Sunday, August 4, 2013

Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The 'Plan 9' Companion


This 1992 documentary is included on one of Image Entertainments releases of Plan 9.

Covering not only the making of the film it also deals with the life and times of Ed Wood. Containing a good number of interviews with the surviving cast we get a good idea what it was like to know and work with Ed. There are also interviews with critics and directors (Sam Raimi and Joe Dante) who talk about Ed and his film in the usual contexts of their lives and influence of others.

Running close to two hours this film is 35 to 40 minutes longer than the movie it documents. While for the most part this is a breezy and informative documentary its simply too long a film for the subject it covers (hell its ten minutes shorter than Tim Burton's Ed Wood and that covered more material).

Almost an hour in an I found my attention started to drift. While I did make to the end I found I ended up using it more as radio on the TV rather than as a documentary to watch. To be fair I'm not sure if the disinterest was do to the film itself or simply knowing a good deal about Ed Wood and the movie already.

Worth a look if you run across it (actually one of the Starz movie channels does run it from time to time), but not worth searching out unless you've never seen anything on the film or Ed Wood.

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