terrible movie yet.

Yeah, exactly.

I think when you haven't seen the film and you hear a story, you come in looking for things to be the worst you've ever seen, and it doesn't really happen right away.

No, it starts off okay.

And I hope we'll talk about that too, because going into a movie, having heard it's the worst movie ever made, is a heck of an expectation setter, I guess.

Yes.

And so we can get into a little bit more, but let's get rolling a little further into the quote plot of this movie. The movie proper opens at a grave site where Bela Lugosi, I think he's just credited as the old man, right? Or something like that. He is here with a group of people. His wife has passed away and they're mourning her death. And as the party, everyone leaves the funeral, some grave diggers approach. If you told me these were two people, they just grabbed off of, randomly off of the street, I would believe you.

Not unlike the grave diggers in Maniac.

In Maniac, I had the exact same thought.

The parallels are becoming haunting.

So those grave diggers are bantering with each other. And then we cut up to the skies above them, where we meet our, I guess, the hero of this movie, right? Captain Trent, he's an airline pilot. He's flying a passenger airplane above the city.

Just to be clear, that's a DC-4.

Okay, I have a lot of airplane questions actually, because there's a ton of stock photography with airplanes in it used in this movie. I'm excited. So this movie has Bela Lugosi, a renowned actor in it, and they spend so much time on just inconsequential banter, starting with this scene with the two pilots talking. And it's like, could you please get us back to Bela Lugosi, or something other than you two talking about who should radio in? That said, a UFO suddenly appears, visibly wobbling on a string. I don't know, so throughout this movie, they never solved the problem that when your UFO model is dangling from a single string and you move it around, it wobbles back and forth and looks really goofy.

Can we just take a moment to talk about the sets?

Please.

So let's take the cockpit of the airplane, which looks nothing. It's clearly like plywood painted with a couple of office chairs. This is why I say he has no interest in the craft of filmmaking. Later, there's a crypt in the graveyard. Yeah. It's just cardboard. It's clearly too small for a human to fit through. The characters come in and out ducking their heads. He just doesn't care about making a decent set, or he doesn't have time or whatever. But yeah, the cockpit doesn't look like a cockpit. The flying saucer model wiggles on a string. Every set and effect is like that in this movie.

Yeah. Related to this UFO, several times this UFO, as UFOs from this era, are often described as being cigar shaped. My question for you is, do I just not know what shape a cigar is? In what way does this very classic looking UFO, which is like a plate with a ball in the middle, in what way does that resemble a cigar? Brad, John, please tell me.

I wonder that too, because the pilot says a cigar shaped UFO. Everyone else calls them flying saucers, which is what they look like.

But in profile, perhaps it looks like a cigar.

I guess.

I wonder that too.

But it's got a big bulge in the middle.

I think that actor maybe took liberties or there was something in the script they didn't fix. I don't know, it doesn't make sense.

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. But I've heard that about other UFO sightings too. So maybe it's just like a bit of collective memory that is dumb that won't go away.

There's more to it, there are layers.

It's not just the movie. I've definitely heard that. There's a lot going on. Yeah, so all right, I need to speed this along though. So basically the higher ups in the government tell the Captain Trent that he needs to keep quiet on this UFO business. They don't want word getting out. But we know that the UFO has sailed down to the town, specifically over the cemetery where Bela Lugosi was recently.

And I think the town is Burbank.

Is it?

Right, like that plane was going to land in Burbank.

So later the military says in San Fernando.

Okay.

Well, the UFO either sails past, or I think it lands in the cemetery. The gravediggers notice it or something like that. And then from behind a crypt, a spooky woman dressed like Elvira appears. I didn't realize till later this is supposed to be Bela Lugosi's wife.

Correct.

And I mean, which means he married like a woman like 50 years younger than him, which I mean, it's Hollywood. So I guess this is technically our first zombie. So John, do you want to tell us what our zombie looks like here?

Well, it looks like Morticia Adams. It's this character of Empire that he has that Edward is convinced to be in this movie. Rumor has it that he had lines for her, but she said they were so awful she wouldn't say them. So she never speaks. But she is tall. She wears a long black dress that is torn. She has these incredibly arched, penciled-on eyebrows, straight black hair, a neckline that plunges almost to her bellybutton, and she stands there with her arms extended and making a creepy dead face.

And her waist is 12 inches.

Yeah, they had to do some method to get her waist to do that. But so she literally looks like a cartoon.

I am so interested that she was buried in this outfit. I am just fascinated to be here.

And the actress said that when she was interpreting the Morticia Adams, she decided to be campier and sexier.

Yes.

That was her goal.

Well, but campiness comes through, that's for sure. For sure. So did you mention, John, that she has...

She is not sexy? That plunging neckline?

I guess so. There is just a lot going on. It's a lot to take in when you think she is.

She is also the undead at this point. So it's hard to...

John, did you mention she has unnaturally long fingers?

I did not mention that. Yeah, no, they are always sort of wiggling at the camera.

Yeah, exactly. Then we hear the screams of the gravediggers and then the scene cuts away. We are meant to accept that, whatever, a vampire right here has killed the gravediggers. And this is as good a point to mention as any. I assume because of the budget, no actual piece of action really ever occurs on screen.

Not one.

Nothing that would require a special effect or anything. No, no.

There's a big flash once where people dive to the ground. That's the most, yeah.

And so, you would think this movie being firmly camped in the schlocky, pulpy genre, that you would get a lot of over-the-top sexuality and violence and gruesomeness and gore, but again, I suspect because of just the budget, we get absolutely none of any of that.

No. The only truly scary thing, you could argue that vampires get up and her look is scary, is Tor Johnson, sorry, spoiler, when he becomes a zombie, he has like claw marks on his face and they put white eye contacts in that look genuinely creepy, and that's probably it.

It is the best effect of this movie, and I noted that in my notes, but yeah. But that's a ways off yet.

That's a ways, we got a ways to go, folks.

So we can pause in a minute. I want to get some general reactions, but let me get through the last kind of inciting incident here. We then cut to an elderly Bela Lugosi emerging from his house, and like a lot of shots in this movie, they don't feel like they were filmed for this movie, and I don't think they were. So I think pretty, Brad, from what you said, anytime Bela Lugosi is here, that's from like other stuff that's just been edited in here, right?

Correct.

Yes, it's been shoehorned into this.

Okay. So we are told by the narrator who does all of the storytelling work in this film.

Unless an alien is telling you the details of their plot, in which case they're doing the storytelling, but yes.

This is a tell-not-show sort of movie. The narrator tells us that Lugosi is grieving deeply, and then Bela Lugosi's character is immediately hit by a car off screen and killed. Yep.

Yes.

So a couple of things here. I'm not going to stop every time a bad piece of filmmaking happens, but when Bela Lugosi's character is hit by the car, you hear the squeal and the crash, you can still see his shadow on like way back on the lawn of his house. So this car must have lost control and then careened into his front yard or something. But anyway.

He was hit by a car, but not in the street. He was just mowing his lawn.

Next to his, he was standing next to his house.

Yes, but suffice to say that the aliens now have, they've taken two dead bodies, his former, his ex, his dead wife and Pyrrha, and the soon to be him and reanimated them as our first two zombies.

Exactly. So there are 300 funeral scenes in this movie, and this is the second one. We moved to the burial of Bela Lugosi's character at the, obviously made out of cardboard at a scale for children crypt.

The crypt in the graveyard.

The last, a couple of mourners at this, as they leave the grave site and noticed the bodies of the grave diggers that were killed by Vampyrra earlier. It did make me wonder if the cemetery staff had noticed that the grave diggers disappeared.

Who dug this grave, for example. Also, clearly the bodies are like stuff. They're like scarecrows. When they find the bodies, they're not like the actors. They're like scarecrows that have been thrown on the ground.

Yeah.

Yeah. Again.

In my notes, the next two things in my notes are, first, I wrote, my goodness, the narrator. And then I wrote, genuinely the worst acting. So the acting I'm referring to is, so I guess the movie kind of officially kicks off now as the police arrive to investigate these murders. And we are introduced to a character that will be with us through the rest of the film, although he'll only be alive for a short part of the film. And this is Detective or Inspector Clay, who is that Swedish wrestler, I guess you said, Brad? Is that right?

Tor Johnson, who by the way, it is his actual home, Tor Johnson's home, that Bela Lugosi is seen exiting.

Really? Yes. Well, that's another way to make a cheap movie. You can just do it at your friend's houses.

That home still stands. You can look it up online.

Oh, that's amazing. I think we should just refer to him as Tor.

I think so. All right, Tor, that works.

Tor and Van Pyrro, which are not their character's names, but.

I almost grabbed an audio clip of this because he stumbles so badly over his dialogue. I don't know if it's a language issue or just not being a good actor issue.

I think it's all of the above because one of Tor Johnson's famous moments was in a previous film. The way he delivered a line to mix up the grammar, it just lives on in infamy.

Nice. I want to pause here. John, Brad, do you have any, we are what, 20 minutes into this movie, do you have any thoughts about this film so far that we haven't touched on?

I don't think so. I'm looking at my notes that are coming up and it's just like, like who the F is coming out of this crypt and this graveyard is the cheapest thing I've ever seen. And at one point a policeman scratches the side of his head with the barrel of his pistol. It's just like the succession of like, what is happening here?

I think this is when you realize how cheap it is because Tor goes on a long walk trying to figure out what's going on, but he's walking over the same ground. They just keep cutting to it. You realize there's only one set that they keep reusing and repurposing.

I think that's, again, it's to the lack of curiosity. Movies do this all the time. You shoot a car chase and you, on one side of the street, you shoot the car going away and then you shoot it coming back. This is the economy of film. It's how you make movies work, but it's like, he forgot the part where you need to disguise it.

Yeah. Exactly. Long story short here, Tor decides he's going to go investigate around the cemetery while the police are working on the bodies of the gravediggers. He encounters Vampira and an undead Bela Lugosi, right?

Yes, but it's obviously not Bela Lugosi. It's a man holding a cape up over his face.

Yeah. Often when Bela Lugosi appears, and I assume he was not around anymore, they have somebody else playing his role. He has his cape over his face in that really over-the-top Dracula style.

Yes, even though this is-

It looks very silly. It's extremely hard to take this seriously anytime he appears on screen, but whatever. He-

And by the way, this person who is replacing Lugosi in real life was a chiropractor.

Of course, of course.

So Undead, Bela Lugosi and Vampira kill Tor, and Tor will be returning to us before too long. Meanwhile, while this is happening, we have cut over to again, to our hero airplane pilot Trent. He, I guess, lives right- What a coincidence, right? He lives right next to the cemetery with his wife, Paula, who will be menaced by various things as the movie goes on. And he reiterates in a comical scene in which he tells his wife everything he knows, he is complaining that he's not allowed to tell anyone any of what he's seen about the UFOs.

Right.

So I personally was under the impression that when the military told you, you couldn't talk about something that included your spouse, but maybe times were different in the 50s.

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah. I wrote down a quote, he says, he says to another person, I can't say a word, I'm muzzled by army brass, I can't even admit I saw the thing. So well, you are admitting it. So anyway, maybe not even in the top 50 in this film's problems, but it bugged me. All right. Blah, blah, blah.

How was the grammar of their conversation?

Well, it was okay. Like just give me two more minutes and I have a whole, I have a big bone to pick. We're getting there. All right. So I wrote down, I don't even remember, we have another funeral. Oh, for tour, I guess. I told you there's a million funerals. Blah, blah, blah.

My note here is, at this point, I would have picked a different graveyard.

Yes. I also noted that, first of all, I think all of these funerals are taking place like the same night in the same foggy cemetery and this movie-

I don't know why I'm being shocked by the lack of competence here.

This film is never sure what time of day it is. Like is it night? Is it day? Whatever. Anyway, this sort of critique, it almost gets boring, right? I mean, just everything we describe is kind of done in the most amateurish way, but-

Yeah, but just don't- We got a scene coming up with a lot of stock footage of planes, so just don't gloss over that.

Oh, it's coming up, it's coming up, yes. The Ampura is watching the funeral, which is how you know it's taking place. This whole movie, I think, takes place in the same roughly 50 foot square area, but-

Right.

Okay, but the movie really escalates the tension now because new multiple UFOs arrive flying over the city. Three UFOs, and we get this montage of people spotting the saucers and newspaper headlines, and multiple US cities are getting buzzed by the flying saucers, and Wabba.

At this point, I was impressed by the effects because they show one, it flies, and then they showed the second one by itself, then they show a third one, and I'm thinking they only have one model. But by the end of the sequence, they have all three together. And so I was actually impressed that they did it.

It's like Stockholm Syndrome for bad special effects. Yeah.

So John, in a minute, I'm going to give you a chance, because in this stock photography here contains some images of planes. I'm going to give you a second to spotlight that. But let me get through this next little bit. So basically, the governments of Earth respond to this with force. And the movie is going to get really preachy about this later, which is why I mentioned it. And by force, I mean they call up the army and they start shooting at these UFOs. So let's hear the next audio clip, which is the narrator. But before we do, listeners, we're going to do a little segment here called Andy's Script Doctor Corner. So I want you to jot down the narration you hear, and we're going to work together to improve the script. So let's hear it.

Rockets were quickly set up. Colonel Tom Edwards, in charge of saucer field activities, was to make the greatest decision of his career. He made that decision. Colonel Edwards gave the signal to fire.

So this is accompanied by a lot of stock photography of soldiers firing ground artillery rockets at targets in the air, which is very silly. But so we need to talk grammar for a minute, guys. I'm very sorry. Invisible Invaders infected me with this bug. But because this movie has committed to this idea that it's a documentary, it is really causing some problems with the script. So I want to go through the lines we just heard. And listeners, as you go, I want you to pause the podcast. There's like three or four sentences here. I want you to rewrite these sentences in a way that makes things better. Okay. So I'm going to start walking us through this. So we get rockets were quickly set up. This is something, this passive voice we saw a lot in Invisible Invaders. Yes. There's a reason you are taught not to use the passive voice unless you have to. And can I just say that setting up a rocket is the least exciting verb you could possibly do with a rocket. So I'm going to vote that we entirely strike this sentence.

Okay.

Then we get Colonel Tom Edwards in charge of saucer field activities was to make the greatest decision of his career. Okay.

So that tense, this tense confusion is so painful. I don't even know what to do.

This is, I don't know what the technical term for this.

How do you want to do something in the future?

I learned this as called, this is just the future in the past tense. There's probably a more technical term for it. And if you're using it, it's a red flag. Like you've made a wrong turn somewhere. Yeah. And this is followed by, he made that decision, period. Colonel Edwards gave the signal to fire. So let me just propose that all four of these sentences could maybe reduce to one sentence that goes something like, Colonel Tom Edwards made the career-defining decision to fire his rockets at the UFOs or something.

That is way better. And even if you left the four something in there, it'd still be better.

Yes.

All right.

So that's a wrap on Andy's script, Dr. Corner for this episode.

Andy, I think we need to shorten it to Andy Grammar, but not the singer. And I'll see if I can find some Andy Grammar, the singer song to play when you do these segments.

I would be so delighted if we do that. And I hope we get more mangled Grammar in future movies because that was the most fun I had watching this movie was stopping it to write a lot of words of criticism about the narration grammar. But this could all have been solved if they dropped this pretense about it being a documentary, but you know, it's take note, you know, future scriptwriters of Hollywood. All right, I want to pause because while this is happening, we're seeing a lot of stock photography of stuff.

Actually, can we take note right now? Because I think there's a direct line between these kind of films and found footage later. Now, the found footage films solve that problem, but it's documented at the time. It's not post documented. So, they don't have to deal with the tense. So, maybe current script writers have fixed that problem for you. Maybe they saw this and saw what you saw.

Yeah, and let's be generous to Ed Wood and say he wanted to do this documentary style, but he didn't have the technology to do found footage because portable personal use cameras didn't exist yet.

Yeah, I mean, if we zoom out a little bit, obviously, I mean, the era of the newscasters on your TV breathlessly telling you breaking news is pretty new. It's less, it's a decade-ish old, right? Yep. So this would maybe have felt like an exciting, energetic way to tell your story. So I guess that's me being really generous. All right, John, tell us about the aircraft we've seen in this movie and specifically in this montage of jets.

