Ed Wood is beloved because he was a sincere guy who made very sincerely bad movies. He meant well, and he put everything into it.

Vic Savage, not so much.

How cynical were his movies on a scale of 1 to Amazing Bulk?

1) Filmed at Spahn Ranch. MNR approval right there.

2) He sold the film to investors based on the script by Robert Silliphant, writer of several Twilight Zone episodes. But it turned out it was actually his older brother, Allen Silliphant, who wrote it. Robert Silliphant was credited as the writer.

3) Savage's wife wrote a tell-all biography that delves deep into his sex life and drug abuse. He worked as a male sex worker to raise funds for his movie. There's a pretty good movie that was made recently called "The Creep Behind The Camera", with interviews with people who worked on the movie (including the author of this fun little number).

4) It's oddly sincere, but nothing about this movie makes sense.

Ed Wood was a natural artist, in the same way that children are natural artists. Plan Nine is a Tragicomic masterpiece about a chaotic universe where stupid aliens attempt to save the universe from the stupid earth people, and fail spectacularly (and stupidly), leaving the universe still heading toward destruction at the story's end. My favourite scene is the one where two earth officers listen to a taped message from the alien commander, who explains the aliens' mission quite clearly, but the senior earth officer ends the scene by the junior earth officer to "find out what the hell they want!".

The incompetence of the film just underlines the great themes that were expressed not by Ed Wood, but by his uncredited collaborator, CHAOS.