Plan 9 From Outer Space

Thanks mostly to a couple of writers in the early 80s, there is a widespread belief that one of the worst films of all time is Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space. This irritates me for a bunch of reasons. One of them is that it isn't even the worst film Ed Wood made. He did make some films that can be hard to sit through. Plan 9 is not one of them.

It also bothers me because, whatever else you can say about Plan 9, it is watchable and entertaining. If you are watching ironically, you are having fun, and if you aren't you're having fun. There are literally thousands of movies that are completely mediocre and unwatchably dull. Nobody ever puts them on "worst movie lists."  Some will at least talk about films so bad they're good.

The main reason that it bothers me is this: Ed Wood's movies cannot be judged by comparison with other films of the period.  Ed Wood is a legitimate outsider artist. Comparing his movies to contemporary films like The Day The Earth Stood Still is ridiculous in the same way that it would be to compare the work of Henry Darger to the work of Kurt Vonnegut.

Darger grappled with mental illness, worked a series of day jobs, and produced his writing in the evenings. It does not seem that he did the work for anything but the work itself. His work was discovered after his death and became a focus of fascination. Stylistically crude, and obsessively detailed and illustrated, his work is not like the work of anyone else's. It is simultaneously innocent and sexual, peace-loving and blood-thirsty. It is a window into the mind of the author, and for all of its problems, fascinating.

Ed Wood was an outsider in mid-twentieth century America. He fought depression his entire life, enjoyed cross-dressing to the point of obsession, and battled with alcohol addiction off and on for most of his life.

Unlike Darger, Wood wanted an audience for his writing. He wanted to be in charge of his films, to make them exactly as he wanted under his own terms. While he would make serious compromises due to budget, he remained true to his vision. This results in occasional scenes of unintentional hilarity, but this never seemed to bother him.

The biopic by Tim Burton annoys me because it paints his relationship with Bela Lugosi as him using an old man in the last years of his life, and that does not seem to be accurate. Their friendship seems to have been mutual, and based on deep respect of each other and their status as outsiders. Lugosi never felt himself appreciated in Hollywood, and Wood, well...Hollywood wasn't ready for him.  Yes, it is true, Wood did enable Lugosi's terrible addiction to alcohol and paraldehyde. Wood didn't judge people for things like that.

Eking out a meager living with his films only lasted so long, and he began to write pornographic novels, and it is this that paid his bills most of his life. He died in squalor.

His films remain, and many of them make the "so bad, it's good lists." None of them belong there.  We need to assess his films for what they were.  They are technically shaky, made for pennies, borrowing props and occasionally stealing stock from Hollywood studios. Living in the underbelly of Hollywood allowed Wood access to materials. Had he lived in Wisconsin, his films would have been impossible.

Wood embraced his own strangeness without shame.  His first film, Glen or Glenda is all about transvestism. He starred. It's an amazingly honest film, trying to build legitimate bridges for people to understand the fetish.  I may do an in depth on that one.

His films are filled with no name actors, and open homosexuals and people with political beliefs that made it hard for them to find jobs. Nobody was going after the art of Ed Wood.  He flew under the radar. The roughness of his films and the genre trappings he used meant that nobody took them seriously.  Knowing what we know of him, and his outsider status, we can view his films very differently.

And Plan 9 might be the finest example of what I mean when I talk about his subversive genius.  It is, on one level a science-fiction/horror quickie. It's also a very funny and pointed satire about the military mind, mid-twentieth century America, and the nature of authority. And I feel it's meant to be.

And with that...I'll start the film.

The film opens with Criswell, an out homosexual, and minor celebrity here, to try to draw investors to the film.  I maintain that, Wood's dialogue is tin-eared but kind of brilliant in its own way.  It has a cadence unlike anyone else's.  Talking of our interest in the future because it is where we will spend the rest of our lives.

Criswell was a known and open fraud, and to have an open fortune-teller fraud, repeatedly calling the audience "My friends," claiming the story we are about to watch is based on true facts and secret testimony.  This is a contempt for the argument by authority, and he knows what he's doing.  This speech ends asking us if we're able to handle the horrors of Grave Robbers From Outer Space.  This is one of the titles the movie was released under.

