Science Fiction and Horror meet, and obviously don’t like each other much, in the original, the infamous, “Plan 9 from Outer Space”. Ed Wood’s extremely uneven tale of Aliens, creating the undead in an attempt to stop us from creating a weapon that would destroy the universe, was little more than a 1959 cinema footnote, until it was declared the worst film ever in the early 80’s. It’s a film so bad that most viewers are magnetized to it as cinematic disaster that somehow satisfies our morbid curiosity for how bad a film can be. It takes courage to try and source that material for a stage production. It also oddly takes a variety of bottle caps, sink strainers, tiny toy vehicles, and paper plates. (I’ll explain soon I promise)
Year four of the crowd-pleasing stage production is wrapped up at the Maverick Theater in Fullerton. It’s part of a holiday trilogy of film adaptations that have defined and helped establish writer, director, Brian Newell as the king of sustainable and more importantly re-watchable horror/sci-fi material. We’ve already reviewed the wildly popular Night of the Living Dead which has become their October mainstay. We will soon bring to you a review of the entirely sold out run of Santa Claus Concurs the Martians. Plan 9 fills the gap between the two, not by embellishing Wood’s horrible script, but by celebrating everything that is wrong.
The play takes us back to the “jet set” age, where square jawed “manly” men were jet pilots and women stayed in the kitchen. Our hero is the hard drinking, hard smoking, Jeff Trent (Sean Couto). A guy so solid and right as rain that he only smacks his wife around occasionally when he’s unable to bury his feelings deeply enough with scotch. His wife Paula (Hannah Hoshirvan) steels the show with her “Stepford wife” delivery of a woman who only seems to own a nightgown and, as was the case in the 1950’s, is unable to formulate even simple thoughts without the assistance of the strong “alpha” males around her.
What makes this production take off is how Newell and his able cast punctuate the glaring issues with the source material. The play takes seriously funny jabs at the overtly misogynistic tone of the film. For instance, when alien Tanna (Cassandra Coutu) laments her inability to think owning to her possession of female reproductive parts. When Topher Mauerhan’s bumbling policeman character, Patrolman Larry, dons one of Paula’s spare nightgowns (ala Wood’s other cinematic disaster the imfamous Glen and Glenda), the audience is already expecting so little from the plot that it kind of just makes sense.
We have the undead too! Yes, it’s easy to forget because they really do so little other than walk around and, somehow, murder people from 30 feet away. Then there’s the iconic Vampire (Isabelle McDonald). McDonald manages to mimic the quirky movements from the film while still somehow winking at the audience and eliciting huge laughs. The sci-fi mainstay Tor Johnson (John Castro, co-creator of the slow). His labored, meandering movements still associated with undead everywhere, are faithfully recreated.
Perhaps what makes this show so unique is the way the staging is handled. Newell brings the saddest and cheesiest effects ever put on screen to life by having them re-created live and then rear projected from a small alcove above the stage. So when the brilliantly detailed bottle cap flying saucers attack the tiny cardboard cutout of Washington D.C., the viewers are not only able to see the strings projected larger than life, but also witness the wonderfully choreographed start to finish performance of the “Maverick Light and Magic” effects team Kyle Hawkins and Lauren Shoemaker at stage right.
Originally, the show was offered as part of a Sci-fi double feature that could be purchased and watched with the popular Night of the Living Dead in October. We really miss that format as it really balanced out the intensity of NOTLD with quirky tongue-in-cheek humor. The upside is that, four seasons in, this delightful and original work is finally able to stand on it’s own and continues to bring them back year after year.
The lesson? Look for this production next year and get your tickets the second they go on sale.
