The B-Masters Cabal

43 Comments

• #1 by Chris S. on September 10, 2009 - 11:21 am

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  From Darkstone’s website:

  ‘Simple titled “Plan 9”, the remake will be a serious-minded retelling of the original story, paying homage to the spirit of Wood’s film without resorting to camp or parody. The film will focus on the horror and science fiction aspects of the original, but will also be largely character-driven. Johnson’s goal for “Plan 9” is to make a film that honors not only the original source material, but also Ed Wood’s intentions when he made “Plan 9 From Outer Space”.’

  Madness. Raw, gibbering madness.

• #2 by Nathan Shumate on September 10, 2009 - 11:23 am

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  With more zombies.

• #3 by Chris S. on September 10, 2009 - 11:47 am

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  More than you know, because there’s ANOTHER remake of Plan 9 from Outer Space due out this year. Two of them. Two. One and another, that makes two.

  I just … I can’t … I mean …

  I give up.

  IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440745/

• #4 by Nathan Shumate on September 10, 2009 - 11:58 am

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  Isn’t it great living in the future?

• #5 by Chad on September 10, 2009 - 12:10 pm

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  Normally I’d actually be on board for a serious-minded Plan 9 from Outer Space remake, but…does it have to be yet another Romeronian zombie movie?

• #6 by Nathan Shumate on September 10, 2009 - 1:12 pm

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  This is true. I can’t imagine how electrode-sparked zombiehood can be communicable through biting.

• #7 by Chris S. on September 10, 2009 - 1:46 pm

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  Poor script writing?

• #8 by GalaxyJane on September 10, 2009 - 4:00 pm

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  Holy Crap!!! They must have made this in Richmond! I know that corner of Boulevard and Monument well! The statue of Stonewall Jackson is maybe half-a-mile from my favorite pre-sound era movie palace and not much further from the craphole apartment I spent my (first) university years in.

  Wonder if we’ll get a hometown premiere? Hell, I wonder how many people involved in this I know?

• #9 by GalaxyJane on September 10, 2009 - 4:03 pm

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  Oh, and I hate everything about this just on general principle and because it boosts my curmudgeon cred.

• #10 by Nathan Shumate on September 10, 2009 - 4:04 pm

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  That’s okay, it’s all right to love crap. Really.

• #11 by El Santo on September 10, 2009 - 5:30 pm

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  You know, there’s already a serious-minded, only minimally campy version of Plan 9 from Outer Space. It’s called Invisible Invaders.

• #12 by Blake on September 10, 2009 - 6:02 pm

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  Well, the fact that they are trying to make a serious film (at least from the trailer) doesn’t necessarily mean it will be bad. We B-movie fans often attack films that intentionally try to be camp, when the best camp classics are, as Dr. Freex put it, “Your best laid-out plans gone horribly wrong.” That is, films where the director had a vision and simply lacked the competence (and budget) to translate that vision into a good movie…ok I’m just rambling.

• #13 by Chad on September 10, 2009 - 7:05 pm

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  Nathan,

  Me neither. Personally I’d be much happier if they took a more Phantasm-esque approach.

• #14 by ProfessorKettlewell on September 10, 2009 - 7:47 pm

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  Honestly, I’d be up for a straight remake as well, but I don’t think that a shakycam gut-muncher is the way to go.

  Blake: I bore everyone silly with this one at every opportunity, but I pathologically cannot enjoy ‘camp’ or ‘kitsch’. All that “don’t you get it? It’s bad on purpose!” shit really jerks my chain. You know….you watch something like “Devil Girl from Mars” and you know perfectly well that the director had Something Important To Say about class and gender, but just ended up doing it so….badly. I think people get the idea that because Ed was a trannie in real-life, and liked to hang around showbiz has-beens his movies were intentionally campy, but what sticks out for me is the crack-owl sincerity of them. That, and their blithering incompetance.

• #15 by Blake on September 10, 2009 - 8:22 pm

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  My badly-stated point was that if they try to make an honest, serious, Romero-esque retelling and then botch it up badly, it will be more in the spirit of the original than if they were to shoot for intentional camp. Whether or not it’ll be as entertaining as the original, that’s another story.

• #16 by ProfessorKettlewell on September 10, 2009 - 11:04 pm

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  Understood, and….yes, you’re correct. My misunderstanding.

• #17 by Read MacGuirtose on September 11, 2009 - 3:04 am

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  You know, maybe it’s just me, but I’d think if they really wanted to make a “serious-minded retelling of the original story… without… camp or parody”, taking out the ridiculous Criswell narration might be a good start. Having it spoken over an old-fashioned radio, on the other hand… I don’t really see that as helping.