The credits are very business-like, and this film actually had one of his higher budgets, and you can tell.

Criswell narrates over this graveyard scene featuring Bela Lugosi's character at the funeral of his wife.  This scene was filmed without usable sound due to noise in the background. Bela's performance here is perfectly adequate.  It's one of only a few scenes that Bela filmed before his death, sadly.

This is not a convincing airplane cockpit, and yes, that is a shower curtain, and the pilots have multiple shadows from studio lights, but I maintain that we can't really consider technical shortcomings as mattering much. This is like filmed theater. Suspend disbelief.

Also, here is the first flying saucer.  Not a paper plate as commonly claimed but a model of some kind.

The actors in this plane scene are no more stilted than most actors in films of this period.  Honestly.

It is extremely funny to many people to see the scenes crosscutting here from the gravediggers finishing their chores in daylight to Vampira coming from her tomb in pitch darkness, and I'll admit, this is some lousy editing.  But it also gives her first appearance a genuine sense of the uncanny.  Many have made a point of how stiff an unnatural her movements are.  I dig it.

Now we see Bela, again narrated, leaving his home. This was the last footage ever shot of a great actor. He died days later. Wood made the decision to carry on. Some of called this thoughtless and nasty. I think that a) it's what Lugosi would have wanted, and b) that he had put time effort and love into this film.  Also, Lugosi's presence in the film was one of the primary ways he got funding, and he couldn't afford NOT to use this footage.  I will admit, he might have found a better physical match for Lugosi, but his backers really wanted a role for his stand in.

And so here we go.  "The Doctor" steps of screen to an ignominious end unable to go on without his wife.

This is a very low budget cemetery set, and it is hard to take seriously, but he had a budget like what most amateur theatre companies would have...this is a stage set.  Pretend this is a play.

Also, I don't think I ever realized Vampira's character was the dead wife until just now.  That's funny because I've watched this movie a lot, and it's in the narration and EVERYTHING.

This actress here is not good. The gentleman is much better. You get what you get when you're basically getting actors for beer money.  I'm not sure, but I think she was a relative of one of the financers.

Casting Tor Johnson as Chief Inspector Clay to investigate the death of the gravediggers makes me laugh every time. The other actors do a good job helping him along with this scene. Honestly, the thickness of his accent, and his semi-broken English makes this otherwise bland character more interesting.  How did a Swedish guy end up here in SoCal as the head of police?  Is he just that brilliant.  Now I want to write a book.  Unfortunately, he dies really soon, so Tor can do what he does best...look really weird and scary.

But, I love this about Wood.  No other director would have given Tor the chance at this dialogue, and you know, it grows on me, this scene, a little more every time.  That character seems like a real guy. There's an inner life there.  Tor acted his heart out, and it kinda works. The men he works with clearly respect and like him.  It's neat.

So now he's wandering the graveyard with the flashlight, with some mist.

The other detectives are standing by the bodies, noting the savagery of the attacks and a strange odor.  We cut to this suburban couple, one of whom is the pilot from the earlier scene, the other is his wife.  They discuss his saucer sighting.  There's a dialogue weirdness here.  He describes the craft as shaped like a cigar, not a saucer. I suspect they had a special effect change after this was filmed.

And then, just as he's discussing how he can't talk about it, they get buzzed by the saucer, as do the police.  Tor's Inspector sees the craft land in the graveyard and walks toward it, gun out, flashlight in hand.  And here comes "The Doctor" now played by a dentist almost a foot taller than Lugosi, and clearly twenty or thirty years younger.

Vampira also seems very young to be an elderly doctor's wife of many many many years marriage. I posit that the resurrection process may cause some changes to the body.  Except for Tor Johnson, because, Tor looks fantastic as a zombie.

The Doctor is now stalking behind Tor, as he walks toward the ship. He turns, and sees the Doctor, shooting, and turning to see the Wife. His gun does nothing, and they close on him, killing him.