Yeah, so under that narration is a bunch of like stock footage from the Korean War counterimposed with that colonel standing against what looks like a black bank background with some binoculars commenting. And then there are these cuts of airplanes fighting and doing things. So there's another DC-4. Then there's, this one was tough. I couldn't identify it. It's a Grumman F-11 Tiger, which was a Navy plane for about five years in the late 1950s. And then they dropped it in favor of the much more useful F-8, the Vought F-8 Corsair. But the best plane at the end is a squadron of F-86 Sabres, which, as you know, is America's coolest plane ever. Yes, absolutely. So I was very excited about that.

That's great. I tried to identify these artillery pieces that were firing into the air, which they shouldn't be doing. And I thought I did not think the US used many, they looked like those Russian, like, Katyusha rocket trucks. They could be. I did not think America used a ton of these. Maybe listeners write us in. If you just got really excited or upset, please send us an angry tweet.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay, but we gotta.

So yeah, if we hadn't even been in Korea, it might have been World War II, who knows?

Yeah, I think that we are seeing some World War II era stuff. But all right, we gotta keep rolling this movie. We learn comically in that same thing where they don't have the budget to show you anything interesting happening. We learn that the UFOs have attacked a town or something and maybe killed a bunch of people there.

Possibly.

Possibly is unclear. And then the biggest scene shift in this movie happens now because we shift over to the perspective of the alien invaders.

Yes, they were in an office.

Yeah. So tell us what our aliens look like here.

They look like people with satin outfits on with big belts.

It's strange when someone that looks like a middle-aged regular person talks about the Earth creatures. It's like, do you not see some similarities between your physiology and the that of the Earth creatures?

Honestly, when the aliens were talking to each other, clearly there's supposed to be some tension between Eros and the great leader and Tana, and something's going on here, but I won't lie, even my brain just kind of turned off. I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah.

So I should also say, my attention started to really, I struggled starting in about here to keep my focus on this film. So it might get a little fuzzier going forward. I do have two audio clips I want to play in quick succession just to make producer Brad's life more difficult. We're going to hear the alien leader, he's called the ruler, which made me think of a school ruler, which made me giggle throughout the rest of this movie.

I would describe him as laconic about that.

He's talking to Eros, who is like the captain of this small alien squadron that has invaded Earth, and Eros' assistant, Etana, right? So let's hear, they're talking about what their next move is after all this disaster that has just unfolded.

What plan will you follow now?

Plan 9. It's been absolutely impossible to work through these Earth creatures. Their soul is too controlled.

Plan 9. Ah, yes, Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrode shortens opinion on pituitary grounds of recent dead. Have you attempted any of this plan as yet?

Yes, Excellency.

How successful has it been?

We have risen too so far. We shall be just as successful on more.

The living, they have no suspicion of your movements.

We had to dispose of one policeman. However, none of those risen have been seen, at least not by anyone who still remains alive.

It's too bad it must be handled this way, but it must. Those who we take from the grave will lead the way for our other operations.

All right, so that's them talking about, that's the titular Plan 9, of course. And there's a little shorter conversation that takes place after that we'll hear here, because I was just really desperately digging for anything zombie related in this film, any bit pieces of zombie meat we could get. And the most I could find is in this next quote with the aliens where they talk in a slightly more specifics about how they're going to animate the dead. But what were you gonna say?

I just wanted to call it the mention of the pituitary gland here, because that becomes a staple of horror and sci-fi movies. I think I Come in Peace, isn't that? Maybe that was the Adrenal Gland, but like, there's many, I'm trying to think, there's a horror movie about somebody with like an elevated or overactive pituitary gland, and that gives them like psychic powers and stuff. And I should have done more research, but like, this feels to me like something I've seen in horror and sci-fi movies more than once.

I have, yeah, you're absolutely right. All right, let's hear their slightly more detailed talk about this in the next audio clip.

What do you think will be the next obstacle the Earth people will put in our way?

Well, as long as they can think, we'll have our problems. But those whom we're using cannot think. They are the dead, brought to a simulated life by our electrode guns. You know, it's an interesting thing when you consider the Earth people who can think are so frightened by those who cannot, the dead.

Would you describe that as a really interesting thing, Brad and John?

It's very strange because, yeah, like, why is he saying that? I don't quite follow his logic, I guess. There's a lot of logic like that in this movie that I don't follow.

So the reason I pulled that is because, well, this movie does not have a lot to say about the zombie genre. No. This helps us understand exactly what we're dealing with, right? These are mindless beings. They are scientifically created and their default state is mindless aggression, as we're going to see. They don't distinguish friend from foe and they must be controlled by these technological devices like electrode guns or something like that.

Can I comment on this too? I put it in my notes and now I feel like I can't back it up, but I feel like Tor was actually raised as a zombie by Vampira.

That's coming up. Believe it or not, it's coming up in the very next scene.

All right. Tell us about it and then I have thoughts.

You bet. Well, okay, good. Let's just scurry our way there. We do cut back to our hero, Captain Trent and his wife Paula, blah, blah, blah. They have a somewhat uncomfortable talk about what Paula does with Jeff's pillow while he's away. I kept wanting for the camera for them scene to switch, but it didn't. It kept not switching.

Yeah. Naming the character Eros and this pillow. It's just like there's these hints of sexuality that Ed Wood puts in his movies that are just sort of, I don't know. I think it's just who he is. They just come into the movie.

I think so too. This is a completely disposable scene, but it did feel like a movie that is otherwise quite lacking in gratuitous. It felt like they were trying to sneak it in around the edges a little bit. Matt's reading too much into it. But all right, then we get kind of our final big zombie moment. Some incomprehensible stuff happens. Like Bela Lugosi and his full Dracula get up emerges from the cemetery. He breaks into Jeff's house where Paula is in bed. I don't know why he does this. He's doing his Dracula cape. We get a lot of scenes of Bela Lugosi, kind of vamping for like a photo shoot or something in his Dracula get up.

I think that's just footage that Edward wanted to have.

I think it is, yes.

From six, four years ago or whatever.

Then we get to the genuinely exciting from a Zombie Strains perspective thing that I think, John, you have been eager to get to.

Itching.

And we do, we cut back to the grave and we see that a recent grave is sort of pulsing. Like something is trying to push its way out from the grave. This is Tor, Captain Tor's grave.

Right.

And, you know, long story short, Captain Tor emerges from this grave and I was trying to remember if this is our first, this is a definitely feels like that iconic, like zombie clawing its way out of a grave. And I was trying to think if we've seen it before.

I feel like we haven't.

Yeah, not quite like this at least.

No, so that was one part of it. But I, so I took this note and I want to see if you agree, because I'm not willing to die on this hill. But doesn't Vampira essentially turn Tor into a zombie? I know that the zombies are controlled with the electro guns, but I thought, is this actually contagion? Is Vampira turning Tor into a zombie or is it not? So I can see that, yes. What's that?

I think not, because they clearly say that their weaponry, their technology is what brings the dead back.

Okay, fair enough. So then I won't die on that hill.

So I think the movie tells us that that's not what's happening. But if you are just from watching the movie, I think you probably would think that Vampira had brought him back.

No. So I think you're right. But it feels close to me. So I just thought I'd mention it. But yes, this emergence from the grave is great actually. Tor Johnson as zombie and emerging zombie is the best zombie part of this whole movie.

I agree.

Vampira is great, but she doesn't do anything. She just wanders around.

Yeah, he's great because first of all, he's got those eye contacts or something like that in his eyes that make them look all glazed over. And he wears, you would recognize it if you saw it. And Brad said it was made into a mask. He's got this really exaggerated grimace on his face.

Yeah, like his mouth is hanging open and his eyes are huge.

I bet if you think like vintage zombie, this probably is what pops to mind, something like this, so.

I was expecting during the grave scene to see a hand pop through the dirt, which is what we later see in zombie films doesn't happen. I think that may have been a budget issue. But I think if you go back, Wanga is the other film where there are corpses in the grave, but it's a not covered grave. So they're just lying in a hole and they rise up. This is the first one where they come out of the dirt.

Yep, I think you're right about that, Andy. It feels like in Wanga, they're in boxes that are open and then she reanimates them with her voodoo. Here, it's the zombie rising up on its own.

Yeah, so, okay. So this is the point in the movie where my attention really started to wander. So I kind of apologize. I am gonna kind of just move quickly through the rest of this. I wanna say a couple of things. So first, all of the trouble the aliens have gone through and they have managed to resurrect exactly three corpses. Correct. Like this is, we're gonna learn shortly, their plan is to resurrect whole armies of corpses and use them as the vanguard in an invasion. But the time scale of this operation is looking pretty ludicrous.

And the leader or whoever, the ruler, is putting pressure on Eros to get his stuff done. He removes ships from his command, basically saying, Plan 9 is not working, yeah.

So, this is the part of the movie where we get the kind of clearest statement of this movie's message, because the government has managed to interpret the aliens' message. Did you note down the piece of technology they used to interpret the aliens' message, John?

It's the language computer.

But what's its scientific name, please, John?

What do the aliens call it?

I don't remember. Dictorobotary.

The Dictorobotary, also known as the Lang computer.

So they use this to interpret the aliens' message, which we've already been told what it is. So these aliens are the most sneery, condescending that you could possibly be. But they say they don't want to destroy Earth, they actually want to save it. As Brad, I think, as we discussed earlier in this episode, the aliens believe that with the development of nuclear weapons, humans have basically developed too quickly, to develop destructive technology too fast. And they say that there is really only one level of destructive bomb above the H bomb. I'm trying to see if I wrote down what that was.

It's the Solonite bomb.

The Solonite, yeah. And that is a weapon that actually ignites sunlight.

Yeah. Now, was this part of the recording? Because I know they discussed this sort of in person later.

I don't really remember. I guess some of these details come later because the aliens later lecture a separate group of people again with the same message.

I have a sound clip from that lecture, but yes. Okay. The aliens basically say, look, we've been trying to communicate with you. You weren't sophisticated enough, but now you've figured it out. It's the same theme and plot as the day the Earth showed still, roughly. It's humans need to be saved from themselves because of their technology.

Ian, zooming out, this is a theme of this era of sci-fi and speculative fiction. Sure. Technology is out of control. We've built stuff, but we don't have the maturity or the moral stature to know how to use it. We're going to blow ourselves up if we're not careful before we develop the wisdom we need to use these weapons.

I don't want to skip a ton of the movie, but I do have a clip during that lecture about the Solonite bomb. Do you have plot stuff you want to cover in here?

Let me try and quickly get us to that. I do have some plot stuff. Meanwhile, the head alien is getting frustrated that this is taking so long, unsurprisingly. Again, we have raised three corpses so far. He orders that they are going to need to convince the humans they need to amp up the stakes a little bit. They order the Bela Lugosi zombie to be sent to a house. They are going to make some kind of demonstration. The house Bela Lugosi attacks is of course Captain Pilot Trent's house. Bela Lugosi appears. He knocks out a policeman, but then the aliens zap him with a ray that reduces him to a skeleton.

I think it's because the communication with their alien technology was severed, that he collapses and becomes a skeleton.

