ANOTHER PLAN FROM OUTER SPACE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: LANCE POLLARD / STARRING: JESSICA MORRIS, AUGIE DUKE, ELIZABETH SAINT / RELEASE DATE: TBC
Making an ultra-low-budget sci-fi movie and calling it Another Plan from Outer Space is a bit of bold move. The original Plan 9 from Outer Space has gone down in history as a classic stinker, a film so bad that it’s used to judge the standard of movies so abysmally put together that they ascend to a different level.
Ironically, Another Plan from Outer Space is far too competently directed and put together to reach the depths of Ed Wood’s classic. This black and white movie has the following things going for it: the (digital) print is clean, the audio is good, and the acting is adequate. After that, it’s all downhill. It has nothing at all to do with the original Plan 9 movie, except for the fact that it’s monochrome.
The movie opens quite well; we have very well rendered titles and then some stock footage of various American Presidents talking about a space programme. We then cut to an American spacecraft crashing into the desert. The crew have mostly survived but have no idea where they are, though it becomes swiftly obvious that they’ve landed on Earth. These trained pilots have a total lack of survival training (for reasons never explained) and one them has a broken watch. This watch becomes a plot point at the very end. This is all covered in the first ten minutes or so, and it’s about as good as the movie gets.
We then get just over an hour of pretty much nothing, as the actors walk slowly round the desert talking about nothing and getting themselves more and more lost. What’s clear here is that the actors, the director, and the rest of the crew are having a great time making a movie. Unfortunately, there’s not enough script or solid direction to turn that fun into something the viewer could enjoy watching. It has more padding than an over-stuffed sofa. Though the sofa is way more interesting and useful.
Towards the end of the feature, some plot arrives and something actually happens. It’s not a terribly interesting or original something and it’s the sort of thing that should have happened closer to the start of the movie. Without giving away spoilers, the film ends on a cliffhanger of sorts. We neither know nor care if the story will be resolved. Probably not.
Another Plan from Outer Space is not so bad it’s good, it’s just bad and dull. It feels like a very well done test piece for various technical skills, but as it’s presented as movie, it has to be judged on those terms. Another Plan from Outer Space is boring and should only ever be used if you are truly desperate to go to sleep.
