The Atrocious Music Collection: #40 in a series
Artist: Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1924-1978)
Album Title: Plan 9 From Outer space (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Category: Film "Soundtrack"Year: 1989 (album); 1959 (film)
Cover art style: Walking Dead
Audio/Video: Plan 9 From Outer Space
Acquisition: Gifted ca. 1991
Yes, Plan 9 From Outer Space is a movie and this is an Atrocious Music Collection. What’s your point? Right there on the album cover it says “Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.” How were we to know this record contained the audio – all the audio – from the movie? If that’s how they want to define a soundtrack, then that’s what a soundtrack is. Or at least what this soundtrack is. It’s been recorded in Nerv-o-Rama for goodness sake. What more do you want!?!
Honestly, we really had no idea what we were going to hear when we plopped the needle down on this disc. Imagine our surprise when we heard everything – dialog, sound effects, music, every second of the movie, a movie we knew so well, we would have known immediately if something had been left out. Considering all of the music was pre-recorded, canned, stock-music, I really do know what we expected.
It is simply not possible to overestimate the importance of Plan 9 for the development of the Curator's tastes and interest in atrocious art. For that reason alone, it belongs in the Collection. I read Nightmare of Ecstasy- The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr years before it was turned into the movie Ed Wood (which I also saw and loved). The NYC PBS (channel 13!) New Year’s Eve double feature, starting at midnight sometime around 1989, featuring Plan 9 From Outer Space and This is Spinal Tap remains (in my opinion) the best double feature ever created in the history of the world.
An understanding came early to me that Plan 9 transcended the usual dimensions in which a movie can be bad. Bad script, bad acting, bad direction, sure. Plot holes, cheap sets, special effects failures, all commonplace.
But how do you wrap your head around marketing your picture around a washed-up, heroin-addicted actor famous only for playing one monster-movie role and who was, unfortunately, now deceased? AND then body doubling him with your noticeably taller chiropractor based on a belief their ears looked the same? Or allowing Tor Johnson to speak English, a language in which he is barely comprehensible, while agreeing to Vampira’s decision to be completely silent (when she had spent years talking on TV quite well)? How do you write an introduction for grade-Z “wildly inaccurate” psychic Criswell, which, within moments of the film’s opening, manages to contradict itself regarding the film’s timeframe? (“Future events such as these will affect you in the future” but “we are bringing you the full story of what happened on that fateful day” based on the testimony of the “miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal.”) This was the film that cleaved new pathways of Atrociousness, ones never before theorized, let alone actualized.
However, as noted in my post on the Don Johnson album, “what makes the best Atrocious Art [is] the combination of dedicated sincerity with a lack of ability.” For the modern world, Ed Wood is the patron saint of Atrocious Art because he so fully embodies that combination. Danny Peary’s liner notes may find subversive messages in Plan 9, even comparing it to The Grapes of Wrath, but even if Peary is correct, Woods’ subversive message is so deeply buried in Eros’ awkward speech, which is so deeply buried in the worst movie of all time, it is essentially meaningless. It can’t be subversive because if you’ve managed to stay around until this point in the flick, you’re inoculated against taking any of this seriously. (By the way, Eros’ climatic monolog is easily one of the best renderings of how an alien being might actually sound trying to speak in English. Too bad everyone in the movie seems to have the same problem…)
So, here it is, the movie that may be more responsible for the existence of the Collection than any song. We can agree to disagree about if it is technically “music” or not. I say it’s in the ear of the beholder, but there can be no argument on whether it belongs in the Collection or not. It is part of the bedrock of Artocious Art - it transcends catagory.
By the way, I have linked to the movie up above, but if you want the experience of listening to this album, feel free to keep the sound on and cover up your browser with the images of the album cover and back. You’ll miss some of the visual fun, but it may just sharpen your auditory experience of this masterpiece.
P.S. I once planned a series of electroacoustic pieces around various themes in Plan 9, but only completed the first one. Someday I may get back to this project, but if you wish to hear the first movement (all two minutes of it), head on over to here. Funny story: after posting the audio online, many years ago now, I actually recieved an email from one of Ed Wood's nephews, who related a few of his personal memories of his unusual uncle, which was pretty cool.