I thought that they were trying to just make a dramatic statement of some kind.

No, I don't think so. I think they point out like they shoot him with the gun and it doesn't work, but when they sever that connection, then he turns into a skeleton.

Okay, well, the aliens lose control of their zombie and he turns into a skeleton. So the humans all rush into the cemetery. This is Trent, a bunch of police. I think Paula is with them.

Colonel whatever his face is there.

I don't remember exactly what this refers to, but I wrote, quote, some misogyny in my notes at this point.

They won't let Evelyn go into the graveyard without her. She's got to stay in the car.

That's right. Yeah. So they're investigating the crypt. I did note we get a new term for the zombies here. Did either of you guys notice this? It was weirdies.

Weirdies, that's right.

I missed that.

Not weirdos, weirdies.

Weirdies, yeah. So the aliens are waiting in their ship in the cemetery, and they see that the humans are getting closer and closer to finding them.

Right. And Tor abducts Evelyn and starts taking her back to the ship.

Yes. So the humans are all converging on the UFO. I skipped a part earlier where the aliens lost control of Tor, and he almost killed one of them. It just demonstrated that without the aliens' direct control, the zombies just go feral. Correct. Anyway, the humans find the UFO, and they come into the UFO with their guns out. We have regressed a decade or so because we are back to the air when people held their handguns against their torsos.

Right. Scratch their chins with them, throw them around. Also, why does the Detective Inspector, whose name I've forgotten, have a basket of guns? He's like, you need a gun? Here, here's a gun.

You?

Here's another gun. Apparently, policemen just carry around piles of guns.

How else are you going to carry all your guns, John? Come on. I think we are at the point probably for your audio clip, John, because once they're all in the UFO, the alien starts again lecturing the humans.

So he lectures him about the Solonite bomb. The point he's making is that humans are so dumb, all they want is more power, and they don't realize that they're going to kill themselves. He accuses them of wanting to make this bomb. Trent says, but wouldn't making this bomb just make our nation stronger? To which our aeros responds.

So what if we do develop this Solonite bomb? We'd be even a stronger nation than now.

Stronger.

You see, you see, you're stupid minds.

Stupid, stupid.

I like John, I like how you're mouthing the words as he says it.

That is the most memorable clip from this movie, and I feel like I see it like semi-frequently. You know, like just dropped, stupid, stupid. It's just so great.

There's another line where he says, I thought it might be in your clip, he goes, all you of Earth are idiots.

Yes, and I feel like maybe this is how Edward feels about people.

So say what you will about this movie. It has a message it is trying to convey.

I hate to admit that I agree with the message, maybe we don't need to make so many gigantic bombs.

I don't know that he's wrong. I will say there is some real confusion in the scene about whether the universe consists of our specific solar system or if there's more to it than that.

It's a little unclear, but they basically say if you ignite this bomb in the sun, it will destroy all the stars.

Yeah, exactly. So my notes actually say blah, blah, blah, talk, talk, talk, so that's not just me improving that.

Yeah, this goes on forever. I mean, we could just get to the end here if you wanted to, unless you had anything big you wanted to make.

Oh yeah, we're almost to the end. Just one more minute. All right, so the tour zombies picked up Paula, the police.

Is it Paula or Evelyn? I can't remember, I'm sorry.

For some reason, I started writing down Paula.

It's Paula.

Paula.

Okay. Sorry about the Evelyn folks.

The police knock out the zombie. It turns out the zombie is not really very hard to stop after all.

It is resistant to bullets, but not a whack on the head bias.

Yes, exactly. A fight breaks out between the aliens and the humans and the UFO. This is like the big climactic thing. Jeff, Captain Trent, that is, knocks out the alien and runs for it. The UFO catches on fire. In special effects, so bad, they almost work. We see the flaming UFO take off and fly over the city.

Can I just say, this is my second favorite line. Our humans are watching the flying saucer fly away and the inspector says, well, you have to admit, they're far more advanced than we are. Then you cut to the flaming, wobbling UFO flying across the cityscape. I just thought that had to be intentional, but it probably wasn't.

That's even the better thing about it. Inside, Tana is running around in a panic. Apparently, despite being one of two crewmen on the spaceship, she hasn't been trained in spaceship operation at all.

She's able to get it take off. First of all, to get it to take off, she sits down at a desk with some equipment on it. I'm like, oh, that's the pilot console. I thought she was just going to destroy some paperwork or something like that.

The zombies are now all released from the control, the aliens. We see that the Tor zombie turned into a skeleton. Correct.

What I love is the same skeleton they use for Bela Lugosi because those two people have the same stature completely.

And then the UFO explodes and someone mentions that like, someone mentions I think that the vampire must be skeletonized too. And I assume they didn't even have the budget to haul that skeleton out for like a third shot of the Vampira.

I think she might have spent a day or two wandering around the set doing her Vampira thing and was like, I'm not coming back tomorrow. Like I am done.

So then we get to priceless quotes from the narrator that closed us out.

Amazing Criswell.

One of them is, can you prove that it didn't happen?

Right.

Which granted, I don't know if I could. And the other I wrote down is, God help us in the future. So.

Yes, I love, it ties in with the beginning when he says, it's about the future where we will all spend the rest of our lives. That's one of those things that's so dumb it made me go like, wait, is that deep? No, it's just, wait, I don't know, I'm not sure.

Exactly. Okay, so that's a wrap on Plan 9 From Outer Space. John, I propose since we've been talking for quite a while that we just jump right into our questions here.

Let's just do it.

Okay. John, is there a hero party in Plan 9 From Outer Space?