• #18 by Read MacGuirtose on September 11, 2009 - 3:08 am

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  (Okay, yeah, I realize the radio voice obviously wasn’t actually Criswell, but having anyone, Criswell or not, go on about how we’re “all interested in the future, for that’s where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives”, and so on, doesn’t really seem conducive to “serious-minded”ness…)

• #19 by Chris S. on September 11, 2009 - 10:47 am

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  I’ve found the (God help us) official Myspace page for the other “Plan 9” remake, “Grave Robbers From Outer Space”. It has a trailer and several production stills.

  …

  Words fail me.

  http://www.myspace.com/grfos

• #20 by Nathan Shumate on September 11, 2009 - 11:24 am

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  And me. Which means, I guess, that I don’t want to review it.

• #21 by Chris S. on September 11, 2009 - 12:25 pm

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  Oh, God, no. It looks like a couple of dropouts shot this in somebody’s basement over a long weekend.

  The weird thing is that these guys, like our friends at Darkstone Entertainment, seem to think that there’s merit in making a straight version of “Plan 9”.

  And I quote, “‘Plan 9’ was a great idea that never got a fair shake because of the ‘worst movie ever’ tag. We have no intentions of making a ‘so bad it’s good’ movie for the sake of spoofing the original. I personally am a big fan of it as a matter of fact which is why I always wanted to do my own version of it if the opportunity arose. It has so I’m doing it”.

  Seriously, who are these people?

  Source: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=363016853&blogId=477442814

• #22 by Bill Cunningham on September 11, 2009 - 5:03 pm

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  As I said over at my place, I think these guys have no where to go but up.

  The Graverobbers folks though – two kids in a basement using flash to create some graphics does not a trailer make. Shoot some footage guys!

• #23 by Nathan Shumate on September 11, 2009 - 5:55 pm

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  Be careful what you wish for, Bill.

• #24 by Read MacGuirtose on September 11, 2009 - 7:03 pm

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  Vacuous trailer notwithstanding, I suspect that the makers of Grave Robbers From Outer Space actually have shot some footage, if not the entire movie. One hint is the background to the page — I’m guessing that’s a picture of their Vampira analogue. More significant, however, is the movie’s IMDb page (which I’m actually kind of surprised exists). That page lists a release date of October 31, 2009 — for that to happen, production has got to have already wrapped; they’d probably need at least a few months for post-production. Now, granted, one could argue that maybe they don’t know what they’re doing and they somehow think they can shoot and edit the movie in less than two months, but this seems very unlikely — the very fact that they somehow managed to get their project listed on the IMDb implies that someone on their production team isn’t entirely ignorant of how the film industry works. More importantly, the film’s status — last updated May 13, 2009 — is listed as “Filming” — if they had already started filming in May, they should be done by now.

  Ah, ha. Yes, on further investigation, it appears the shooting was completed back in June. So it’s probably in post-production now.

  Of course, if so, that leaves open the question of why, if they did shoot all the footage for their movie, they didn’t use any of it in their trailer. I see at least two possibilities: either they made that trailer before the shoot, and haven’t bothered to make a new one since, or they really, really have an odd idea of what goes into a good trailer.

  But anyway, I guess the main point is, it seems their footage has already been shot. For better or for worse.

• #25 by Read MacGuirtose on September 11, 2009 - 7:08 pm

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  Whoops — minor correction. On rereading the blog post I linked to, I’m not sure the shooting finished in June after all. The replies to the post seemed to be good-byes of a sort from cast members that I took to indicate they referred to the last day of shooting, but the post itself mentions that they “really set the watermark high early in this production”, which seems to imply they were still near the beginning of their shoot on June 29. Although that doesn’t seem compatible with the IMDb listing saying that they were filming as of May 13…

  Well, all right, so, whether it was near the beginning or the end of their shooting schedule, it at least seems that they were shooting in June 29. Which means that they’re probably done by now, although not necessarily… sometimes low budget productions done by novice filmmakers with day jobs only shoot on weekends (and while the phrase “What a weekend!” in the blog post doesn’t prove that was the case here, it certainly suggests it may have been), which means production may drag out over several months. Anyway, though, while questions still remain, I think there’s one thing I can say for sure, which is that I just spent way too much time looking into this.

• #26 by Thomas on September 12, 2009 - 1:44 am

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  I was going to say that the idea of aliens invading earth by possessing corpses, and then attempting to strong-arm us into something or other, is actually a pretty neat-sounding premise for a film. But then El Santo mentioned Invisible Invaders. So, maybe I will watch that.

  This new version does not look very good.

• #27 by The Rev. D.D. on September 12, 2009 - 8:17 am

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  It almost looks like a remake of the remake of Dawn of the Dead. The footage looks pretty good, although that “radio Criswell” thing I’m not sure about. I don’t know that this needed to be made, or that I’m overly interested in seeing it, but it at least appears they were trying to make a good movie. Who knows–maybe they succeeded.