He's found by the Detective and the two officers.  The detective pushes his hat back with his gun...in what I think is an actual moment of real human behaviour, but which most people call ridiculous. He also scratches his shoulder with the barrel while uttering the line "One thing's sure.  Clay's dead, murdered, and someone's responsible."  He points with his gun like an extension of his hand.  I've seen people do things that stupid countless times.

The Wife is watching the funeral from apparent cover.

Meanwhile, elsewhere we see three saucers high over Hollywood Blvd.  The police are called.  Some of the effects shot are better than others. Criswell narrates over the effects shots, and the stock footage, and the few original shots Wood has shot.  Day and night switch with no regard, possibly a budgetary concern (almost certainly), possible to show that there is the passage of time.  Either works for me.

The saucers are being seen all over the country, and the army is now involved.  We see vivid stock footage cut with an actor in front of a white wall pretending to be outside looking at the sky with binoculars.  This is theater, no realism intended.

Colonel Edwards (the fellow mentioned) orders the troops to fire. The attack does nothing, and it's pretty clear it's doing nothing. They keep at it for awhile though, because you never know, I guess, and what else can the US Army do with advanced craft but keep shooting.

The ships flee and vanish from all sight.

Edwards proceeds to discuss what must be incredibly secret data with an underling here, revealing that they haven't always shot at these visitors in the past, but they received no response on radio. It's revealed the aliens attacked a small town, and killed many people. The government covered it up, he suggests his young captain consider every disaster he hears about and wonder if it's related.  They then joke grimly about how they'll call this a training exercise.

Wood served in the military, and I think he has a pretty good sense of the culture, despite the roughness of this acting and dialogue, and I think he did not care for it. This scene seems sympathetic to the Colonel, but also angry at both of these soldiers for their complicity in keeping secrets of this importance from the people.

Wood questions, I think the wisdom of people in power. This was not a common habit in America in the fifties.

From one military to another, we head to the alien space station. The alien flight commander is prissy and irritable. He claims to have contacted government officials, and they refused to acknowledge their existence. This is either a lie, or Wood means for this character to totally misunderstand Earth's response. His superior is bored, reading his lines from a script on his desk, barely present, and asks which plan they will follow now.  The actor pretends to be reading the details of Plan 9 to cover that he's reading from a script. He does a good job of it, really. You get a legitimate sense of pointless bureaucracy.

Plan 9 involves the resurrection of the dead, and they report that they have successfully resurrected two, and that they should be able to add more.  The implication is that there is to be an army of the dead resurrected. The commanding officer seems to regret the need for violence, but sees there being no other choice.

This is a strange scene. There have been 8 plans before this. One of them apparently involved the attack on that town.  They seem to think hovering above Washington and LA is an attempt at communication that was rebuffed.  Are they assuming Earth to be more advanced, expecting some kind of communication we don't possess?  Or, is the prissy Alien captain deliberately lying to his superior here. I think the film kind of hangs on this.

In the hall outside the room, The captain and his female first officer discuss how, as long as humans can think, they will have problems dealing with them, noting the irony that humans fear the dead, who cannot think.  Then they head back to their vessel and depart for Earth again.

The pilot is back in uniform speaking with his wife. He suggests that she should stay with her mother for the time being. These two have the blandest chemistry ever. It's a perfect fifties married couple.  There is a line in this scene that is discussed as badly written. It's not. It's a muffed reading is all.  The wife says, "The saucers are up there," looking at the sky, then inclines her head, "and the cemetery's over there, and then adds, "but I'll be locked up in there," with no inflection. She should have looked at their house and emphasized the word "there." That's a perfectly legitimate bit of writing, let down by a weak delivery. In a film with a larger budget, and a better actress, they'd have reshot.  And heck, maybe they did, and this was the best take of it.

All this said, they kind of do feel like an actual couple.  Just really boring people who like each other a lot, and are in this film right now for reasons that are unclear. They are absolutely the normal people in this film. They represent America as the public ideal.

