F I L M S / T V

From the very first words - "Can your heart stand the shocking truth about grave robbers from outer space?" - Plan 9 from Outer Space is a masterpiece of super-cheese, complete with ridiculously fake UFO shots, gorgeously terrible dialogue, the cliche narration from hell, not-quite-two-dimensional sets, hilarious sci-fi bullshitting and much, much more. But what makes it so wonderful is its earnestness; it was Ed Wood's Great Work, his piece de resistance, and he used it to make a Really Deep Statement about the human race.

See, what happens is these aliens are far more 'advanced' than we are, and they know that if we continue to gambol down the path of scientific progress unhindered by notions of social responsibility, we will end up destroying the universe (by exploding particles of sunlight, or something). So they're trying to scare us, and get us to acknowledge their existence, by making dead people walk around. The aliens look strangely like homo sapiens in shiny clothes, and you get some great identifying moments of sympathetic frustration when they shout at the humans things like "Your stupid minds. Stupid! Stupid!", or "It's been impossible to work with these human creatures. Their souls are too controlled."

Oh, it's all deeply touching really. There are some very special moments. Like the hi-tech sci-fi jargon: electrode guns, decomposure rays, dictomometers. The dialogue is truly amazing: She - "I don't think I've ever seen you in this mood before". He - (pause) "I guess that's because I've never been in this mood before". When pressed, he elaborates - "I saw a flying saucer". She - "You mean the kind from (gasp) up there?". The hyper-cheesoid voiceover: "There comes a time in every man's life when he cannot believe his own eyes", and so on. Someone actually says "Oh, you crazy kid".

Truly this doesn't deserve the appellation of "worst movie in the world". This is a work of art, the outpouring of an inspired soul. No film with lines like "The Earth people who can think are still frightened by those who can't" deserves such a dissing. Ed Wood was one of those rare and fragile creatures, an artist with absolutely no sense of cynicism. Such oddities should be treasured wherever they can be found; earnest people are a seriously endangered species.

Chaff, 24 July 1995

"what you are about to see may startle you," warns the Serious Message at the start of the film. Unfortunately a startle is pretty much out of the question for this film, the best it can arouse is a kind of condescending snigger. But there are plenty of those.

Just the characters' gleeful expressions as they toot on their reefers, sitting in a cloud of smoke, is enough to crack you up. They're hilarious when they get stoned; they say things like "Let's go Jack! I'm red hot!", they dance maniacally around, and any kind of dialogue is replaced by laughter. Lots of laughter. They laugh all the time, at nothing, or everything.

But that doesn't last long, pretty soon the Evil Demon Weed takes over their little brains, they succumb to the violent paranoids and start bashing innocent visitors around and throwing themselves out of windows. One of the men is even reduced to tears - he must be a deviant.

All in all it's pretty funny -- particularly lines like "Under the influence of the drug he killed his entire family with an axe!" -- but startling I'm afraid it is not. Or if it is, only for the fact that all the straight people seem even more screwed up than the pot smokers.

There's only one genuinely spooky moment, and that's the Respectable Authority Figure at the end telling us sternly that "Our children are obliged to learn the truth, so that we may safely protect them". You will believe what we tell you so that we can protect you from the horror of being able to make your own decisions! The people who made this film and the nightmares that have resulted from these attitudes are far more shocking than anything they try to show you here.

Chaff, 24 July 1995

"Welcome to hell." says spunky paramedic-type to spunky nurse-type, after loading a 14-year-old with multiple gunshot wounds into an ambulance and driving off into the opening credits of e r. "Welcome to hell," spunky nurse-type ripostes innovatively, once said 14-year-old is on the emergency room table with other spunky medic-types crawling all over him and bickering about their marriages.

Do I detect a theme struggling to make itself visible through the barrage of witty banter, medical jargon and ethnically diverse swearing? Well, yes. The message to be taken from e r appears to be something along the lines of "people are constantly injuring themselves in terrible, horrific and vastly entertaining ways, and the people who try to fix them are just as screwed up as everybody else. This is also vastly entertaining."

Thus we have an hour of panic and pathos every Sunday at 8.30 on TV2, as the e r staff fight, flirt and freak out at each other (though never losing their grip on their polystyrene cups of coffee), while patients make poignant yet humourous comments and eject a remarkable variety of bodily fluids. It's pretty stressful viewing -- everyone runs everywhere, all the time, talks really fast, handles a million total crisis emergencies a day and still has to cope with their babies being sick and their cars and marriages breaking down. Relaxing it's not. But then that's not why we watch TV, right? What we want in our recreation is EXCITEMENT, right? Like, crime and sex and violence and BLOOD AND GUTS AND THE TOTAL DECAY OF WESTERN CIVILISATION!!!!!! RIGHT??????

See, we're all still cavepeople at heart, really. We may pretend to be interested in politics and philosophy and higher social issues but nothing really gets up worked up like good old-fashioned pain. Other people's, that is. Lots of it, and as graphic as possible. Especially if we can laugh at it; the 'ouch - haha' response is one of the most primitive and deeply ingrained in the human soul. But it's the 90s and we're all meant to be more sophisticated now, we can't be quite as obvious about these things - we feel like we should legitimate our obsessions.

This is the real attraction of e r: the yuk factor. It's authentic gore, splatter with the ring of truth; characters say things like "oh man, the blood's pouring out" and "I got brains all over the asphalt, bro", and bodies do really gruesome things like spontaneously explode, but it's all with Full Medical Justification. All the schlock value of Z-grade horror, but like it's the Real Thing - this Actually Happens, man. This is Where It's At. Us viewers are just broadening our minds by sharing vicariously in the lives of the emergency room staff, in order to come to a deeper and wider understanding of, um, medical science and, uh, hospital administration. The fact that you get to see brains all over the asphalt (bro) is a minor detail, included merely for effect. Honest.

OK, so I'm being overly cynical. Lots of people watch e r to follow the Social Issues and Personal Traumas the characters experience, not just for the yuks, and well, OK, it's not a terrible programme or anything. It's got lots of competent women characters, kind of a sense of humour, and it isn't entirely predictable. But if you are an e r fan -- next time you're watching, examine your motives. Are you really interested in Dr Thingo's affair with Nurse Whatsisname, or do you just want to see her scrub up and plunge her hands into a steaming chest cavity?

Matter of fact, even if you've never seen e r in your life, you could perform the same exercise next time you see One Network News ... I think they're made by the same people ...

Chaff, 10 March 1996