It grows on you with every viewing. Plan 9 is the most notorious film by Ed Wood, Jr., who was voted the worst film director or all time. It is loved by all who aspire not to be Ed Wood, and gives a shiver to those of us who come frighteningly close to being Ed Wood. It combines the inability to master the most elementary film techniques with a surrealistic mangling of the English language. Some of Wood’s bizarre and horrible phrasing approaches accidental poetry.
I had the great pleasure of showing it to a first-time viewer, my good friend Isaac White. Watching him react to the film — especially the scientific explanations “this can of gasoline, the sun, is connected to this rubber ball, the Earth by a line of gasoline.…” “a particle of light is composed of many atoms” — gave me more fun than I’ve had in awhile. You can only see Plan 9 for the first time once in your life. The experience cannot be repeated, and you cannot be the same person, after it has happened.
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