Lampy Cinema

Paper plate flying saucers, bee girls and actors who grow 12 inches during the course of a film drew about 100 students to Emerson Hall last night for the Harvard Lampoon Movie Worst Festival.

A Lampoon committee, including Robert M. Ulin '83 and Paul J Lee '84 took care to chose "unspeakably horrible, but fun to watch" movies like "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" and "Invasion of the Bee Girls," Lee said yesterday.

Arguably the worst of the bunch was David D. Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space," in which stagehands tossed paper plates to serve as spaceships and used styrofoam balls as planets.

Lead actor Bela Lugosi died half way through the film, so wood simply used another actor as a double, according to Michael Medred, author of "The Golden Turkey Awards" Wood told the stand-in, who was a full foot taller than Lugosi, to keep his face covered with his cape.

John Brosnan, author of "The Horror People," a movie book, describes "Plan 9" as "so very bad that it exerts a strange fascination. It appears to have been made in some body's garage"

Lee said that "Plan 9" is quite popular among film renters and that its rental price is comparable to that of a feature film.

Ulin said he was pleased with the Lampoon's choices, adding. "They are not per se the worst movies ever made. They are had in such a way as they can be enjoyed.