Ed Wood Extra: To those we lost in 2017

Rance Howard, Martin Landau, Conrad Brooks, David Ward, and Steve Apostolof.

Before we get too far into 2018, I thought it only proper that we should acknowledge a few of those who died in 2017, specifically those whose lives intersected in some way with that of Ed Wood. Sadly, the number of people who knew Eddie or who worked with him directly is getting smaller and smaller each year. And even Tim Burton's Ed Wood is now 24 years old, if you can believe it, and a number of cast and crew members from that biopic have since died. In brief, 2017 took a hell of a toll on the Ed Wood community. It was nice, I suppose, to have some new books and BluRay releases, but they're a poor substitute for these extraordinary people.

Let's deal with the Burton film first. Two of the principal cast members of Ed Wood passed away in 2017. The one who got the lion's share of the headlines, naturally, was Martin Landau, who died at the advanced age of 89 on July 15 of last year. A native New Yorker whose career in film and television spanned an astonishing 64 years, Landau finally won an Oscar in 1995 for his portrayal of a cranky, crumbling Bela Lugosi, turning to Ed Wood for employment and companionship in his final years. Aided by Rick Baker's award-winning makeup, Landau managed to bring new insight and vulnerability to the much-imitated and caricatured Lugosi. Whenever I see Bela in a movie -- whether it's one of Wood's movies or not -- I think of Landau.

Departing our realm, too, was character actor Rance Howard, who played straight-shooting moneyman Donald McCoy in Ed Wood. (He wants Eddie's movie to end with a "sky full of smoke" and gazes up dreamily as he imagines the glorious destruction.) Father of Clint and Ron Howard, Rance was one of the most familiar faces in Hollywood, appearing in nearly 300 movies and television shows starting in the mid-1950s. He had an honest face and a slight Oklahoma drawl that served him well in dozens upon dozens of roles. Rance worked so often and with so many people, in fact, he comes much closer than Kevin Bacon to being the center of the Hollywood universe. Rance Howard died on November 25, 2017. He, too, was 89.

Perhaps the most significant Wood-related death of 2017 was of actor turned filmmaker Conrad "Connie" Brooks, who died just last month at the age of 86. An irreplaceable link to the past, Brooks was truly the last surviving member of Eddie's inner circle, having appeared in Glen or Glenda, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Bride of the Monster, The Sinister Urge, and Jail Bait. Since Eddie's personal and professional lives were so intricately intertwined, Conrad Brooks can safely be called one of Ed's cronies. Who knows how many more movies they would have made together if there were but world enough and time, not to mention cash? A staple of documentaries about Wood, always popping up to talk about his departed pal, Brooks was a B-movie lifer. Even without Eddie, the incorrigible, garrulous Connie appeared in dozens of low-budget flicks (as well as Burton's Ed Wood) and eventually wrote and directed a few of his own.

Attention should also be paid to the passing of stage and screen actor David Ward, who died in August at the age of 84. He'd been a resident of a Los Angeles nursing home for years, and Ed Wood superfan Bob Blackburn stayed in contact with him and visited him frequently until the end of his life. Ward was another of Wood's Hollywood cronies, especially during Eddie's boozy final years in the 1970s, though the two didn't really work on many movies together. Ward was also a personal friend of Bulgarian-born filmmaker Stephen C. Apostolof and made cameos in at least two of Apostolof's movies, The Cocktail Hostesses and Drop Out Wife, both scripted by Eddie. And Ed had other plans for David, including an adaptation of his short story "To Kill a Saturday Night," that never came to pass. The David Ward saga is an incredible one, inspiring the unproduced screenplay Edward Ford, which I thoroughly discussed here.

Speaking of Apostolof, the late filmmaker's oldest son Steve Apostolof died unexpectedly after a brief illness in Simi Valley, CA at the age of 60 on November 19, 2017. Like all of Apostolof's children, Steve made numerous visits to his father's sets and even made an onscreen appearance in 1978's Hot Ice, canonically the last film Ed Wood ever worked on. (Eddie was credited as an assistant director and was slated to make a cameo but was too drunk to do so.) In addition, Steve was one of the interviewees in Jordan Todorov's documentary Dad Made Dirty Movies. He took great amusement in his father's colorful career and helped keep the Wood-Apostolof legend alive by sharing his stories of those bygone days of the 1960s and '70s.

Rest in peace, one and all.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Collaborator Odyssey, Part Seven

She was only in one Ed Wood feature, but Valda Hansen casts a long shadow. Art by Drew Friedman.

Among the circle of fascinating personalities appearing prominently in Ed Wood's first half-dozen films—the work for which he is best and "worst" remembered—Valda Hansen (1932-1993) stands out as a fixture of the group despite making only one relatively brief appearance. As The White Ghost in Night of the Ghouls, moll to the scheming Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan), she projects a delicate beauty and ethereal presence. That film also featured another key player in the Wood repertory company, Criswell, in one of his most memorable roles. In my research, I've discovered a fascinating old newspaper clipping that involves both Criswell and Ms. Hansen, and I'd like to share it with you this week.

The Long Beach Independent and Independent Press Telegram were Criswell's first homes as a regular newspaper columnist in 1949, as he laid the foundation for his persona. These papers covered him often, and it's not hard to imagine that his pull was largely responsible for a full page feature in the Telegram from December 7, 1958, featuring Valda and coverage of the "recently-released" (?) Night of the Ghouls ("...which carried her up to stardom"?). While there are no mentions of writer-director Ed Wood, there are priceless details about Valda that have gone unrecorded elsewhere. And then there's that photo of Cris as "Dead Man." (!) Enjoy.

We'll return to Valda Hansen, and to Night of the Ghouls, among a host of topics all related to Ed Wood, this coming year here at Ed Wood Wednesdays!

NOTE: The original layout for this vintage article can be seen here at the Ed Wood Wednesdays Tumblr.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Woodologist Odyssey, Part One by Greg Dziawer

Author James Pontolillo has been delving into Ed Wood's war record.

The work of a true Woodologist.

As we approach a new year, it seems as good an opportunity as any to introduce a new Odyssey. In the 2+ years that I have been writing articles here, my research has led me to cross paths with a number of folks who, like me, are more than just casual fans of Edward D. Wood, Jr. The most seriously afflicted of these people can even be affectionately termed Woodologists.

Just what does being a Woodologist entail? To my mind, it means possessing not only (1) an abiding interest in Ed, the man and his work, but moreso (2) a desire to learn more about Ed than we previously knew. Most critically, a Woodologist will (3) endeavor to take action upon that desire to learn more. People like Rudolph Grey, author of Nightmare of Ecstasy, and Joe Blevins, who started this very series way back in July 2013, are just a few folks you will surely recognize as Woodologists. I aspire to be one some day, and as I continue being privileged enough to meet many of them, I decided to introduce them here to the world as such.

First up, I am happy to introduce my friend, author and researcher James "Jimbo" Pontolillo, who has graciously agreed to be my first willing subject.

Before getting into James' answers to my 10 questions, however I must issue a spoiler alert for those who have yet to read Pontolillo's book The Unknown War Of Edward D. Wood, Jr.: 1942-1946. While the following interview is short on details, the overarching direction of the work can be clearly inferred from James' answers nevertheless. Stop now and return here later if you plan to read it. I suggest you go over to Amazon and get yourself a copy. Containing Ed's full military record and a superb editorial apparatus throughout by Pontolillo, this is and will doubtless remain the foundational work regarding Ed's years in the military during WWII. For more on the book, you can read an overview here. 

10 Questions With James Pontolillo

The author as a young man.

1. Have you ever worn an angora sweater? 

No, I have not. Although I did briefly entertain the idea of writing my Ed Wood book while wearing an angora sweater. I went onto Ebay, and the variety of angora sweaters available was so overwhelming that I quickly dropped the idea. Probably for the best; sweaters don’t do much for my figure nowadays. Cross dressing is a slim, young guy’s game. I would just look like a scary extra from the movie Wigstock.

2. You expressed to me, before the publication of the book—and addressed your initial worries in the book itself—that sharing documentary proof of Ed's wartime activity might piss people off. Have you received any angry missives since publication? 

Not yet. The Ed Wood community has been incredibly supportive so far. At worst, some people have said they are somewhat saddened by my deflation of the Ed Wood combat legend. But there is still plenty of time for angry responses. After all, my book has yet to crack the New York Times bestseller list. LOL. 

3. Why Ed Wood? 

I’ve always had an interest in idiosyncratic visionaries and extremists—people who chart a course way outside of the mainstream. You have to be someone special to decide to run far off the rails in a new, unusual, and interesting way. Eddie was nothing if not an idiosyncratic visionary. I first saw Plan 9 when I was a kid and knew nothing about Eddie. Years later, I discovered him through the Medved Brothers' Golden Turkey Awards book, and the rest is history. 

4. The book contains Ed's entire military record, from mundane to starling and new. What startled you most? 

Well, what was most startling was the night and day contrast between what he did during the war and what he claimed to have done during the war. The contrast could not be much starker. While I was expecting some of the received legend to be BS, I was not expecting it to be virtually complete BS. But when you look at his wartime story as a whole, it is understandable why he manufactured the legend that he did. 

5. If there is one mystery about Ed or his work that you would love to solve, what is it? 

Well, there is a certain scene that recurs in many of Ed’s short stories and novels. You know what I’m talking about—a very unusual type of reveal that occurs to the sound of a camera shutter going off. It is such a constant element of his work that I’m convinced it must be based on a personal experience. I’d really like to know the true story behind that scene. God, I hope that it’s not another one of his fanciful inventions.

6. You've also interrogated Ed's paperbacks with a combination of incredibly knowing discernment and predictive analytics, effectively answering questions about Ed's authorship. Beyond what he wrote, did you garner any insight into who he was? 

I read Eddie largely for sheer enjoyment without giving too much thought to what the text may be telling me about him. This is true for other authors that I am stuck on like Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, etc. When I read, I place myself inside the work. I don’t stand outside and try to examine it. 

7. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? 

You think I was born yesterday? I see what you are trying to do here. This is the low IQ version of the famous Zen koan, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?" You are not going to lead me into a Rorschach dead end that easily. Let’s see how this grates your carrot. Let’s talk Ed Wood gematria. Coincidence or not, by full reduction gematria "Edward D. Wood Jr." equals: 

Dantes Inferno
Symbolic logic
Gender neutral
Screw magazine
Alien invasion
Drunk driver
Ruby slippers 

8. What's next on your personal Woodology horizon? 

I have been collaborating with a renowned Woodologist on a revised and expanded reissue of David Hayes’ classic Muddled Mind. Not sure when that will come out, though. Other than that, I have no other Eddie projects going on. I’m actually in the midst of a writing break at the present time. After publishing four books in as many years, I am overdue for an extended research and writing break.  

9. You self-published The Unknown War on Amazon, among numerous other scholarly publications. Based upon those experiences, Universal Access or Penetration? 

When online print-on-demand publishers (Amazon, Lulu) tell you that their distribution network will increase your sales, don’t believe it. From a sales perspective, there is usually no substitute for releasing your book through established channels. The real advantage of POD is being your own boss and editor. For better or worse, you get to publish exactly what you want irrespective of commercial viability. However, if you manage to hit a popular vein and sell in any quantity, like the short-lived dino-porn fad on Amazon, the POD publishers pay much better royalties than traditional publishers. I haven’t answered the question yet, have I? Let’s go with Penetration. 

Belinda in cold cream.

10. Glen or Glenda? 

Definitely Glenda. After all, women’s clothes are designed for their comfort. Hats that give no obstruction to the blood flow, hats that do not crush the hair. Interesting thought, isn't it? Hell, back in the day I went to a Halloween party as Belinda Carlisle off the cover of the first Go-Go’s album. You know, wrapped in a bath towel with cold cream on my face. As far as I know, pictures (thankfully) do not exist! 

Special thanks to author James Pontolillo, for subjecting himself to our first 10 Questions. Check out more of his diverse and challenging work here.  I can definitely relate to his last answer. For Halloween 2005, two friends and I attended a party as the group TLC. I was T-Boz. When I was a much younger man, I briefly entertained a crush on Belinda Carlisle, during the savage and tumultuous throes of puberty.

Apart from those correspondences, my friend Jimbo and I initially connected via our shared love of Ed nearly two years ago. As we began talking, I mentioned that I was working on revising David Hayes' invaluable index, Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Thanks both to the internet and the increasing number of serious (and seriously obsessive) Ed Wood fans, knowledge about Ed's life and work have continued to expand four decades after his passing. David graciously invited me to update his index to reflect this newfound information.

While that revision continues to challenge me, Jimbo and I began talking about his interest in using text analysis to solve the problem of identifying exactly which books were written by Ed Wood. After a burst of amazingly creative and scientifically rigorous work, Jimbo—I initially called him the "Mad Scientist"—quickly submitted to me a series of such reports to supplement the index I was compiling. Now is not the time to get into his full methodology. Suffice it to say, Jimbo utilized four software text analysis tools as well as his own ridiculously big brain in the process. He deployed a battery of predictive analytics to Ed's known and suspected work, solving outstanding questions of authorship. This has helped me avoid mis-Ed-tributions while also making new discoveries.

James Pontolillo has been charting Ed Wood's work.

Additionally, he and I have dug deep into researching Ed's early years in Poughkeepsie, and it was Jimbo who first noted to me the common narrative element he mentions in his answer to Question #5. He and I have privately referred to this Wood-ian trope as "the boner in the face." If you've read your fair share of Ed's short stories and paperbacks, you know what we're talking about.

Although he says he is not currently and actively working on anything regarding Ed, I advise readers to stay tuned. A certain self-styled foreseer, a friend and associate of Ed's who more primitively employed predictive analytics of his own, might just be on Jimbo's periphery.

This is just a bunch of comics parodies and remixes, okay?

This book never existed, but don't you kind of remember it in bookstores anyway?

Look, I'll level with you. I was going through the images saved to my hard drive, deciding which ones to chuck, and I found some  comics parodies that I hadn't posted here yet. So I wanted to collect them in one big post before deleting them from my computer forever. That's what this post is. There's nothing else to this, so don't expect any incisive commentary.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Loop Orbit, Part Twelve by Greg Dziawer

Skulls and shackles figure into this week's article. Enjoy!

As supernaturalism of a wide variety crops up regularly in Ed Wood's films and writings, it stands to reason that it would also appear in the 8mm silent porn loops produced and distributed by Noel Bloom. Particularly if it were a loop with strong ties to Ed in other ways. This week, we submit a specimen for your consideration, certainly within the orbit of Ed's work, and suggesting his possible involvement.

When I first viewed the loop Sex & Magic, a number of things immediately jumped out at me, literally from all sides. The loop commences with the title spelled out in small plastic letters on an undersized pegboard. This is immediately recognizable as the same board used in just about every other Cinema Classics loop I've ever seen. Sometimes, as in this film, the board is filmed as part of a larger scene. At other times, shot in close-up, it is authoritative, the titles looking like an industrial grid of some sort, belying the nickel and dime nature of the actual prop.

This week's loop is quite a find.

The title board sits atop a table, a white skull to its right and shackles in front of it, hanging over the front edge of the table. The title and props quickly conspire to create intrigue. The skull, naturally, is the very same one that appears in Necromania and dozens of other Bloom-family loops. This identifies the set as Hal Guthu's studio on Santa Monica Blvd, where interior sets for Necromania were shot. The shackles, no doubt, were a prop easily found lying around. My friend Jack Descent had been at Guthu's studio at the time, and recalls that he had two soundstages on the ground floor of the facility, and two dungeon sets on the basement floor.

The altar, featuring two skulls, an inverted cross, and shackles.

The film opens with a medium shot: the same table, skull and shackles now joined by a second white skull and an inverted wooden cross. The cross, spray-painted a different color, also appears in Necromania. A blonde woman in a black leather dress enters from the right, a book in her hand. In close-up, as she leafs through the book, we see captioned hardcore photos on the right-hand facing pages and text on the left-hand pages, the images showing all variety of sex. I knew right away that this was a Pendulum/Calga illustrated sociosex paperback. As she places the book on the makeshift altar, we can briefly see that it is part of Calga's Everything You Wanted to See and Read series of six paperbacks, part of the larger Sexual Enlightenment Series credited to T.K. Peters. 

The second book in the series.

The first three entries in this series carried the title Everything You Wanted to See and Read About Love and Sex. That name is briefly visible here on the cover. I have Book Three, which has a red cover, but the one in this loop appears yellow. Book One and Book Two in the series I have not seen, but images of Book Two have an orange cover. Book One, unfortunately, I can find no trace of, save its copyright listing. Although the more appropriate pick at this altar may have been A Study in Sexual Practices and Black Magic, as we'll see, any T.K. Peters book will do the trick! 

In any event, the volume seen in Sex & Magic is either Everything You Wanted to See and Read About Love And Sex, Book One, or the film print I viewed is faded enough to distort the color and it's really Book Two. For the record, those paperbacks were penned by, respectively, William D. "Bill" Jones and Robin Eagle, who commonly used the pseudonym "Robert Elgin." Both books were filed for copyright on the same day: October 7, 1970. At that time, in addition to Jones and Eagle, the Pendulum magazine writing staff, who wrote these paperbacks for bonuses, also consisted of Leo Eaton and Ed Wood. Although Ed Wood did not write the Love and Sex book that appears here, he likely penned the photo captions in it. These captions remain consistent throughout two lengthy T.K. Peters series of illustrated sociosex paperbacks and contain enough stylistic signatures to surmise that Wood was their author.

But back to the film. After placing the book on the altar, the woman gets on her knees and bows and prays in front of it. The actress (as identified by an eagle-eyed viewer in a private forum) is Lynn Holmes, whose smattering of known credits includes the 1971 feature The Undergraduate, produced by Jack Descent from a script by Ed Wood. Holmes picks up the shackles and one skull and takes them into a bedroom with deep pink and fuzzy blankets not only on the bed, but even up the wall behind the bed where the headboard would normally be. Simply and cheaply, the set succeeds in creating an otherworldly atmosphere. She places the shackles and skull on the bed and steps back to conjure. As she does, her hand movements Lugosi-like, we cut to a close-up of the skull. It disappears, and in its place, a naked man appears, one hand shackled and chained to another shackle around his neck. While a simple effect, it works, again the sort of economy of means Ed was accustomed to employing.

Lynn Holmes in action: (a) Casting her spell; (b) Drinking from a wine glass.

She removes the shackles, and you can guess what happens next. After this carefully crafted build-up—relatively speaking, and largely superfluous given the intended audience—the two have sex in the usual manner, nothing very magical about it. 

Judging by the spartan sets and functional camerawork, this is certainly one of the Blooms' first-phase loops. And, as with many of these very early films, the female lead is given to overacting. The male is a near-total cipher, also purely functional. The actress' black leather boots remain on throughout. We are almost six minutes in before actual intercourse begins. We get little more than a minute, and just one position, before returning to oral sex and soon after the literal climax. He ejaculates into a wine glass, and she drinks from it, savoring it, the purpose of her ritual. (Otherwise we'd have gotten the typical facial.) She rises, and conjures again, turning him back into the white skull. She lies back and begins masturbating as she makes out with the skull.

The final title card of the film. Note the logo in the upper right corner.

We then cut to a title card reading The End in a fanciful font that anticipates some Swedish Erotica loops that were just around the corner. In the upper right sits the second and final logo used by Cinema Classics, Bloom's flagship series of loops, which ran for approximately 100 installments between 1969 and 1971. The series started as softcore but quickly transitioned into hardcore, just in advance of the hardcore feature industry. By the time the series ended in '71, other series had begun to appear and the Cinema Classics line disappeared for good. Sex & Magic is a later title in the Cinema Classics series, shot no earlier than late 1970. 

With this film, we are on the cusp of the second phase of loops, which not only feature the subtitles and signature artistic tropes of the series  but also include numerous items of set dressing recycled from Ed Wood's final two features as a writer director, Necromania and The Young Marrieds. Sex & Magic stands at the doorstep of Ed's more certain involvement in the loops. Could he have been on set, personally arranging the altar and providing stage directions from offscreen? We may never know for certain, but for me, the answer is a confident yes.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Loop Odyssey, Part Eight by Greg Dziawer

This week, Greg explores the loop Girl on a Bike.

