LogFAQs > #984504405

I know special effects were hard in 1959, but some of these regular effects dont work either. The pilots are flying with what looks like half a paper plate and the most interesting part of the movie was the stewardess getting stuck in the curtain that she was desperately trying to keep closed so you couldnt see the nothing behind her. The sets in this movie look like they were made by elementary school children that were subsequently put down for how bad they were at art. There is that tomb that the old man Bela Lugosi is buried in and the fact that thing appeared in a real, actual movie is insane. Everything looks way too small. I laughed out loud when the pilot described the flying saucer as looking like a cigar because as far as I know that isnt what a cigar looks like. That isnt what a flying saucer is supposed to look like, either. Thats what maybe a doorknob looks like hanging from a string.

This is another film in this list where the acting isnt great. It isnt as bad as some of the other movies on this list, which almost makes it worse. This is boring bad acting instead of campy bad acting and there really isnt any role here that is so bad that it becomes fun. My favorite character was Vampira who made the very wise choice of never speaking and just leering at people behind bushes. My second favorite character is someone who I swear is time traveling Joe Lo Truglio, who is the cop who keeps repeatedly getting the shit kicked out of him by zombies and vampires. He is very good at standing there while someone beats him about the face and head. Other than that, the performances here are very wooden and they are being out acted by a guy who appears to have been dead for three years. But the problem is it feels like standard bad acting. It is bad acting in the way your local theater troupe is bad acting, and it is normal bad acting.

I do think at least this movie does get into the so bad it is funny territory from time to time. It isnt a good movie but it did make me laugh. I did get a good laugh at the end while the people are looking up at the spaceship and theyre like you have to admire them. They truly are more advanced to us and then there is a hard cut to the spaceship and it is literally on fire and the woman alien is shrieking and it EXPLODES over Hollywood. Thats a bonkers ending and that sort of unintentional comedy is the only thing really saving the movie at all. Ive described so many movies this way now, but the only entertainment value comes from getting drunk and mocking this with your friends. The sort of unintentional comedy a lot of these films manage to capture through sheer incompetence is funny, but I feel like it isnt as funny if you dont have someone to sit there and jeer at it with you. Why would you watch the dumbest movies ever made if you are just sitting there chuckling to yourself? I feel like thats what my watches of these movies are missing, honestly. Im watching Plan 9 From Outer Space and I am laughing some, but I would be laughing a lot more if I was watching this with people.

Like, taken at face value, this is an absolutely abysmal experience. It doesnt make sense and it is horrifically shot and nobody can act and it was put together for whatever money the director could find in his pocket. It isnt genuinely good. It is sometimes funny but not because it wants to be. Thats the nicest thing I have to say about half the movies on this list, honestly. Sometimes funny by mistake isnt necessarily something Im looking for in a movie. And, unfortunately, even though Plan 9 From Outer Space is sometimes funny by mistake, it isnt as funny as other movies on this list. I dont think it has that same charm or that same weirdness that Im looking for. I think the movies Im going to rank highest on this list have a sort of campy feel to them, or at least something genuinely good or fun or something, I dont know. This doesnt have any of this. This is a cult classic just because of how incompetent and insane the whole thing is, and that I think is going to get this towards the bottom of this list. Whatever the hell that might mean.

Inviso:
Even in my childhood, I can remember this movie being touted as one of the worst films ever made, but with campy adoration. Heck, the movie Ed Wood was ultimately based around the creation of this mess, because it was such a fascinating story in and of itself. But after watching itits just a little bit under the okay line for me. I havent watched a ton of 50s B-movies, but my general understanding is that they all follow a very similar formula with some alien or monstrous threat and a lot of dull, exposition scenes in between attacks of varying levels of competence. The exposition really stands out here, because those are the scenes where, for the most part, you dont get to experience the fun incompetence of the film-making; its just dry explanation of science or what have you. Its a bit hard to get through, in other words.

But there IS fun to be gleaned from this: from the choice to give a big, burly guy a speaking role (even though he absolutely should NOT have a speaking role), all because hes eventually going to become a lumbering brute character later in the film; to the utter hilarity of fighting Bela Legosis not-a-vampire, only for him to fall to the ground in defeatand his body is replaced by a pristine skeleton. The same pristine skeleton we see later on when the much MUCH bigger brute is similarly defeated. Throw in some cheap sets and general buffoonery, and I can at least understand why this became a cult classic, even if its not necessarily my speed.

Good, Bad Movie Grade: D
Best Bad Aspect: The general cheapness of the production.