Holiday viewing: ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’

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In his opening monologue for Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, the psychic Criswell declares, “We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” In a bizarre way, the movie has proved him right, as both it and its quixotic writer, editor and director have achieved a timeless quality — though maybe not for the reasons Wood originally intended.

Originally titled Grave Robbers From Outer Space, Wood’s accidentally seminal sci-fi clunker isn’t loved because it’s good — the film review site Rotten Tomatoes lists it with a score of 66 percent, while calling it “an oddly endearing disaster” — but because it was a labor of love for Wood, who assembled a coterie of characters in their own right to bring his characters to life, a process dramatized in Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic Ed Wood.

So if you, like Criswell, are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, and the unexplainable — or if you just want to put the holiday festivities on hold for 78 minutes — sit back and take in Wood’s vision, as posted at The Internet Archive, below.