We cut back to the "cockpit," and our boy is pretty preoccupied with thoughts of his wife all alone next to that cemetery with all the deaths.

The co-pilot and the stewardess flirt and chatter like really boring co-workers with a side of moderate sexual harassment.

Bela is out in full Dracula costume as the reanimated corpse of The Doctor. He's old again, so there goes my rejuvenation theory/joke.  He sneaks into a house. We cut to a ringing phone, Max, our pilot is talking to his wife.  Bela enters the door, and is soon in her bedroom, younger and taller (and a dentist, apparently).  She runs away as slowly as she seems able, but picks up speed.  Bela as himself pursues, and she nearly runs into Vampira. Another grave is stirring as Vampira walks by.

Max's wife is slowly, oh so slowly cornered by The Doctor and his Wife, and then, shockingly, and lit from below, Detective Clay rises from his grave to join the chase. His face is fixed, and legitimately scary as he staggers after her.  The Doctor (dentist) also pursues, his cape interfering with the crosses and tombstone on this theater set.  Look away.

She manages to make it to the road, where a man in a cowboy hat finds her exhausted at the side of the road, and pursued by ghouls.  He tosses her in his car, and drives away.

Bela's doctor glares, the dentist doctor walks after the car.  Too slow. Night and day change with no frame of reference.  All ghouls give up the chase, returning to the cemetery.  They are clearly counting on volume of soldiers for Plan 9, for these three are not very effective as a small combat unit.

Bela's doctor staggers away, and I think that's the last we will see of him.

The police lieutenant is here to investigate the report apparently. The ghouls are now approaching the hatch of the saucer.  His female first officer Tana, opens the hatch, and Vampira and Tor come on board.  The device they are using to control the dead are turned off, and the ghouls seem inactive. It's clear that when the device is on, they ghouls will attack anyone. Even their master.  The Doctor joins them, and the saucer leaves.

The cops pretty much shoot the shit, talk about the saucers. The lieutenant seems quite a bit more knowledgeable than he should be.  They head to Clay's grave, thinking it's been broken into. They examine the grave and realize something dug OUT of the grave. Not one of these trained cops remembers this is where they buried Clay. They need to go into the grave and see the stone.

One of the cops is complaining that he always gets the spook details. That's a cute little in joke.  This cop has appeared in previous films of Wood's as the same character.  I don't think it's an accident that these cops are being portrayed as buffoons.  I think that it's part and parcel of the message of this film.  Authority is not to be trusted, it's made up of people just like everyone else, and probably people inclined to doing as they're told.

Meanwhile in the Pentagon, our Colonel Edwards is reporting to his superior, General Roberts.. This superior asks if Edwards believes in saucers and he has seen them despite the government's directive that there is no such thing.  Roberts advises this could be a courtmartial, but he does admit they're real, and have been there for some time.

Roberts says they've had radio contact. For a while in came in as jumbled noise.  It seems that they've now developed a language computer that deciphers the alien language.  Edwards is offered the chance to hear the recordings.  It begins with Space Commander Eros, our prissy alien captain saying that he understands the language difficulties, but also that they now are aware earth has the translator and they can now understand.

The aliens are far ahead of the humans, and seem offended that humans still do not believe in them.  They do not wish to harm Earth but to keep it safe.  They could have destroyed Earth long ago if that had been their aim (the general scoffs at that part...dick that he is)

The aliens admit that they have done some criminal things because the Earth does have big guns that have damaged their ships. If they refuse to let them land, Earth must not want them on friendly terms.

The aliens say that they may have to destroy them to keep the humans from destroying themselves and the aliens with atomic weapons, and that they are on the road to greater weapons that will let them destroy the entire universe. This will not be permitted.

The general and the colonel discuss San Fernando where the saucers have been flying low, maybe landing. Edwards is their best chance for contacting them and finding out what they want...despite the pretty clear mentions on the tape.

The General mirrors the Alien superior officer pretty closely...which is not an accident, as we transfer back to the Alien space station. Excellency is annoyed by Eros' lateness, and demands to see one of the reanimated.  Eros is informed that two of his three ships have been reassigned and he must continue alone.  Excellency is as dubious of this plan as, frankly, everyone in the audience right now, and is not prepared to commit more ships, energy or manpower until some results are shown.

Tor is brought in, and is menacing Eros, the electrode gun malfunctioning. Excellency advises Tana to throw the gun to the floor to turn it off. The giant is now docile, and brought for review.  Excellency is informed the other two are a woman and an old man.

Excellency seems inspired by this. Tana takes Tor to the ship. The Doctor is to be sacrificed, he is to enter a building, be released from electro command and a "decomposure ray" set on him to astound the humans and cause them to wonder what is going on long enough for them to resurrect a great many more dead.

It is apparent to me that the aliens, despite having a martial culture, and despite Excellency having a halberd on his shirt simply do not have weaponry at hand. I'm not sure how they'd have destroyed Earth, maybe it's a bluff.

It hasn't, seemingly, occurred to them that a decomposure ray could be effective on a live human.  I think that they simply find it anathema.

What the "attack" was on that small town that resulted in deaths might have been is a mystery.  Was it an accident of some kind?  A different alien race.  I don't know.

It is fascinating that they feel the humans will not respond to them. Why have they not responded by radio? It's genuinely confusing to them.

Rather than acting with violence, they are hoping to intimidate humans with a show of their power by reanimating the dead. The violence is incidental. They want humans to see that they wield power over life and death.  What the dead do seems to be less important to them.  The sidearms they carry, the electrode guns, only control, they have no offensive power.

They want a bloodless coup. They want the dead to march on the capitals until all of Earth simply acknowledge the aliens exist and respect their right to do so, and, ostensibly, as a result, stop building atom bombs.  By "respect our existence" they may mean for Earth to become nonviolent as well.

Plan 9 is a bad plan, based in two things, an inability to understand humans, and a kind of inconsistent pacifism.  Hypocrisy is baked in.  The aliens are every bit as arrogant and ignorant as the humans, even if their intention is noble.  They will not take, it seems, overt violent action, but their control over what actions they DO take is limited, and they seem indifferent to the violence committed by the ghouls. I suspect the attack on that other town was much the same.

I think Wood's portrayal of the aliens is, essentially, a portrayal of beat and intellectual culture. Good intentioned, paying lip service to pacifism and the triumph of intellect and education, showing contempt for the common people (earthlings) and full of overly complicated solutions that lack practicality.

Whereas the American military wants to resolve everything with violence and rigid order, the Aliens are their diametric opposite, and BOTH are portrayed as being deeply flawed.

The colonel is introduced to our pilot and his wife. to discuss their experiences.  The dead are walking again in the cemetery.

The doctor closes in on Officer Kelton (our cop who always gets the spook details) and backs him right onto the patio with the others.  They empty bullets into him to no effect, and then the decomposure ray hits, and he is turned into a skeleton.  All stare on in befuddled silence. Kelton is okay! Kelton is always okay.

Our earthlings head out to the cemetery. Kelton is advised to stay with Officer Kelton.  She doesn't like it, "but I guess there isn't much I can do about it." If that isn't the state of women in 1956, I don't know what is.  All the men folk arm up and stumble into the graveyard, looking for whatever is causing all of this.

The Wife is still prowling. No sign of Tor so far.  The American good guys all discuss Clay's breaking out of his grave.

Back on the ship, Eros advises Tana that the men will find their ship, and that they must be halted before they can inform others.  Now, Eros, I know your mission is secret, but has it occurred to you that your whole beef is that they won't contact you?  Apparently face to face is not what they want. These intellectual liberal space aliens want to be acknowledged, respected, but apparently only on their terms, which are a mystery to us.

They dispatch the giant to gather the Kelton and Mrs. Trent.

The menfolk spot the glow of the ship and head in to investigate.

Back at the car, Kelton, our police buffoon is knocked senseless by Clay, who then turns attention to Mrs. Trent.

