peter-m-koch

if it isn't, already, and, along with the "Lenny Bruce Performance Film", may become known as the definitive video overview of the life and work of this iconic, visionary, controversial and seminal American artist, satirist and comedian.

Perhaps the one important event in Bruce's life, overlooked by, or perhaps deliberately excluded from, the film, is the near-fatal injury suffered by Bruce's wife, Honey, in a car accident.

It would have been good to see interviewed in the film, people that knew Bruce, that were heard in Larry Josephson's "Modern Times" radio documentary, "Lenny Bruce Remembered", such as Orin Keepnews, Sid Mark, Mort Sahl, Jean Shepherd, Albert Goldman, and Sherman Block, but I suppose one cannot have everything, and it IS Bob Weide's film, not Larry Josephson's. We DO hear from Bruce's mother, wife, and last girlfriend, Lotus Weinstock, in the film, as we do in the radio documentary.

It also would have been good to see and hear Bob Dylan talk about the real-life incident he mentions in his song "Lenny Bruce" :

"I rode with him, in a taxi once, only a mile and a half, seemed like it took a couple of months"

if indeed that did happen, but perhaps that was between the two of them only.

I will close by quoting from the end of Bruce's autobiography. I think the words are Dick Schaap's :

"Finally, one last four-letter word concerning Lenny Bruce : Dead. At forty. That's obscene."

Thus said the airline pilot to the stewardess in this film, attempting to be charming, before the UFO's appear to them both.

Sadly, this "Albuquerque ball" never takes place, at least not on the screen.

Similarly, the pilot's wife tells him she keeps a pillow next to her in bed to feel, when he's away, so she won't feel so lonely.

The 1987 NYC Film Forum Summer Festival of Sci-Fi Program describes this film as "The Amazing Criswell, Bela Lugosi, Vampira, Tor Johnson, washed-up cowboy actors, and movie-crazy Baptists, in this tale of Earth's invasion by flying hubcaps and paper plates from outer space".

What could be more horrifying than Vampira's tiny wasp waist, and its implicit damage to her abdominal vital and reproductive organs ?

The film even has its own tautology ( a term from logic and philosophy, meaning a statement which, of necessity, is true, and which therefore may seem trivial) :

"Inspector Clay is dead ! He's been murdered ! And one thing's certain ! Someone's responsible !"

Lugosi died in 1956 while this film was being shot. Hence Mrs. Wood's chiropractor taking Lugosi's place, albeit being eight inches taller than Lugosi, etc. I have read that the film was not released until 1959, because Wood could not pay the lab bill to process the film until then.

No, sorry, that was "Plan 9"'s sequel, "Night Of The Ghouls", which is even worse, if you can believe that.

I've always enjoyed the resemblance of Eros and Alien Commander to Neil Sedaka and Truman Capote, respectively, with all that that implies.

The film could also be seen as Wood's version of "The Day The Earth Stood Still", which also concerns extraterrestrials attempting to get Earth's people to take them seriously, acknowledge their existence, and listen and respond to them. There is, of course, no comparison between the two films, and some may see it as nonsense, blasphemy, sacrilege, etc. to even mention them both in the same paragraph.

Perhaps the next step downward would be to mention the corpse-reviving radiation from the Venus Explorer satellite returning to Earth in "Night Of The Living Dead".

I wonder how much of Lugosi's real pain (from narcotic addiction, the pain the narcotic was prescribed for, what had happened to his life, and to his career) is visible in what little we see of him on screen in "Plan 9".

Having seen this film on "Chiller Theater" on Saturday evening as a youngster, and attending Mass the following morning, I could not help but remember, and ponder it, towards the end of the Nicene Creed :

"Ah yes ... Plan Nine ... the resurrection of the dead !"

"And I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen."