Undead, undead, undead!

A warning before we start - this is one of those "I haven't really got anything of substance to blog about but I'm blogging because I've feel I've got some vague sort of obligation to do so" post, and thus may contain random raving about... well about almost anything, really.

I recently watched the movie 'Ed Wood', which is a Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp (after all, what would be a Tim Burton film without Johnny Depp? Well it would be Planet of the Apes, wouldn't it?) as the title character. Now if you've never heard of Ed Wood, well you're probably a very lucky individual. He's famous for having had been declared 'The Worst Director of All Time' and his movie 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' is often cited as being the worst film ever made (on the case of the DVD, no less... which is an indication of just how bad it is, usually even if they have to scour every mental institution in town they can usually find at least one person to write a raving review to quote, although they do follow it up with the claim that it's 'so bad it's good!'). A quick plot synopsis (from memory): aliens who have been trying unsuccessfully to destroy (or was it enslave? I forget) planet Earth decide to enact 'Plan 9' (plans 1 through to 8 having had failed) which involves reanimating the dead and detonating sunlight (well, it doesn't claim to be hard science fiction). Of course the aliens are somehow foiled in the end and the reanimated dead get unanimated, but it's not really the shockingly bad plot that this movie gets remembered for, but more for the complete lack of any sort of quality control whatsoever. For starters there's the cardboard tombstones which randomly fall over, the sudden changes from day to night, visible boom mics and the flying saucers which are (a) probably hubcaps and (b) definitely on string. But wait! It gets better! The film uses a very small amount of footage of Bela Lugosi filmed just before he died with Ed Wood's wife's chiropractor playing Lugosi's body double (always with his cape held over half his face), which would have been fine if only the chiropractor had've (a) had similar facial features to Lugosi, (b) been of similar build to Lugosi (c) been of similar height to Lugosi (d) had a similar haircut to Lugosi or (e) borne even the slightest resemblance whatsoever to Bela Lugosi.
Plan 9 is something that really needs to be watched to be believed, but if you don't think you're the kind of person who can stomach watching this kind of complete and utter crap, I recommend watching 'Ed Wood' - it's quite good, and Martin Landau's Oscar-winning portrayal of Bela Lugosi (and I'm going to resist the temptation to wander off into raving about how brilliant Bela Lugosi was... we'll save that for another day) is fantastic.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to finish the Edward Scissorhands-esque book mutilation project and even take some pics of it, so stay tuned (if you're interested in that sort of thing)