Local filmmaker sets out to fix Ed Wood’s ‘classic’

It’s not that John Johnson wanted to make the worst movie ever made. He just wants to remake it.
The local filmmaker has been putting on the finishing touches on “Plan 9,” an homage to Ed Wood Jr.’s notoriously bad “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”

The creepy final touches were added last week during the filming of a trailer at Lee Park. The local filmmaker hopes to have his version released on 9-9-09, the 50th anniversary of Wood’s mess-terpiece.
The original low low budget film was written and directed by Wood. His special effects weren’t that special. The aliens, who come to our planet to awake the dead, arrived, of course, in a spaceship. Wood’s spaceship was a pie pan dangling from a visible string.
In the graveyard scenes, the actors easily tip over the cardboard tombstones.

The good and bad part is that Wood was able to land one of the biggest stars in the horror genre, Bela Lugosi. Lugosi, who performed in more than 100 scary movies, played Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name. Among his other roles, Lugosi was also cast as the Wolfman and Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.
But with Lugosi’s early departure from “Plan 9 from Outer Space” (he died during filming), Wood took the opportunity to solve the dilemma by using the same footage of the star, over and over again.

The film was a flop. It was so bad it earned the title “worst movie ever made” and, because of that, soon became a cult classic. Even Tim Burton got his old pal Johnny Depp to star in a biopic of the notoriously odd director.
Johnson claims that his film is not a parody but more of a retelling of Wood’s original intention. Wood, he said, wanted to make a scary film, so the Charlottesville filmmaker concentrated on the science fiction and horror aspects of the original.
For those lucky, or unlucky, enough to have seen the original, Wood’s low-budget effects and bad actors left a lot to be desired.
“Even if Eddie was a little off in his filmmaking skills,” Johnson wrote on his Web site, “you cannot deny his passion. I feel a strong camaraderie for the man and his work, and I hope that I can make a film that would be as loved by audiences today as the original was for his generation. Only this time with its true intention.”

Johnson tracked down the only surviving member of the cast or crew to get his blessing on his project and ended up casting him in his remake. Look for Conrad Brooks to be back in his police uniform as Lt. Harper. Johnson also gives a little bit of the Hitchcock touch, appearing in a cameo in his own film. He plays Patrolman Kelton.
But Johnson’s real role is to mimic Wood as writer and director.
Brinke Stevens will play the part of the Vampire Girl, Monique Dupree is Becky, Caitlin Hill is Luck Grimm, Eric Lobo is Criswell, John R. Price II is Inspector Clay and Andri Kjartan is … a corpse.

Will it be a success? Only time will tell, my friends.
The two-disc DVD from Darkstone Entertainment will include a Q&A with Brooks.
Stay tuned.