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| Never is a long time, as Bela Lugosi proves in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). |
When I think about the movies I've seen the most times, a few titles come immediately to mind, including The Wizard of Oz (1939), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), This is Spinal Tap (1984), and The Big Lebowski (1998). Among Ed Wood's movies, however, the clear winner is Plan 9 from Outer Space aka Graverobbers from Outer Space (1957). I first sat through this notorious sci-fi horror chiller in October 1992 as part of a four-film Ed Wood marathon in Flint, Michigan. Since then, I've probably seen Plan 9 theatrically about a half-dozen more times. At home—through VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming—I've screened it dozens of times in whole or in part, often while doing research for this series.
In short, I've spent many hours of my life with this odd little film. And yet, all these decades later, it may still have things to teach me. I'll give you an example.
Critic Harry Medved, who helped give both Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space some measure of immortality with his book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), recently devoted an episode of his PBS documentary series Locationland to the making of Plan 9. Among the filming sites Medved visited was 15129 Lakewood St. in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles. Back in the 1950s, this charming domicile was the residence of actor-wrestler Tor Johnson, who played Inspector Daniel Clay in the film. Johnson allowed Ed Wood to use the site as the home of Bela Lugosi's unnamed character, generally referred to as Old Man or Ghoul Man. In Plan 9, we see a grief-stricken Lugosi—still reeling from the death of his young wife (Vampira)—smelling the roses outside the house before wandering into traffic and getting run over.
"Confused by his great loss," intones narrator Criswell, "the old man left that home, never to return again."
Except Lugosi totally returns again just 23 minutes later, as proven by that aforementioned episode of Locationland. When Harry Medved visited the house in Sylmar, the owner graciously let him film the outside. But Medved and his guest, comedian and writer Dana Gould, wanted to film the back porch of the house as well, because this is where Ed Wood shot the scene in which Bela's character, having been resurrected from the grave as a zombie, enters his former home, now owned by pilot Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) and his wife Paula (Mona McKinnon). Jeff's away when Bela arrives, so Paula is all by herself and quite vulnerable when this strange figure suddenly appears in her bedroom.
Even though I've been watching Plan 9 for decades, it took Locationland to make me realize that the Trents are living in Lugosi's character's former home and must have moved into the place shortly after he died. Jeff's coworker, sassy stewardess Edie (Norma McCarty), comments that the house is too close to the local cemetery, "I tried to get you kids to not buy too near one of those things," she opines. "We get there soon enough as it is." She also says Jeff's house is "quiet alright, like a tomb." Jeff is rightfully concerned that the police keep showing up at the cemetery for unknown reasons. What exactly is going on there?
We soon find out what's happening at that cemetery, and it's more bizarre than we could have possibly guessed. Aliens from a faraway planet, represented by the arrogant Eros (Dudley Manlove) and the more pragmatic Tanna (Joanna Lee), are using their "electrode guns" to resurrect some recently deceased earthlings, including both Lugosi and Lugosi's wife. This is all part of a larger campaign to strike fear in the hearts of the human race and thus deter us from creating a weapon called "Solaronite" that will destroy the entire universe. Got all that?
The aliens' plan is quite convoluted and doesn't come close to working. But they do manage to bring Lugosi back to "simulated life" for a short while. Once resurrected, he is more like a traditional obedient "voodoo zombie" rather than the cannibalistic, aggressive zombies we know from the George Romero films, starting with Night of the Living Dead (1968). Eros and Tanna can control the zombies to some extent, but Lugosi is apparently allowed to explore the world on his own for a while when he's revived. And where does he choose to go first? Right back to his old house.
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| The bedroom scene from Plan 9. |
The Ghoul Man (now played by Lugosi's stand-in, Dr. Tom Mason) enters Paula's bedroom slowly and carefully, concealing his face behind his cape. She panics and flees to the nearby cemetery. The Ghoul Man (now played by Lugosi again) follows at a slow pace. Elsewhere in the graveyard, the Ghoul's Wife watches with interest but does not act. Tor Johnson's character, Inspector Clay, rises from his grave as well. Now there are at least three zombies wandering around in the cemetery, but they don't get anywhere near Paula, who manages to make it to the nearest road where she is rescued by Farmer Calder (Tor's son, Karl Johnson).
Studying the Plan 9 from Outer Space screenplay reveals some interesting and enlightening context for this entire sequence. I mentioned earlier that Lugosi's character has no real name—at least none is given in the film—but the script consistently refers to him as Dracula. As every Ed Wood fan knows, Plan 9 was written around some existing silent footage Ed had of Bela Lugosi, who very inconveniently died in 1956. In some of that footage, Lugosi is wearing his Dracula outfit and standing in a graveyard. This has led some fans to speculate that Wood was actually shooting test footage for his unrealized film, The Vampire's Tomb.
Meanwhile, the Plan 9 script definitely wants us to know that Paula Trent is wearing a sexy, sheer negligee in this scene. Ed Wood was utterly obsessed with women's lingerie and wrote about his beloved "nighties and negligees" as often as he could in his novels, short stories, and articles. In the Plan 9 screenplay, we are told that Paula "slips on a negligee over her night dress, then picks up the phone." Just a few lines later, Ed Wood reminds us that Paula is "wearing a night-dress and negligee combination" and that she is "completely out from beneath her bed covers and is leaning back against a pile of soft pillows." If that weren't enough, the script then gives us "a new, closer angle on Paula, sexily lounging back on her pillows." Even when "the Dracula character" (Ed's words, not mine) enters her bedroom and Paula leaves in terror, the script mentions "her sheer negligee flying behind her like giant white bat wings."
All of this is significant, in my opinion, because Dracula is the most blatantly erotic of the classic movie monsters. The character is defined, in part, by his fearsome sexual prowess. His incredible hypnotic power over women makes the Count a definite threat to heterosexual couples. A good Dracula movie is not complete without a flummoxed, vaguely impotent hero who is deeply and justifiably concerned about his wife or fiancée falling under the vampire's sway. An extreme example of this is Robert Eggers' recent Nosferatu (2024), which makes cuckolding a central theme. The vampire in that film (played by Bill Skarsgård) makes no effort whatsoever to be charming or attractive in any way—he is, in fact, physically repulsive—and yet his power over young Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is total. All Ellen's handsome yet ineffectual husband, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), can really do is watch from the sidelines in rising horror.
NOTE: Eggers' Nosferatu credits Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula as its source material. The characters of Nosferatu, Ellen, and Thomas are obvious cognates of Dracula, Mina, and Jonathan respectively. Nosferatu also has its own version of Van Helsing in the form of Von Franz (Willem Dafoe). Thomas and Von Franz team up and confront the vampire at the end of the film but arrive too late to save Ellen, if indeed she even wanted to be "saved."
So we must wonder what Lugosi's motives are in Plan 9 from Outer Space when he enters Paula Trent's bedroom. It's very likely that he has returned to this house instinctively, like the zombies in Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) shambling back to the mall. Once he's inside, what are his intentions toward Paula? Is it possible that he sees her as the reincarnation of his dead wife? (This is a motif in numerous films about Dracula, though it's not part of Bram Stoker's novel.) Or does he just see her as an attractive woman? It is not accidental or coincidental that this scene takes place in a bedroom and that the woman, Paula, is wearing very little at the time. Wood's screenplay unmistakably sexualizes the sequence.
If we see Paula Trent as Plan 9's equivalent to Mina Harker/Ellen Hutter, then that makes Jeff Trent the stand-in for Jonathan Harker/Thomas Hutter. For Jeff, it's bad enough that he has to deal with stuck-up space aliens and suppression from his own government (the "big Army brass"). But a horny vampire who wants to make time with his wife? That's a step too far. No wonder Jeff is so grouchy throughout Plan 9. Wouldn't you be?
P.S. Robert Anton Wilson's "illustrated screenplay" Reality is What You Can Get Away With (1992) contains its own parody of this exact sequence from Plan 9. In Wilson's version, the Lugosi character breaks into the woman's bedroom but assures her, "It's okay, I don't have an erection."