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Public Domain from Outer Space
Black_by_Pubic_Deman writes "It is a work of art that truly represents the nadir of film making; a movie so bad that it's good. It has been labelled 'The Worst Movie Ever' by the Golden Turkey Awards and is also the winner of two notable Razzies. Ed Wood's classic and every Slashdot reader's favorite movie Plan 9 from Outer Space is now in the Public Domain and available as a free download thanks to the fine folks over at Archive.org."
Looks like they weren't ready. Any of the lucky few want to make a bittorrent?
If only the same were true about the operating system.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Plan 9 From Outer Space is better than half the movies available in the theatres now.
The Internet Archive got slashdotted. No more downloading the internet for them.
It was on TV late at night about 15 years ago when I was still a teen. I was wondering what that was until I saw the movie with Depp.
Still, I don't know if Plan 9 is truly the worst movie ever. I have to agree with the MST3K crew that there are several others even worse, like Manos.
Is "Fantasy Mission Force," an old Jackie Chan film.
If you're ever in the mood to pull your hair out and you're just looking for a reason, rent this movie.
is named in the honour of this film, to commemorate how truly bad it was in the opinion of the Bell Labs folks
VKh
Perhaps we can place a copy onboard for the next shuttle launch and send that piece back where it came fome. *shudder*
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
Maybe they should say "But subscriber can beat the rush and slashdot the links early" rather than what they have now.
...Gayniggers from Outer Space?
Personally, I'd like to see an MST3K made of The Matrix, which I think is *much* worse than Plan 9, especially given the budget.
Anyways, it couldn't be any worse than Battlefield Earth, could it? Or am I about to have to give up my geek card?
Now, if it is as bad as you say, there should be an MST3K of it somewhere. THAT I would like to see.
#define CLUE 0
After all, it's future events such as these that affect us in the future!
would have to be Gay Niggers From Outer Space.
The GNAA put out a torrent of a VHS rip for those curious how bad a movie can be.
It might have rock-bottom production values and a below-b-grade script, but thinking about it I don't it's any less enjoyable a movie to watch than Spiderman 2 or *other random hollywood movie*.
It's worth watching just to know what everyone's on about.
"Karloff did not deserve to smell my shit! That limey cocksucker can rot in Hell for all I care!"
Oh, and there's a great scene where EW meets Orson Welles, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, except that Welles' voice is uncannily dubbed by Maurice la Marche (Kif & the Robot Devil in Futurama, The Brain in Pinky & The Brain, etc.)
Hilarious film, a classic. It's always nice to be reminded that as long as nobody wants something it might actually make it to the public domain some day.
If you haven't seen it I definitely recommend "Ed Wood" by Tim Burton. Very funny, talks about this movie a bit.
The worst movie ever title belongs to 'Zombie vs Ninja' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094384/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052077/
If the person who posted the original article really liked archive.org, they wouldn't have posted the link...
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
Seven Ninja Kids. I am not kidding. After watching this film, you'll murder babies.
More and further proof that we all love to see utter crap. At amazon the rating is 4/5 stars, after being reviewed by 188 people.5 760403/ref=pd_sxp_f/103-5341856-6668652?v=glance&s =dvd
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/630
Perhaps this is the type of success that Hollywood is currently aiming for?
Too bad that it's actually not watchable. I mean, there's something cool about something so bad it's good, but this movie is so bad that it went straight through bad, PAST so bad it's good, and back into bad again, so bad it's undescribably unpleasant to watch it. I'm talking kicked in the testicles bad. but worse.
The only movie I have ever seen that I disliked more was a tie between Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. If there was ever a case for copyright extension, keeping those piles of shit out of the public domain IS IT.
I am NOT kidding. This movie is BAD.
To truly appreciate Wood's work (his masterpiece, Glen or Glenda is especially worth checking out) one needs to think of it in it's proper context, that is, alongside such work as Un Chien Andalou, L'Age D'Or, and the works of filmmakers like Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, John Waters, and the Brothers Quay.
Mainstream critics and casual moviegoers laugh at what Wood acheived, but the surreal beauty of his films will live on and be appreciated by fans long after rubbish like Cinderella Man and Spielberg's crummy War of the Worlds remake have been forgotten.
Like anyone could even know that, Napoleon!
So, here I was, happily downloading the last few live recordings of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, when this gets posted to slashdot. I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE MOVIE, I JUST WANT MY MUSIC BACK!
:( Well, I really hope you lot all really do want this film, and aren't just leeching it "because it's there".
Poor Archive.org.
Prisoner #655321
Here is an interesting tidbit. In its day, that film was considered communist propaganda for making a common man the hero and a banker the villian. Now, the entertainment industry would have us believe that the public domain is a communist plot, and that "intellectual property" (pure vapor) is worth more than tangible things. Well, it's not!
In the near future people might literally ask, "Public domain? What's that?" and only historians will be able to explain the concept. It will be as extinct as the Dodo Bird.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
The Fantastic Four.
What a streaming pile of cat shit and an insult to those who grew up with the comics.
Please Hollywood you don't need the MPAA, it's not like any of your stuff is worth protecting.
Give up. Stop. Please stop making films. They are FUCKING AWFUL.
me and my friend were just talking about that movie earlier today O_O
We're sorry, your post could not be completed as written. The agency you were attempting to spam, "CIA," could not be reached. Please check to make sure you didn't mean, "NSA," and try posting again.