NOTE: Hope you had a good Thanksgiving, dear readers. Ed Wood Wednesdays took a break last week for the holidays, but Greg Dziawer is back today with a brand new article about Ed Wood's work in pornographic loops in the 1970s. This week, he examines 1973's Girl on a Bike, featuring Margie Lanier of Fugitive Girls fame. The article is a bit too NSFW for the blog, so it's been posted over at the Ed Wood Wednesdays Tumblr. You can read it here. Enjoy! - J.B. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Dziawer Odyssey, Part Six by Greg Dziawer

This week, a particular book caught Greg's eye.

The book as it appears in School Girl.

Last night, I was scanning through some 8mm silent loops from the early '70s, loops I had seen before and that had connections to Ed Wood if not his direct involvement. It seems like I've spent the better part of 2017 poring over loops in the target zone, trying to piece together Ed's possible contributions. 

It was while watching School Girl, the third loop in the long-running Swedish Erotica series—the first 19 believed to have been made by Ed, and certainly subtitled by his hand—that I had a flash of recognition as the onscreen couple sat in bed doing homework. Of course, the sitting and the homework didn't last long, a typically flimsy narrative conceit always immediately leading to sex.

What I noticed was the book on the bed. As they paged through it, it dawned on me that I had seen a similar book before in the loop Incest. Like School Girl, it carries a number of signatures shared by the larger family of loops produced by Noel Bloom. 

Though I don't know if there is any documented proof, I agree with the general consensus that Ed Wood made (or at least contributed to) the earliest Swedish Erotica loops. These short films can be identified by a number of stylistic signatures. But I've also seen these same signatures in hundreds of other non-Swedish loops, none of which to my knowledge has ever been definitively ascribed to Ed.

That's the larger, perhaps quixotic and even completely wrongheaded endeavor in this series: interrogating the larger of family of loops to find the telling intersections. And it's in those intersections, too many to suggest mere coincidence, that I've concluded Ed Wood worked on hundreds of loops in a variety of capacities.

I'll refer obsessive Woodologists to the details from my previous Odysseys and Orbits, all of which you can find here. Below are my basic findings in summa, some taken from the public record, some derived solely from my own inferences:

• Edward D. Wood, Jr. worked in some capacity for the notorious Swedish Erotica series for a period in the early 1970s.

• Wood wrote subtitles for numerous loop series that, like Swedish Erotica, were produced and distributed by Noel Bloom.

• He wrote various promotional texts for these loops, too, including box cover and catalog insert summaries.

• He appeared on camera in at least once in a loop that we know of. 

• The set decorations for these loops draw from the same common pool of bric a brac: wall hangings, pillows, blankets, lamps, nightstands, etc. Some of these same items turn up in the final two feature films Ed is known to have directed, Necromania and The Young Marrieds.

• I know more than a few experts who also feel strongly that Wood was involved in decorating the sets of these pornographic loops, and there's even the notion out there that he may have edited them, too.

The book as it appears in Incest.

Back to that book. When I checked the loop Incest, sure enough, the same book appeared immediately. It's obvious from the size of the book and also the view of the spine. In School Girl, you can see the finger-grips on the edge of it, as well as gilt edging, earmarking it as a dictionary or encyclopedia. Well, the actors in the movie must have been studying vocabulary, because in Incest, we see that it is indeed a dictionary. We get a close up of the page on which the word "incest" is defined, just before Rick Cassidy laughs and casually tosses the book to the corner of the couch.

While there are numerous other correspondences between these two loops and the larger family of loops, this was a nice little moment for me. The sort of moment that rewards patience and continues to spur me on. I'm sure I'll see that book again, now that my eyes are open to it, and when I do, you'll hear all about right here at Ed Wood Wednesdays.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Plan 9 Odyssey, Part One by Greg Dziawer

Ed Wood's name has long been synonymous with "turkey."

The First "Worst" 
   

When the Medved Brothers, Harry and Michael, released their book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (1978), coauthored with Randy Dreyfuss, it contained nary a mention of Ed Wood or any of his movies. In the Medveds' follow-up, The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), that all changed dramatically: Ed seemingly appearing from nowhere to be dubbed the Worst Director of All Time and Plan 9 from Outer Space the Worst Film Ever. Thus, the story goes, began the film's—and its producer/writer/director's— reassessment as "so bad it's good" cult object.

Of course, by 1980, Ed had passed. While certainly aware of the negative reviews of Plan 9 that appeared during his lifetime, he couldn't have imagined the film becoming revered—and for that very reason—within just a few short years of his death. Plan 9 had enjoyed nearly two decades of afterlife in TV syndication before reaching this dubious pinnacle. By the time the first Medved book asked readers to submit their nominations for the Worst Film Ever, receiving 3,000 votes, with Plan 9 from Outer Space the winner, a small following had begun to emerge, shaping the "worst" viewpoint.

This attitude hardly originated with the notorious Medved book. If we dial it back a few years, in soon-to-be-director Joe Dante's serial column "The Frankenstein TV Movieguide" from Castle of Frankenstein magazine (specifically issue 22 from 1974), we see that the "so bad it's good" viewpoint is already fully developed. Dante's capsule review of Plan 9 is delirious, deeming the film an "unalloyed delight," owing to its "rank amateurishness" and incompetence. Ed is a name "to conjure with." Effusively, Dante ends the review: "Wow." Still, he steers clear of the "worst" moniker. 

On the index page for that issue of Castle of Frankenstein, the listing for the article mentions two films beginning with the letter P: Psycho and—you guessed it!—Plan 9 from Outer Space. Already, in 1974, the film had begun its reassessment. This prompts some questions:

1. Just how far back can we go to find the "worst" root? 
2. Is it really a reassessment? 

To which I would answer:

1. All the way back. 
2. No, Plan 9 was assessed in this same manner right from the beginning. 

Ad for an early showing of Plan 9.

When I found an ad for a showing of Plan 9 in the November 8, 1959 edition of The Sarasota News, I was happy to see the movie playing on a quadruple bill mere months after its initial widespread distribution. One of the Big "Space-O-Rama" showings that night at the Siesta Drive-In, Plan 9 was the only film to play twice on that sprawling bill. 

I immediately spotted the lengthy "special note" included in the ad, which turned out to be penned by one of the film's two associate producers: Hugh Thomas, Jr. Like co-producer J. Edward Reynolds, Thomas  was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention of Beverly Hills.

Thomas appears in Plan 9 as as the taller and thinner of two gravediggers, with Reynolds as his stockier companion. He's credited as the movie's sole producer in the ad. His note is simply amazing. Unique details include the mention of another film "we" produced entitled The Peacemaker. Thomas is surely speaking of the low-budget religious propaganda Western from 1956. The word "we" likely refers to Reynolds specifically or to the church generally. In that film, although Thomas and Reynolds were uncredited, they successfully managed to Trojan horse their religious views. Not so with Plan 9, and perhaps that partly explains Thomas' startling decision to run down the film in print, in fact right in an ad for a showing of the film. 

Special note about "PLAN NINE" . . . Some months ago we called to your attention we had spent a few years (And numerous dollars) in Hollywood having a fling at making pictures. Our first effort was "THE PEACEMAKER" which we played back in June. Well, now comes another one in "PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE". Not only did I produce it, I had a hand in developing the thin story, and I am even in the darn thing. If you'll study the above ad you will see two grave diggers, that's me on the right. I don't want to be misleading, so I'll just tell you in all honest that the picture stinks!!! It's strictly from corn. There have probably been worse pictures made; but I haven't seen one yet. Anyway, I had a lot of fun making it and you will have more of the same watching yours truly making a vain attempt to copy Marlon Brando, etc. Come down and have a big belly laugh on and at . . . Hugh Thomas, Jr.

The reference to an earlier message from "some months ago" suggests that this note was repurposed from some communication between Thomas and his church. The would-be producer also indicates that the church went to Hollywood expressly with the intent to make films. 

Although he remains gregarious overall, Thomas flatly states that the film "stinks." And, yes, for likely the first time in print, he says the magic words: "There have probably been worse pictures made; but I haven't seen one yet."

Echoing these sentiments, it certainly wouldn't be the last time.