Norma McCarty Movies

The strange life and the wonderfully awful films of 1950's Hollywood Z movie director Ed Wood are profiled in this documentary that was conceived of and researched several years before commercial-filmmaker Tim Burton made his feature film tribute. Actually, Wood does not appear much in this film. Rather, it centers on the lives and thoughts of his entourage and those who knew him. Among those interviewed are Wood's former lover and star of his earliest films, Dolores Fuller, whom he abruptly replaced in the middle of Bride of the Monster with actress Loretta King who is also interviewed. Also interviewed are Maila Nurmi (aka Vampira); Bela Lugosi, Jr., who believes Wood destroyed his troubled father's career; Rev. Dr. Lynn Lemon, the Baptist minister who backed Wood's most famous film Plan 9 from Outer Space in hopes that it would generate enough income to allow Lemon's church to produce religious films; Paul Marco, who played Kelton the Cop in several films, and actors Conrad Brooks and Lyle Talbot. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

With its incoherent plot, jaw-droppingly odd dialogue, inept acting, threadbare production design, and special effects so shoddy that they border on the surreal, Plan 9 From Outer Space has often been called the worst movie ever made. But it's an oddly endearing disaster; boasting genuine enthusiasm and undeniable charm, it is the work of people who loved movies and loved making them, even if they displayed little visible talent. In Plan 9, alien invaders attempt to conquer the world by raising the dead, starting with an old man dressed in a Dracula costume (Bela Lugosi, in a few minutes of left-over footage grafted into this film), his much-younger and well-proportioned wife (Maila "Vampira" Nurmi), and a remarkably overweight police officer (Tor Johnson). Often funny and consistently entertaining (if almost always for the wrong reasons), Plan 9 From Outer Space is an anti-masterpiece if there ever was one, and as Criswell so brilliantly puts it, "Can you PROVE it didn't happen?!?" Its legendary director Edward D. Wood Jr. was played by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic, Ed Wood. One of the DVD releases of Plan 9 From Outer Space includes the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion, an exhaustive and entertaining look at the making of the film that runs a half-hour longer than the feature to which it pays tribute! ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide