USA. 1992.
Crew
Director – Mark Patrick Carducci, Screenplay – Mark Patrick Carducci with Lee Harris, Producers – Mark Patrick Carducci & Lee Harris, Music – Marc Doten & Joe Moe, Computer Animation – John Goss, Miniatures – Zen Mansley. Production Company – Atomic Pictures/Wade Williams Productions.
With
Lee Harris (Narrator/Host). With:- Forrest J. Ackerman, Carl Anthony, Steven Apostolof, Terry Black, Bobbie Bresee, Conrad Brooks, Eric Caidin, Drew Friedman, Gary Gerani, Rudolf H. Grey, Valda Hansen, Verne Langdon, Paul Marco, Mrs. Tom Mason, Harry Medved, Don Post Jr, Sam Raimi, Tony Randel, Greg Sims, Scott Spiegel, Harry Thomas, Vampira, Gregory Walcott, Bill Warren
Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion is a Documentary about the so-called ‘World’s Worst Director’ Edward D. Wood, Jr (1924-1978) and the making of his most famous film Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). (See below for Edward D. Wood’ Jr’s other films). The Wood cult grew following the publication of The Golden Turkey Awards (1980) by brothers Harry and Michael Medved – Harry is interviewed in the film. The Medveds named Wood as the World’s Worst Director and Plan 9 as the Worst Film Ever Made, but this contrarily served to turn both Wood, his life and films and in particular Plan 9 from Outer Space into objects of cultish fascination.
Not long after this, Wood’s films were revived in festival screenings, fan magazines of the day set out to interview all the surviving Wood hangers-on, and then there were several books Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr (1992), whose author Rudolf H. Grey is interviewed here, and subsequent to this King of the B’s: The Biography of Edward D. Wood Jr (1995) from Lee Harris who co-writes and co-produces the documentary, and David C. Hayes’s Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood Jr (2001). This culminated in the Tim Burton biopic Ed Wood (1994), made a couple of years after Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion came out.
Flying Saucers Over Hollywood gets inside who Edward D. Wood Jr was. People who knew him talk of his sense of failure, how this led to his increasing problems with alcohol in later life or of he calling up J. Edward Reynolds, the minister who funded Plan 9, seeking spiritual solace. The film talks of how Wood was financially reduced to writing pornographic films and novels in later years. His circumstances had him evicted from apartments multiple times and at the time he died he was reduced to living with a friend.
The documentary does a deep dive into Wood’s life. It screens footage from the unfinished film Crossroads of Laredo (1948) that Wood directed and appears in. There is even some rare behind-the-scenes film footage of Wood directing on the set of a commercial. The film discusses in depth Wood’s meeting with Bela Lugosi and their friendship, of Lugosi’s addiction issues and entering into recovery and of how Wood, rather than exploiting Lugosi as he has been accused of doing, genuinely believed that he would be able to revive Lugosi’s career.
The film briefly mentions a couple of Wood’s other films – Glen or Glenda? (1952), Bride of the Monster (1955) – but the almost complete focus is on Plan 9 from Outer Space. There are all the familiar stories told but in more detail than before. We learn how Lugosi’s double Tom Mason was Wood’s chiropractor – all a result of Wood apparently having developed back problems from sitting on his bed typing out his scripts on a table in front of him. The film even tracks down Mason’s widow to interview her. There’s the recounting of how the cast were baptised by the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills and all the other hangers-on turned up in the belief that Wood had finally hit the big time and hoping they might get a piece of the action.
Flying Saucers Over Hollywood even goes so far as to track down the locations of the places Wood lived and makes a visit to the now disused studio where Plan 9 from Outer Space was shot. Conrad Brooks takes us on a tour of the set and you can see just how cramped and minimal the surroundings were. Gregory Walcott talks of how he liked to get to a set early and prepare for a role – only to find the plane cockpit was built moments before the scene was shot and consisted of two pieces of board nailed together and a shower curtain hung between them. Some of the documentary is spent pointing out the notorious gaffes. The myth of what the flying saucers were made of is debunked – it is commonly believed that they were hubcaps, where in reality Wood simply bought flying saucer model kits.
Quite a bit of time is spent on the key supporting players in Plan 9 from Outer Space. The film goes into the life of Tor Johnson in some depth with everyone saying how he was a gentle character in real life. We even get director Sam Raimi and his friend Scott Spiegel acting out the dialogue from Johnson’s appearance on an episode of Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life (1949-61) and glimpses of a Tor Johnson comic-book. We get an interview with a still-alive Maila Nurmi, who tells of her history of the creation of the role of Vampira – she lists her inspirations as the Dragon Lady in the Terry and the Pirates comic-strip, Charles Addams’ Morticia and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty (1959). We learn how she was cast when Wood and Lugosi were watching her introduce a tv screening of Lugosi’s film White Zombie (1932) and Lugosi mentioned how he would like to work with her. There is also discussion of Criswell and how none of his prophecies ever came true, while Vampira states that even Criswell himself believed he was a fraud.
There is some time spent on the revival of Plan 9 from Outer Space and the growth of the Wood cult via The Golden Turkey Awards. Other sources are cited for the film’s infamy, including tv revival screenings, even the famous Dante’s Inferno list of worst films ever published by Joe Dante in Famous Monsters of Filmland (1958-82) magazine. We also meet Terry Black, author of Dead Heat (1988), who details how he uses Plan 9 from Outer Space as a teaching tool to get students to note all the bad details about a film.
Director Mark Patrick Carducci had previously written the scripts for Neon Maniacs (1986), Pumpkinhead (1988) and Buried Alive (1990). Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion was his only directorial outing. Carducci unfortunately committed suicide in 1997 at age 42.
Edward D. Wood Jr’s other genre films are:– the transvestitism pseudo-documentary Glen or Glenda? (1952); the mad scientist film Bride of the Monster (1955); the script for the ape-human love saga The Bride and the Beast (1958); the fake medium film Night of the Ghouls (1960, released 1983); the script for the nudie horror Orgy of the Dead (1965); the script for the prehistoric sex comedy One Million AC/DC (1969); and the pornographic film Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love (1971).
Full film available here