There 100% is a hero party.

Okay. How does the party do? How many survive? How many die?

See, I don't think Vampira or I don't think Tor is part of the hero party. I think they all survive, is what I'll say, because I don't think Tor is part of it.

Yeah, I agree. Is there a zombie horde in this movie?

Three zombies do not make a horde.

They do not. We get one scene where two zombies are closing on a person. They've kind of flanked him, but a horde doesn't flank it, needs to surround. How are zombies destroyed or killed in this movie?

Well, it's interesting because they are resistant to bullets and they're sort of impervious until this connection.

I didn't mention it. When Tor was being attacked, he did take a bunch of shots with hilariously pop gun sounding gun effects. He seemed to be shooting at their feet. But I think we were supposed to take from that, but that they were just shrugging off the bullets.

Yeah. So nothing can kill them except for severing their connection with their controller.

Right. Or bombing them lightly on the back of the head. Correct. Is the world threatened in this?

They tell us it is, yes.

Yeah. I mean, if we go with the movie's fiction, the world definitely is threatened, right? Correct. What's the kill count here?

So the zombies do kill, they kill, is Tor killed by a zombie?

So they kill the two gravediggers.

Yes.

They kill Tor.

Yeah.

I think that might be it.

Who kills Bela Lugosi? Is it Vampira?

No, he just, he skeletonizes.

He gets hit by a car. He gets hit by a car.

Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, he got hit by a car.

So yeah, we'll call it three.

Okay. What type of zombie strain are we dealing with here? Is there anything new about the strain?

They are science-created zombies, and I can't really think of anything new about them.

I don't think so either. Yeah. Are there any zombie firsts that we want to call out?

I would agree with you that digging itself out of the grave, at least is the first in the movies that we've seen.

Yeah. Digging out in this way, they don't show all of it that you expect, but the implication is there. We're pretty close to seeing a hand pop out of the earth.

Yeah. I don't know if this is really a first, but Tor's makeup with the white cataract contact lenses and the scratches on his face, and the suit, he looks a lot like a zombie from Day of the Dead, in my mind.

I agree. It's a pretty good zombie look, to be honest.

Yeah.

Also, the pituitary gland is a first mention, although it's similar to Revenge of the Zombies, where they talk about the brain stem.

Yes.

Correct. But yeah, I think the pituitary gland is like a thing in movies now. Maybe it's an inside joke, is what we'll call it.

And I think the film you were thinking of was From Beyond?

Yes.

Oh, yes. Of course. All right. So John, let's move to your four pillars of the zombie genre. Does this movie feature an apocalypse?

It threatens one, right? Because the aliens are threatening, but I don't think there is actually an apocalypse.

Yeah. Is Contagion featured in this movie?

I wanted to argue yes, but I don't think I can. I think we'll just have to say no.

Yeah. I respect what you're trying to do there, but I don't think we can make that.

No. It's not quite there.

Are there tough moral choices in this movie?

Not really.

Only the actors have said yes to be in the film.

Those are moral failings. Yes.

Are there loved ones turning against you?

I think the cops did love their beloved teammate Tor, and he does turn against them, so I'm going to say yes.

I'm going to give him like half credit on that one.

Half a point for that one.

Yeah. Did the poster sell this movie accurately?

Unfortunately, no, because it's a good poster.

Yeah. It's a good poster for a different sci-fi movie.

Yes, exactly.

All right, John, I'm going to hand the baton off to you for your questions now.

So what about paranoia as a major theme and dark secrets? Do you think those made it into this movie?

So I do. So it is rather striking how strong and over-the-top the message of you can't trust your government is in this movie. Right. I normally think of that as having started in the 60s and really, really coming to blossom with Watergate. But obviously, it is not a new concept that the government is hiding stuff from you. And I don't know. This is me saying I would like to learn more about this. I wonder if just like the development of atomic weaponry, the rapid advances in technology, much of which was militarized, the rapid move for the space race. I wonder if it just sort of set up this environment in which it was easy to believe that the government knew a lot more than they were letting on to you. What do you think about that?

Because it does suggest, we didn't play a lot of them, but there's that scene where the two military officers are talking about whether UFOs really exist, and they're like, well, of course they do. Also in that scene, I love that the general who's in charge of the colonel that is in this movie has a map of the United States, and then just a random map of some stars, like some space. But I think that that is what that scene suggests, right? So the government knows more about this than you do. It's definitely the suggestion of that scene, so for sure.

I would add that there's this general fear of humans.

Yes.

Because this movie is saying that we're becoming too powerful for our own good, and we don't even realize that.

Yeah, I agree.

Which ties into the Atomic Age and all that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there is, so just to push us a little further, probably beyond what this movie can really support, is it is in later zombie movies, it is a trope that the government was like kind of responsible maybe for creating the zombies, right?

Yeah, 28 days later.

Yeah, they let a virus get out or they were doing unethical experiments that went wrong or whatever. And this movie doesn't quite go so far, but in this movie, the government is deciding secretly and without consulting its population, they are deciding to respond to the aliens' overtures of peace with violence. Yes, correct. So the government is bringing this disaster does not come because the alien plan is so dumb, but the government is bringing this upon its own people in a sense. So I see a few echoes of that, like the government created zombie virus gets out.

Yeah, I agree.

All right, go on.

How will our movie heroes change? Did they get younger, more diverse social backgrounds? What do you think?

I don't think so. This feels you could have pulled this cast out of any of the movies we watched from the 40s.

Yeah, it feels like a throwback. Like we had been getting younger or more daring characters, the introduction of romance, but here we've got a married couple.

Yeah. There's no real romance. There's no sexiness to this movie. It's all white people. They're all blandly 30-year-old professionals. Nothing too exciting here.

Have science and sci-fi taken a bigger role in zombie movies according to this movie?

I don't know a bigger role, but certainly these zombies are 100% sci-fi zombies, I guess.

Yeah, for sure. Have zombies and zombie ideas left its Caribbean roots and moved into a broader American world?

I think so. This movie never talks about what's happening outside of the US. When it talks about the aliens threatening the world, they only ever mention American cities. But I think the implication is that the whole world is threatened here. We are a long ways away now from four white people with romantic tensions and family drama get sucked into a sordid tale in the depths of the Caribbean. We are a long ways from that here, I guess. But so far, I don't even know if we can see too much connecting tissue. Go on.

Yeah. Well, I was just about to say that. I think that the idea of the reanimated mindless dead person is here and has no relation to our early movies at all. It's free from that, so that allows things like Night of the Living Dead to happen in the future.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So that leads us to our final couple of questions here, John. So first, would you and I survive in the zombie world?

God, I hope so. I just feel like I could outsmart everyone in this movie. I hope so. I'm going to say yes.

And these might be our slowest moving zombies.

Yes.

They're, if they're not our slowest, they're awfully slow.

If Tor got to hold me though, I think it would be trouble.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

All you have to do is go somewhere other than that cemetery and you're fine. Go to McDonald's down the street, you're fine.

Okay, is this a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies?

I feel like the plot is to reanimate the dead. So I'm going to say it's a zombie movie, even though it only has three zombies.

Yeah, I'm on the fence, but yeah, the plot, the movie itself centers the zombies enough. They talk about them enough that I think we need to say they're central to this film's premise.

Yes.

And lastly, do you, this is a biggie, do you recommend this movie either generally or to our legion of freakish zombie-loving fans?

Okay, so I would say that everyone should watch this movie. That's not the same as recommending it, it's saying everybody should. I honestly, a double feature of this and the film Ed Wood I think is delightful and you might have fun doing that. But in terms of zombie stuff, there's almost but not quite nothing here.

Yeah. Yeah. So here is my realization. I am not bothered by the poor filmmaking and the bad props and the bad acting. As much as I was frustrated by how boring this movie was, yes, and that's what made me think like, what is a bad movie? This movie is not bad because it has terrible acting and bad props. It's bad because it doesn't ring an entertaining story out of that stuff.

It's just people talking about what they're going to do next and what to do differently. Every time somebody goes to do something, they say they're going to do it and then you see them do it, and then they, there's no economy in this movie.

If it had had a bigger budget to show us some of the really exciting stuff, my answer might be different, but I cannot recommend this as anything other than a curiosity. I bet you, if you go to YouTube and watch this, I don't think you'll last more than 15 minutes, honestly. I found it pretty tedious. For our Zombie fans specifically, if you could just single out the tour rising from the grave bit, I think that's worth that five minutes is worth watching because tours are pretty cool looking zombie and the punching out of the earth is pretty iconic zombie. So I guess do that, but other than that, there's not much here for Zombie fans, I don't think. Okay, and that means that we are to the very close of this episode. The scariest part of the episode, as I like to say, because it's when Brad's going to reveal to us what we're watching next.

Well, I mean, it can't be worse, can it? We just watched the worst movie of all time. What could possibly happen?

That's not a challenge, Brad.

We are staying in 1959, but we're getting close to the end of the year. We're November of 59 when the movie that comes out is, here's your poster.

Yes. This is where it's at, guys.

Teenage Zombies. This is our fifth movie of 1959. I wonder if we're going to have another year like this until we get to like 2004.

Oh, wait till the 70s. They're pretty busy.

Oh yeah, you're right.

All right, there's a lot to unpack on this. First, I'll read the little subtitle. Young pawns thrust into pulsating cages of horror in a sadistic experiment.

Oh dear, maybe I spoke too soon.

The main picture is of a gorilla. Please tell me it's that guy who owned the gorilla suit that was in like-

Ray Corrigan?

Yeah. He's lifting up a scantily clad woman and behind them is a person in what looks like-

A jail cell?

Ostrich or something in the jail with them? Anyway, they're in a jail cell.

I think that's like lab equipment, not an ostrich.

You could be right. Can I say that the illustration of the woman whose shirt is coming open being held by the oversized gorilla and the gorilla is terrible? It's a terrible drawing, drawn by somebody who doesn't know how to draw.

No signs of zombies really on this poster.

Other than the word.

And if there's something more menacing than that gorilla, I guess I'm excited to learn what it is.

And the name of the movie company is Governor Films, which fills me with delight.

Well, this will be our first movie with the word teenage in the title, but I'm quite certain it won't be the last.

All right, folks. Well, we're excited for next week. Hey, if you haven't subscribed or rated us in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we would appreciate it. It really helps people find the show. So you can hear me on my other podcast, The Splat Book with my friends Ben and Jess, where we talk about all things role-playing games.

And similarly, you can hear me on my role-playing podcast, Role for Topic, where my co-host Chris and I talk about, well, role-playing games.

And I'm on Multiplex Overthruster, where we watch the summer movies of the 80s, and we're just finishing the summer of 1983.

And your latest episode, as of this recording, was Strange Brew with Bob and Doug McKenzie, which was an absolute delight. And how did I go this far without realizing that was based on Hamlet? I mean, the name of the brewery is the Elsinore Brewery. So on that note, we'll see you next time. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at Zombie Strains. All of this helps like-minded people find the show. See you next time.