The Earthlings are astonished by the craft's size and wondered how it stayed hidden, as Eros and Tana look out through one way portholes.  Tana opens the outer hatch, startling the Earthlings, and they decide to go inside. Our pilot, Mr. All American says, "if a little green man pops out at me, I'm shooting first and asking questions later." The Colonel and the police lieutenant seem to agree.

And I think Wood means for that to be as stupid and brutal as it sounds.

Tana asks if they must kill these humans. Eros very sadly says yes, and that it is better they kill a small number now than be thwarted in their mission, and allow humans to destroy the universe with their weapons.  They do seem genuinely sorry about it. Tana says that Eros is always right, and Eros agrees, because he is a smug fake liberal dick.

Guns drawn, the Earthlings order Eros and Tana to stay where they are, and Eros says they will comply for the moment.  The lieutenant won't be sassed and tells them to do as they're told.

Eros says they don't need guns, and they will not be useful. He acts like a smug superior dick as the humans snarl and threaten like the primitive brutes Eros thinks they are.

Eros asks if they want to talk or wait, advising their friends will be here shortly, those left at the vehicle.  Eros assures them that they are unharmed, offering to show them, and reaches for the control panel. Trent shoots the machine, advising next time he won't aim at the board.

Eros advises that he was only turning on the televisor. The lieutenant advises him to go ahead, but move carefully. We see Tor carrying Mrs Trent.  Mr Trent calls Eros a fiend.

Eros says he is a soldier of his planet and that he didn't come as an enemy but to ask their aid for the whole universe, but the humans refused to accept their existence, or reply to their messages.

The colonel asks why it's so important that they contact Earth.

Eros says "Because of DEATH, and because all you of Earth are IDIOTS."

Trent objects, and Eros continues with a brief history of Earth explosives, culminating with the H-bomb and advises they are about to be capable of destroying the entire universe.

The only explosion left is to detonate Earth's sun, and sunlight itself, and that will destroy the universe.

Eros believes that humans will discover the "Solonite" bomb soon, and not recognize its power because of their primitive, juvenile minds.

Mr Trent says, "So what if we do develop this Solonite bomb. We'd be an even stronger nation than we were before."

Eros replies, "You see!?  You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid."

Mr. Trent replies with "That's all I'm taking from you," and pistol whips Eros.

And this scene, this scene right here is the subversive heart of the picture.

Here we see the American heart laid bare as Wood sees it. The military industrial complex, willing to use brute force to impose will, unable to conceive that more power is not more wisdom, and on the other hand the counterculture, too arrogant, too entitled and too blinkered to act with any kind of useful response.

This is an incredibly nuanced, and rebellious film for the period. It's a deep criticism not just of American foreign policy and nuclear brinksmanship, but also of the opposition to it. It's a pessimistic, but, I think, realistic depiction of how forces in opposition become like each other and it becomes impossible to communicate.

It foreshadows America under Trump, with jingoism, and the fascist undercurrent of American patriotism naked on one side, and the ineffectual, hypocritical, and disorganized left on the other.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Wood is deeply aware of what Burroughs called "the essential rottenness" of American culture, the hypocrisies that fuel it.  They ways in which the left and right are flawed. And he made a movie about it, and released it in 1956.  And people saw it in droves.

It's rough and the acting is iffy, but the message is there.  It's all there.

Eros gathers his dignity and continues to talk to the humans like a lesser species, indicating again that it's because of headstrong men like Trent that they may have to destroy humanity, because once they have Solonite, they have NOTHING, and so does the universe. He says they tried extreme means to get to the humans, because they were left with no choice.

But it's clear that they did have other choices, just not choices they deemed acceptable.  Eros' hypocrisy is apparent. Some think Wood means him as the hero of the picture, but I disagree.  The only hero in this film is Kelton, the average guy, just trying to live his life in his buffoonish disinterest, and Tana, who will speak her most important lines next.

The Solonite (or solaranite) seems to work by using sunlight like a trail of gasoline that will detonate the sun...but likewise to every place our sun has shed lite, and to all the other stars it touches setting off a chain reaction to all stars in the universe.  And you have to admit, that's pretty bad. I suspect that the realization of this is what turned Eros' people into pacifists.