• #28 by Blake on September 12, 2009 - 9:20 am

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  Well, if we go by Chris Magyar’s Rule of Remakes (“If it’s flawed to begin with, go ahead and remake it; if it’s a classic, leave it the h** alone.), then there’s theoretically no problem in trying to accomplish what Ed Wood failed to do because of a lack of funds and talent. I’d try to remake this before, say, “Halloween”, “The Wolf Man,”, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, and even a good number of J-Horror films that have gotten Americanized in the past few years.

• #29 by Nathan Shumate on September 12, 2009 - 11:46 am

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  It would REALLY make more sense to cannibalize that ill-executed concept from a poorly-made, little-known movie and give not even lip service to the original. I mean, there are so many better ways to go with “aliens raise zombies” that don’t follow the path of Plan 9. Would we really feel cheated if there weren’t Ed Wood references in it?

• #30 by Mischief Maker on September 12, 2009 - 3:49 pm

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  That’s like trying to make a straight-minded version of “Springtime for Hitler.” I suspect more than 100% of shares for this film have been sold to several lonely old women.

• #31 by Chris S. on September 12, 2009 - 9:12 pm

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  If by “lonely old women” you mean the director’s mom, then yes, I suspect you may be right.

• #32 by Read MacGuirtose on September 13, 2009 - 2:11 am

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  In case anyone’s interested, Plan 9, the remake this post was originally about, also has an IMDb page…

  (For anyone unaware of the details of how the IMDb works, not just any independent movie gets listed on the IMDb; it actually has some more or less stringent requirements for eligibility (in principle; in practice I’m not sure exactly how faithfully those requirements are followed, though certainly I know filmmakers who have tried and failed to get their films listed there). Which is why I was somewhat surprised that Graverobbers From Outer Space was listed…)

• #33 by Luke Blanchard on September 13, 2009 - 7:34 pm

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  Marketing a remake of Plan 9 is a different proposition to marketing New Zombie Movie #2367. Very many members of the potential audience will never have heard of the original, but the reviews will call it a remake of “the worst movie of all time” and perhaps talk about Ed Wood and Burton’s movie, and that might serve to get them interested in going.

• #34 by Luke Blanchard on September 13, 2009 - 7:51 pm

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  Zombies and aliens-wise, I enjoyed what I caught of the Australian film Undead from 2003. It has a streak of dark humour.

• #35 by Braineater on September 14, 2009 - 8:55 am

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  Undead was an independent production, done as a labor of love by people with real talent, vision and commitment. If the folks behind Plan 9 can bring an equal amount of talent, vision and commitment to adapting Ed Wood’s original, then hey — more power to them.

  The trailer, though, isn’t raising my expectations any. After all, Luke, it reeks of New Zombie Movie #2367 (this year) with a thin veneer of Plan 9 over the top. All the things that endear the original to a certain audience (of which I am absolutely not a member) seem to be intentionally excluded from this version, so… what’s the point?

  I think I’ll stay home and watch Pontypool again instead.

• #36 by Bill Cunningham on September 14, 2009 - 9:44 am

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  I realize I’m probably in the minority here but I thought the Criswell monologue coming out of a classic radio was just enough of a wink to the original to pass muster.

  If someone came into the kitchen and shut the radio off and said to whoever was listening, “Why do you listen to that crap?” and then the story moved on with a serious take on the idea of an alien invasion during a storm that uses the living dead (did I just type that?) …

  Well, I for one would watch that movie.

• #37 by El Santo on September 14, 2009 - 1:16 pm

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  I wonder if this version (or Grave Robbers from Outer Space, for that matter) will retain the solarmanite reaction as the motive force for the plot.

• #38 by Nathan Shumate on September 14, 2009 - 1:20 pm

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  “No blood for sunlight!”

• #39 by Blake on September 14, 2009 - 4:41 pm

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  I’ve only seen the original once and I believe it was this year or late last year when I did. I’m actually kind of looking forward to both.

• #40 by Bryan on September 27, 2009 - 1:28 pm

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  I hope that there is more to the movie than what is shown in the trailer, otherwise it is just a zombie movie. It may be a good zombie movie, but still just a zombie movie. If there are more plot elements from the original I would be pleased. The trailer is geared towards younger people and non-B movie fans. We’ll see.

