Ok so its been awile since I have said or done anything horror related, this gap between horror related posts has not been intentional in the slightest. I like to try and mix my content so this blog keeps a nice mix of Video Game, Horror, Wrestling and my general thoughts on the world around me AKA rants. The problem is that I need something to work with and I need the drive to do it. A lot of horror films I have tried to watch lattly just havent had enough of an impact on me for me to feel like writing about them.
The film I am going to be talking about now is PLAN 9. For those of you who dont know PLAN 9 is basically a remake of the old Ed Wood film PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Ok so I feel I need to expand on this a little Edward Davis Wood, Jr AKA Ed Wood was an American filmmaker, actor, writer, producer, and director mostly known for making a number of incrredably low-budget films in the science fiction, comedy, and horror genres. He might have lacked funds, sometimes he might have even lacked halfway decent ideas but the guy threw his all in to everything he did in a way some people have found inspiring. Tim Burton made a wonderful fim which was a biopic of Wood's life, titled Ed Wood (1994), starring Johnny Depp this obviously helped draw fresh attention to his work.
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE basically became Ed Woods most well known film recieving a cult following in 1980 helped by the fact it became known as "the worst film ever made" it was seen as being a film so bad that you just simply had to watch it and then you had to tell your friends about it and make sure that they watched it as well. I actually want people to watch both the original and this remake so I wont go to deep in spoiler teritory or outline who lives and who dies, this is going to be as spoiler free as possible.
I first heard that there would be a remake of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE on the cinnermasacre website, basically James Rolf AKA the Angry Video Game Nerd annoucned that he would be acting in it as a police officer, now having always been a big fan of all of his work I knew that I would watch it even if just to see his bit. My first question about the remake was who would want to remake a film which was considerd bad in the first place? Well I actually think its an excellent idea, if you try to remake a good film then you have a lot to live up to, people will remember the original and will expect you to beat it, what is worse is that lots of diffrent people will have diffrent ideas of how you should do this. The simple question being do you make a shot for shot remake or do you just try and get the essence of the original and use it to make something new and diffrent? The truth is which ever way you go someone is proberbly going to have an issue with your decision. Well what do we have here? Well the ideas from the original have been lifted from the 1950s and put into a modern setting with a big dollap of swearing and violence thrown in, in short its a film based on a 1950's idea made now but in a kind of 1980's fashion.. Ok so the story in short is that when a meteor hits Earth, it sends a radioactive shockwave across the area, those who have died in the last month are reanimated as zombies. So basically the general plot follows the original storyline and they have included various characters in the film who resemble some of the iconic ones from the original. There is a very obvious Vampira look-alike and a Bela Lugosi look-alike. It kind of tries to do it own thing while also partially being a parody, it doesnt really feel like the original though what it feels like is another Night of the Living Dead inspired Zombie flick one made in the 80's and the truth is I was totally fine with that.
I think the film has some awesome gore, the effects are not always the best but for the budget they are decent and they dont ruin the film for me at least. I think there is some great music in the movie some of it being very 80's horror inspired and reminding me of the kind of stuff used in Demons, there are some great action sequences and some awesome dialog but I will also admit that there are a few moments that are pretty cringe worthy some acting which is less than par but then this is also true of some much higher budgeted films. So is PLAN 9 the best film ever? No, but if you like 80's films and you like Zombie movies then give it a shot as it is in my oppinon a pretty darn good little indie film, it doesnt have the biggest budget out there but it certainly has a lot of heart and thats something Ed Wood himself would appreciate. I really enjoyed it and I would happily give it a strong 7 out of 10.
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