Interdisciplinary artist Joe Wilson’s 19 Hour Plan 9 is a wild thing that one definitely does not see every day. Wilson took Ed Wood’s cult classic black and white film Plan 9 from Outer Space and ran it through Final Cut Pro software to stretch the runtime from 79 minutes out to 19 hours. We will not review the original Plan 9 here, please see the link above to Josiah Teal’s very fine review of the original film. He rates it 10/10.
Considering the technical implications when a 79-minute film runs for 19 hours, doing some quick kitchen math, we can boil down the result to give context. Film is shot at 24 frames per second (FPS). The runtime of Plan 9 is 79 minutes, giving us 113,760 individual frames. Playing those frames at a speed that culminates in a 19 hour runtime changes the frame rate of playback to 1.66 FPS. We are seeing less than 2 frames every second. TL;DR: That’s slow.
In email to Film Threat’s Chris Gore, Wilson shared insights into the process: “It’s been super fun and frustrating working on this, 30 hour render in FCP on an old laptop, uploading for a couple of days, partially due to the power to the computer being accidentally turned off.”
“…Plan 9 from Outer Space…[stretched] from 79 minutes out to 19 hours.”
Wilson suggested skipping ahead to scenes with Tor Johnson, and they are mesmerizing. One instance of this is around 7hr 59 min, where the vampire girl (Vampira / Maila Nurmi) floats into frame, announced by her unnaturally long fingers, followed by undead Inspector Clay (Tor Johnson) rising slowly from his grave. On the film website 19HourPlan9.com Wilson writes about making this version: “19 Hour Plan 9 is not intended as kitsch artifact but as an evolving landscape of light, shadow, and cinematic texture that is also sometimes hilarious.” Given that the source material itself is a kitsch artifact, it is challenging to consider the project in this artistically repurposed context.
The question top of mind is whether anyone will actually watch for 19 hours (in fact it would be longer with potty and snack / booze / mind-altering-substance breaks). If someone takes it on, I’d like to hear about it. Note: viewing over multiple sessions is not the same as watching it in one sitting.
One may ask how a critic can review the film having not watched it in its entirety, which is a fair question. We agreed to take in 45 minutes of the experience and focus on particular moments in the film, like the appearance of Tor Johnson rising from the grave. The rest we can extrapolate. Wilson should consider providing a map of particularly interesting moments, incidents like a torturously long phone bell ringing, or appearances by Bela Lugosi, Vampira, and Johnson. The experience of the film is, to say the least, trippy, but the sound is problematic. With it slowed so dramatically, the sonics take on a backward-echo effect that is intensely grating. The visuals are hypnotic as black and grey shadows play on the screen.
It is impossible to assess this work in comparison to more traditional format films, as it is more of an art installation. We’ve credited Joe Wilson as director here, but “conceptual artist” would be more accurate. 19 Hour Plan 9 would play well projected on the wall of a Goth club at 2AM listening to “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” echo off stone walls at a breathtaking volume. One could think dark thoughts, sip absinthe, and consider the nature of time and mortality.
"…the visuals are hypnotic as the black and grey shadows play on the screen."