• #41 by Christopher Kahler on September 29, 2009 - 8:38 am

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  Since nobody bothered to ask directly, I’ll answer some of your questions about ‘Grave Robbers’ here.
  The trailer was just a throw together fx exercise that ended up all over the internet within 24 hours so it was pointless to remove it by then. I was working on the invisible look for a space pod (ala ‘Predator’) which would explain why it can be sitting in a cemetery unnoticed unlike the original film. It is definitely not a true representation of the finished film in any way.
  Production began in May. Rather than have a Bunny Breckinbridge rolling his eyes and mugging for the camera, our Ruler is beamed via hologram across the galaxy. Footage of this had to be done first for the CGI guys to begin work on spaceship interiors while the rest of the movie is shot. One of our CGI guys headed up the GM department of design for nearly 20 years, did most of the rendering for ‘Poseidon’ and has a line of advanced instructional DVDs on his work alone. The other has done design on practically every 3D game in every bar you’ve been in for the last 10 years or so. I might still look young, but I’m no teenager doing this with Flash LOL
  We have people in from 3 different states covering the 7 different story arcs in the movie so everyone’s availability often puts weeks of downtime into the shoot. I use that time to edit and work on the score. Even if we had the budget to pull people away from their day jobs for a stretch at a time, most of the actors are involved with other productions. It just makes more sense to wait on the people that were cast specifically for each role rather than recast and start the process all over again.
  Yes, there are most of the characters and many references to the original that fans will catch. Unfortunately we’re not going for a campy movie that’s badly done so we can say “Get it ? We screwed up so it’s like Ed Wood !”. Home movies like that need to stay home, not sold on Amazon as some sort of badge of ineptitude.
  No, there is no Criswell narration. If my actors aren’t dead and in reusable stock footage, nor playing mute, I see no need for narration to explain what’s going on to viewers. Again, this isn’t meant to be camp. There’s nothing funny about post 9/11 invasion, recession, epidemic, or the breakdown of the traditional family unit. All of these are very real and very modern. They also play a large role in the storyline since these things are what really scare people now.
  No, there is no solarbonite bomb, death rays, or running teenage zombies in Black Sabbath t-shirts either.
  Why the remake at all then ? The characters and elements are there already. Unlike trying to “reboot a franchise”, injecting some life into a poorly executed standalone movie makes more sense. Spaceships and zombies are fun stuff, so why not ? Ed Wood’s estate loves the idea of it. Fans can go either way. I personally hate most remakes, but there’s always ‘The Thing’, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, ‘Dawn of the Dead’ or a few others that actually are enjoyable on their own merit.
  Nobody has seen much outside a few still pics and people who have watched scenes loved it. Worst case scenario for me is I do an even worse job at remaking “The Worst Movie Ever Made” which I’d never get to live down if I make a dozen Academy Award winners. Just give it a shot before you rip it apart and ask questions if you want to know something.
  CK

• #42 by Read MacGuirtose on October 1, 2009 - 1:45 am

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  Mr. Kahler, I don’t think the general response here has been one of ripping apart your movie. Some of the comments have been quite positive about the idea of a serious remake of Plan 9 From Outer Space. Others, not so much, but you’ve gotta expect not everyone would be crazy about the idea. Now, granted, there were some pretty negative comments about your movie, mostly based on the “trailer”… but the thing is, if the trailer is about the only thing readily available about your movie, it stands to reason that’s what it’ll be judged by (until more information becomes available). Now, it may very well be that that “trailer” was just a “throw-together fx exercise”, as you said, and doesn’t fairly reflect on the quality of the movie as a whole… but people aren’t going to know that by looking at it, and it’s not realistic to expect that everyone is going to contact you directly to ask you about it before commenting. (Anyway, don’t take the comments here too hard, even the ones that were negative about your project. If you’ll read some of the other threads here, you’ll see that this sort of thing isn’t generally meant maliciously, and that the commenters are sometimes almost as wont to make fun of each other as about B-movies… it’s all in good fun.)

  I understand where you’re coming from; I’ve been involved with or am slated to be involved with a number of low-budget independent movies myself as an actor (including, in fact, a remake of a notorious B-movie… not as notorious as Plan 9, but then what is?), and I have ambitions to make movies of my own, so I’m definitely sympathetic to your cause, and I honestly do wish you success. I just think you’re being a little hard on the commenters here with some of your phraseology. Believe me, if there’s anywhere people are going to give your movie a shot, it’s here, some of the negative comments notwithstanding—you’d be surprised some of the movies the B-Masters have given a shot to.

  All that being said, thanks for dropping by and giving more information about Grave Robbers From Outer Space. Good luck with postproduction, and hope everything goes well for you.

  (Incidentally, I suppose I should say for the record, if you’re not familiar with the site, that I am not one of the B-Masters, nor in any way a designated representative; I’m just an occasional poster here, and nothing that I say in this post or elsewhere should be construed as reflecting their official viewpoint…)

• #43 by Nathan Shumate on October 1, 2009 - 6:04 am

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  Thanks, Read. The check’s in the mail.