He explains that this must not happen, either through friendly means or, he says with a snarl, "as it seems YOU want it."

The lieutenant says he's mad. Tana then delivers a speech about the madness of nuclear brinksmanship, and indeed nationalism itself.  She then asks why, if all this is sane, they would consider it mad for one planet to destroy another to save the universe.  Eros, seemingly annoyed by this outburst of calmly spoken rationalism, grabs her arm and says "That's ENOUGH."  Trent, offended by Eros shoving her comes in to sock him again, and is barely restrained.

And then Eros reveals that for his race women are for advancing the race, not fighting a man's battles. Yep, his toxic masculinity forces him to silence Tana and bluster against the humans some more.  They're so very very advanced, and dedicated to peace, but chauvinism is still all good.

And, again, I think Wood finds this offensive. Eros is a dick. He's a dick trying to save the universe, but he is being a total asshole as he does it, and he couldn't be less perfect.

Kelton has hooked up with the other cop, and his story isn't being believed until The Wife shows up, all silent and creepy moving again.  The two cops follow after the ship.  And Tor keeps walking.

The lieutenant intends to arrest Eros and Tana. Eros demonstrates that Clay has Jeff Trent's wife, and that she is still unharmed, but that could change if he chose.  Nice pacifism. We don't use weapons. We make zombies, and THEY hurt people. Our hands are clean.

The slightly more butch cop develops a cunning plan to sneak up behind the very slow undead Clay and hit him on the head and run off with Mrs. Trent.  It's SUPER-EFFECTIVE.

Eros advises this is because the electrode ray is off, and he'll walk again once it's turned on.

But Eros' mind is no match for the Earthling's puny weapons, and, rather rudely, they don't let him turn it on. He is pretty annoyed.

Eros' stunt double is slightly less of a pacifist, and engages in a struggle with the suddenly disarmed Trent, while Tana flips switches and Colonel and Lieutenant try to figure out where this all went quite so wrong.

Tana is simply trying to take off as the Colonel tries to open the hatch, which he does manage to do.  The ship is on fire, and the men flee, Eros beaten senseless.

The flaming ship rises into the air, again, not a flaming paper plate as many say, but a burning model.

The humans watch it flee, Tana trying to rouse Eros.

The humans say that they are sure there will be more of them, and discover Clay has skeletonized.

Mrs Trent asks if they've found the woman yet...not sure how she knows about the woman, but it hardly matters.  The colonel expects she will also be skeletonized.  With the ship and the rays gone, they're probably unable to move.

The saucer explodes, disappearing completely.

We cut back to Criswell at the desk asking the viewer if they can prove it didn't happen (a logical fallacy...and I think Woods knows this), and advises that many viewers will likely meet aliens in secret in their lifetime. He rises from his desk, and finishes with "God help us in the future."

Indeed.

We live in a world where culturally we have split into alien factions, none of which may be capable of communicating with the other.  Wood saw this happening in his own time.  We have seen it intensify.

And this is the genius of outsider art. I think that, not only is Plan 9 good art, it's predictive art. It's social satire. It's subversive, and it's angry, and it offers no answers. It just looks in on America from the outside, from the viewpoint of a kinky, disenfranchised person who never ever felt a part of it.

It's an angry movie. Anger and frustration, and the inability to meaningfully communicate are factors in every screen. In Wood's film, every man is an island, and even in our factions we are misunderstood, and cannot be heard, cannot be honest. Our actions become less and less meaningful and sensible the more we organize.

And at root it's because we lack the ability to truly KNOW anything.  We are stumbling around, guessing, trying to be heard, to imprint reason on a chaotic film, demanding to be acknowledged, respected.  Each of us in a universe of our own that can be so easily destroyed by others.

Wood stumbled and struggled to be heard, doing the best he could, and his message is what mattered, not the props, or the acting. It was the act of being heard.

And I think he deserves to be. I think Plan 9 is brave and angry, and funny (on purpose), and deeply subversive and disrespectful filmmaking.

God help us in the future.