La Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo y la violencia de género . 41

As shocking as it may sound, United Artists’ Invisi- ble Invaders follows a plotline similar to that of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, released the same year (see below). It’s a very low-budget offering (though higher-budget than any Ed Wood picture) with enough wonky ideas to keep fans of Plan 9 and Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) in stitches. Directed by Edward L. Cahn, who also helmed Mora Tau and Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), this third attempt features Revenge of the Zombies (1943) star John Carradine in a brief cameo as an undead scientist, and it stars another genre vet, John Agar. The story is out-of-control silly from the get-go: aliens are planning to (unsurprisingly)

A headless zombie rises (presumably to tickle people to death) in The Thing That Couldn’t

take over the world—this time by possessing the dead (mostly balding businessmen in dirty suits and ties, it seems). While the aliens appear to be intelli- gent and organized enough to mount an effective assault, they do make several questionable decisions. For one, they choose to announce their attack plans to the general public . . . over the loudspeakers at sporting events.

Immediately, a group of sci- entists are given the task of inventing a large, ridiculous-

looking gun that can separate the alien invaders from their human cadaver hosts. Protecting the scientists is Agar’s army major, whose response to almost any encounter with people outside the core group of characters is to shoot them dead. It turns out to be an effective strategy. The dialogue is hokey and the scientific drawing-room scenes go on and on, but Cahn manages some good zombie shots and, like many other filmmakers of this sci-fi horror period, maintains a fun, cheese- ball tone. Of Cahn’s three zombie efforts, Mora Tau and Creature are preferable simply because they’re even more outrageous and unusual—nothing here compares to Mora Tau’s zombies attempting to look like they’re walking underwater—but fans of cheese will also get a kick out of this attempt.

A man, dressed like some kind of atomic age beekeeper, attempts to incapacitate a defenseless zombie in Invisible Invaders.

© United Artists

This zombie finally puts an end to sportscasters’ annoying color commentary in Invisible

Shot in 1956 under the title Grave Robbers from Outer Space and finally released to a select few screens in 1959, Plan 9 from Outer Space has the dubious distinction of being widely considered the worst film of all time. And yes, it is a zombie film.

Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead—or, as the “alien” ruler portrayed by John “Bunny” Breckinridge puts it, “long-distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary glands of recent dead.”

Director Ed Wood was a filmmaker of great imagination whose minuscule budgets could never accommodate what he visualized in his head. He was never able to break into the Hollywood main- stream, but he did become friends with horror leg- end Bela Lugosi, and he shot the last known footage of the actor before his death in 1956. Plan 9 was born when Baptist ministers, hoping to finance their own biblical films with the profits

from a low-budget crowd-pleaser, invested $60,000 in Wood’s grand plan to edit Lugosi’s final scenes into an epic tale of an alien/zombie attack. (The making of the film is chronicled in Tim Burton’s fantastic 1994 biopic Ed Wood, which for anyone reading who hasn’t seen it should immediately be obtained and viewed.) It’s sad to think that during

the last days of his life the once- famous Lugosi was struggling to make ends meet and taking work from a man who could rarely get his B movies distributed—but in a strange way he couldn’t have picked a more memorable final project. While the end result is laughable, there’s something unique, strangely appealing, and oddly sweet about Plan 9.

The dialogue is awkward and ridiculous (including gems like “I’m muzzled by army brass!”), and everything about the production is low rent, but unlike many of the similarly themed pictures produced by independent filmmakers, Wood’s film has a dis- tinct style (or anti-style) that is eminently appeal- ing and entirely unforgettable. There’s more science fiction than horror, but zombie fanatics will find Ed Wood regular Tor Johnson rising awkwardly from the grave, stumbling slowly, and strangling victims on the fakest-looking cemetery set ever cre- ated. And like the best of the zombie subgenre, the movie features a political subtext about human- kind’s arrogance and “stupid minds,” albeit a hap- hazard, forced, and ludicrous one. Best of all, Plan 9 juggles so many characters, settings, and situations with such slapdash abandon that there never is a

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

A zombie (Tor Johnson) attempts to explain seat belt regulations to a terrified passen- ger in Plan 9 from Outer Space. © Distributors Corporation of America, Inc.

dull moment. As shocking as it may seem to the cineasts and zombie fans that look down on Mr. Wood, Plan 9 from Outer Space is, in its own special way, one of the most memorable zombie film expe- riences out there.