Plan 9 from Outer Space

It would be inaccurate to say that everyone needs to see "Plan 9 from Outer Space" at least once, but I'm glad we went to see it on Friday night. It’s likely that I would never have seen this movie if Nicole hadn’t been interested in showing up for this midnight show.

Once again there was a long line of people queuing up for the movie (around the corner and down the alley) (we were in the alley) long before midnight. Once again, it seemed perfectly normal, but it’s been so long since I’ve lived amongst such practices that I’m worried that within a few weeks the public will lose interest in the Nuart’s midnight movies. Yet the Rialto in South Pasadena also has midnight shows, so there must be a market for it. The Landmark Theater in La Jolla has on again, off again midnight movies, but I never gathered enough enthusiasm to visit.

Apparently there is suddenly enthusiasm (however brief it may be) for colorized movies again. I should have seen this one coming, it’s been about fifteen years since the colorizing craze of the late ‘80s. Brother Jim, veteran movie colorizer, might have more info on the current state of the practice. Before the feature presentation on Friday night there were trailers for several (newly?) colorized movies including “Night of the Living Dead” and “Carnival of Souls”. Yet none of the colorized trailers looked as good as “Plan 9”. Some demented people put a great deal of time and care into making this movie look terrific.

Neither N. nor I won anything in the pre-show ticket stub number raffle this time. After N. won the raffle at “Tron” I hoped that we would win every time. And the prize, besides the Café 50’s gift certificate, was a poster for Sophia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” movie.

Before the film there was a short Mike Nelson-narrated feature called “Plans 1 through 8”. It was just a Powerpoint style animated feature, seemed slapped together at the last minute. Some good news is that the colorized “Plan 9” DVD (like the colorized “Reefer Madness” DVD) features a commentary track by Mike Nelson.

After years of “Mystery Science Theater”, I wasn’t sure if “Plan 9” would work without Joel/Mike and the robots cracking wise. It was awful, but it worked. The colorization definitely helped and the colorizers didn’t take many liberties. At one point one the aliens, Eros, gets punched in the face and his face briefly turns green as he recovers, but that was one of the few such instances.

After the movie, around 3 a.m., we walked across the street to Dolores Restaurant. I’d heard terrible things about it on Chowhound, but none of the local darlings of Chowhound are open at that hour, so we visited. It wasn’t terrible, it was just diner food, nothing harrowing about it. It was a little spooky walking on deserted streets back to the car afterwards, but at 4:30 a.m. we were safely home and ready to go to bed.