THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956)

For those of you who don't know, the Ten Commandments are ten rules listed in the Christian Bible that it says humans should live by.  A few of them make sense like "Thou shalt not kill." (yeah, no shit!) and "Thou shalt not commit adultery.", but others like "...the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates..." are just silly.

Anyway, although the title of the film is THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, there's actually very little Commandments action going on.  Nope, the vast majority of the movie is about a dude named Moses.  Moses was born in Egypt way the fuck back in the day.  Around the time that he's hatched there was a prophecy that a great deliverer would be born to lead the slaves out of bondage.  So, the guy who owned all of slaves, the evil Pharaoh puts out a decree that all newborn male slave children shall be murdered.  Goddamn!  Moses' mother places lil' baby Moses in a basket and sends him afloat down the Nile river.  As Fate would have it, within one minute of being yeeted into the Nile, the evil Pharaoh's adult daughter (of all people) finds Moses and raises him as her own child.  Awww.  The End.

Oh sorry, that's actually just the beginning of the film!  Moses soon grows up to look like Charlton Heston and it's down to him and the Pharaoh's legitimate son, Yul Brynner, as to who will take over once the Pharaoh dies.  Things are looking pretty good for Moses, but then he fucks up and before you can say "I really wish Twenty One Pilots would cover Phil Collins' 'One More Night'" Moses is now a slave himself!  What the fuck?  Talk about a rags to riches and back to rags again story.

For being an older film THE TEN COMMANDMENTS is still very entertaining.  Yeah, it's as historically accurate as DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?, but who cares.  Solid acting by an impressive cast (I think Anne Baxter is the highlight of the movie), great sets, an insanely huge amount of extras, animals all over the place, wildly imaginative story, badass costumes, strong direction, groundbreaking special effects and a quick pace that makes the 220 minute runtime fly by.  I've seen TTC a few times over the years and I'd gladly watch it again right now.  My only real gripe is the ten plagues of Egypt stuff is passed over way too quickly.  It shows a little bit about water turning into blood and the hail storm, but it completely skips over the frogs and boils and locust!  Lame.  Still, it's easily worth multiple watches.  Check it out.

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959)

"We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives."

An elderly man, still mourning the recent passing of his late wife, is killed in a car accident.  Mourners leaving his funeral find the mutilated corpses of two graveyard workers.  The police are called and soon even more bodies start to pile up.  At the same time, two commercial airplane pilots report seeing an unidentified flying object, but the government covers it up.  These two events might not seem related, but they are!  You see, advanced extraterrestrials have been watching Earth for a very long time.  As we became more and more advanced.  Inventing the atom bomb, then the hydrogen bomb, but now...humans are on the verge of inventing the Solaranite bomb which will explode sunlight itself and, of course, the Universe!  The aliens have tried multiple times (I'm guessing 8?) to contact us, but The Man always covers it up, so they've moved on to Plan 9: zombies!

The most surprising thing that first time viewers will discover about PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is it's not that bad of a film!  It's honestly just low budget and rough around the edges.  The story itself is entertaining and funny, the pace is good and the acting...well, the acting is pretty stiff, but it's still enjoyable.  The lieutenant's pistol handling skills alone are worth the price of admission!   Yeah, the sets look cheap, but the stuff like the microphone shadows and edges of props being visible is because the film was shot for the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, but all of the home video releases (as of 4/2020) have been in 1.33:1.  So, the viewer ends up seeing things that were not meant to be seen.

As it is though, I still love P9FOS.  It's such a weird movie and it's 100% Ed Wood.  Nobody else in the Universe could have made PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.  That should at least stand for something.  Ed only made a handful of good films, but goddamn, are they unique and charming.  And I think that is the best way to describe PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE: charming.

Required viewing for fans of "bad movies".  

Not part of the review, but I would absolutely love to see a 100% serious retelling of Ed's original Plan 9 story idea.  I'm talking serious like ARRIVAL or something like that.  I honestly think, in the correct hands, this story could be straight up awesome!!!