From left: Tyler Wilson, Zac Ramsey, Andi Allen, Bill Fountain, Brooke Riley and Robert G. Shores. Photo by Daylon Walton.

Robert G. Shores in "Plan Nine From Outer Space." Photo by Daylon Walton.

Bill Fountain and Brooke Riley as Bela Lugosi and Vampira. Photo by Daylon Walton.

Andi Allen as alien babe Tanna. Photo by Daylon Walton.

  

Plan Nine From Outer Space

by Edward D. Wood Jr.

Presented by Level Ground Arts

December 3 - 19

at Dallas Hub Theater
2809 Canton St.
Dallas, TX 75226
214-749-7010

$15-$20

7:30pm Thursdays; 10pm Fridays & Saturdays
Runtime: 75 minutes with no intermission

You gotta feel a little sorry for the millions of filmmakers, past and present, who make mediocre-to-horrible films that will never again be remembered. But it takes a special gift to create a spectacularly awful movie that will forever be celebrated for its rancidity.

Much like the best camp, movies that fall in the "so bad it's good" bin can't be planned for. They just happen, like a perfect pearl plucked from a plump mollusk. What, you think the folks behind What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Showgirls thought they were laying a ginormous turd when they unleashed those works on the world? Of course not. But voila! Their spitball becomes a cherished present for everyone to enjoy.

Edward D. Wood Jr. was the king of producing such gems, although you couldn't tell him that. He's now revered (reviled?) as the world's worst film director. That status grew even more legendary when he was immortalized on film by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's 1994 film Ed Wood.

So how else would one adapt his magnum crappus, Plan 9 From Outer Space, other than by appreciatively sending it up and paying homage to its badness?

Seems pretty easy, huh? Not so fast. There are many ways such a project could go horribly wrong and end up, well, horrible. It must be done with flair and wit, which is exactly how it's handled by Bill Fountain, who directs and performs in it for his outfit Level Ground Arts.

The script isn't an adaptation. Fountain uses Wood's screenplay and lets it—along with his ace cast and cadre of designers—do the work.

What transpires is a flapdoodle plot about some creepazoid graverobbers, two airline pilots who spot a flying saucer, and aliens on a bizarre Earth-saving mission that involves gasoline and that flaming ball in the sky. Just like the movie, it makes less sense than Paris Hilton after she's had 14 tequila shots.

The six-pack of actors (Fountain, Andi Allen, Zac Ramsey, Brooke Riley, Robert G. Shores and Tyler Wilson) play multiple characters. They have the advantage of doing this on Ande Bewley's clever set of painted privacy curtains that represent various locations (on one, a cemetery crypt is labled "crypt") and her imaginatively designed, deliciously bad props.

The flying saucer, famously constructed of pie tins in Burton's film, is made from two Styrofoam bowls and dangled from a string on the end of stick, like a carrot for the world's tackiest mule. In another scene, a mangled body part is a plastic Halloween-store prop still in its packaging. And the graveyard is actually a costume, but it's too brilliant of an idea to ruin here. You'll just have to see it. (Costumes aren't credited, but they're fantastic, and Melody Jones' expert makeup design adds to the overall effect.)

In translating unintentionally bad cinema to skillfully bad theater, Level Ground's production has actors occasionally making wrong entrances and starting lines—words, even—that are never finished. Everybody sing along now: "Plan 9 From Outer Space and Waiting For Guffman sittin' in a tree, K-I-T-S-C-H-I-N-G."

Each of the actors understands the types of humor—especially those deceptively difficult skills of deadpan and mimicry—needed to make this kind of show sparkle.

Wilson, who has Don Knotts-esque expressions, and Riley, playing the actress Vampira, are both hysterical. Shores, who played JFK in Fountain's head-scratcher Crushing Grain, is devilishly dashing, which works out well as a narrator whose body is a cartoonish, tuxedo-wearing puppet. Fountain humorously takes on Bela Lugosi (who filmed footage for another Wood movie that ended up in P9) and also does a spot as the cross-dressing Wood, a cameo that's more over-the-top than the angora sweater-wearing Wood of Glen or Glenda. Ramsey showed a flair for parody in LGA's Evil Dead: The Musical, and he's even better here (because he doesn't have to sing).

And then there's Allen, who could teach a master class in the art of stylish lampoonery. All of her roles are well-done, but as Mrs. Trent, the housewife who is caught up in the middle of the bizarro plot, she parrots Mona McKinnon's expressionless, inflectionless performance from the movie. Her focus and artistry are peerless.

This staging couldn't go on any longer than it does or it would risk unbearable repetition, but at 75 minutes—about the length of the movie—it's perfection. Like Eros and Tanna, the aliens who warn the humans that "all you of Earth are idiots," it looks like Level Ground Arts is plotting something.

If it's a takeover of the DFW theater scene, then we surrender.