Well the site is down. Duh. How predictable was that? But did they post a torrent before they posted the story? NoooooOOO. This is slashdot. Even when they can legitimately post a torrent, something that isn't even hosted on their own servers for cryin' out loud, they don't consider it. They post the story knowing the server will be DoS'd. Oh. I'm soooo impressed at the "slashdot effect". Right. GET OVER YOURSELVES ALREADY. That was cute for about 5 minutes in the go-go 90s when everybody was oh-so-impressed that your little ol hobby website could get that much attention. Guess what? We're half way through the next decade already. Nobody is impressed. They're just annoyed.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Is it any worse than "Inframan"?
I see everyone claiming this movie is in the public domain, but I don't see any evidence that it really IS. Just how did this copyrighted work become no-longer copyrighted? AFAIK it's not old enough for the copyright to have expired.
On another note, I don't think this movie truly qualifies as bad. Sure it's crap, but is it bad? I remember an interesting film essay that said for a movie to be truly bad, it had to have a grand concept that was so arrogant or so ham-handedly executed that it turned on itself and became bad. Sort of hard to explain the whole essay in a couple of sentences, but to give you an example of the movies considered truly bad, he used the examples of "Pay It Forward" and "Grand Canyon."
Now to me, nothing surpasses the horror of what I consider the worst film ever made, by Robert Altman, starring Karen Black, Cher, Sandy Dennis, and Kathy Bates.. that horror is: "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean." This film even fulfills that essayist's ideas, the concept is "high theatre" (it's a film of a 1-room 1 act broadway play) and it is so stridently, shriekingly feminist that it is like being trapped in a room for two hours with a bunch of suicidal women that just won't shut up.
No one wanted to keep it. I mean really, this *is* Plan 9 we are talking about here.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
So why is it public domain now? It's nowhere near 70 years or whatever from the creation date.
And just think. When that "new and improved" content distribution model plus "technology will set you free" comes of age. You'll have acres of such quality to wade through to find those gems our grandparents use to have to go to a movie theatre to discover. Viva la evolution!
I'm getting good speeds from their FTP.
"Manos: the Hands of Fate" Nothing else even comes close. It's truly painful to watch.
I know this is off-topic, but I've got to thank you for that. As a Mac user and Mac lover, I heartily despise the blind frothing fanatics who give the Mac community a bad name. A long-time acquaintance recently asked me what I thought about Windows XP, and when I told him that I've only ever used a Mac so I couldn't comment about any Microsoft OS, he said, "So you're one of those Mac fanatics, eh?" I was livid. The only thing I'm remotely fanatical about is my family; nothing else, certainly no computer, even comes close.
It burns my ass that people automatically assume that I'm some sort of zealot because I use a Mac. I've been called a "traitor" and worse in Mac-related forums for daring to criticize Apple, and for making no bones about my dislike for Steve Jobs. Admire him as one of the greatest visionaries in the tech industry? Certainly. Respect him for his unswerving desire to produce great things? Absolutely. Like him? I wouldn't piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire. This entire Jobs-is-God-and-Apple-is-His-Kingdom shtick is just damned distasteful and immature. For the last time, Apple is a public company like any other, and their CEO needs a thorough psych evaluation. Period. A lot of Mac users need to seriously grow up and rethink their emotional investment in a computing platform, albeit a very good one. My PowerBook is one of my favorite material possessions, but I don't hug it or lick it. That's what my wife is for.
What was this thread about again? Oh yeah. "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Sorry, never seen it.
It was pretty bad, but it was no Hangar 18, let me tell you.
It was fun watching Vampira..meee-owww
Tor was loads of fun since he doesnt close his mouth the entire time. Gotta love it.
The acting is bad. The sets are awful.
I liked it.
Unless what middle school Family Life classes taught me was wrong, I think you have to have sex first to have a daughter. And people at
Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. This was on everywhere in the holiday season until then, but since is exclusively on NBC. Capra chose not to renew the copyright on that film, so it was his wish that it be public domain.
As I heard it, the film is still public domain, but the music in it was still under copyright; NBC bought the rights to the music, and is therefore able to control copyright of the film.
Theoretically, anyone could play it if they replaced the music (or cut the scenes which contain copyrighted music.)
But you're right - we are all being robbed.
I'd rather get hit over the head with the gun, which is preferable for obvious reasons to getting shot with it, but when put in those kinds of situations, one doesn't have much choice.
Everyone talks about Ed Wood, Jr. being a totally incompetent filmmaker, but that is incorrect. Wood was selectively incompetent, which is far more interesting.
Genuinely incompetent films are incomprehensible; they're so badly written, filmed, lit, recorded, and edited you can't tell what's supposed to be happening moment to moment. They're dull. Ed Wood's films are interesting because he so weirdly mixes okay technical competence -- in the sense that you can follow the storytelling from scene to scene, because he tells it with acceptable narrative cohesion -- with utterly whacked-out, surreally incompetent plotting. He couches nonsensical ideas in the most portentous yet tone-deaf language. He displays a glorious ignorance of taste -- not "bad taste" in the too-conscious John-Waters sense, but a genuine vacuity of any informed sensibility at all.
Ed Wood is, in fact, an interesting filmmaker. This is true. If you've ever sat with an audience watching Glen or Glenda?, they stay all the way through, and the final scene has them cheering. Wood disastrously fails to engage his audience on the emotional level he intended, but he nonetheless engages them. A genuine incompetent couldn't do this.
I think Ed Wood is a telling case study that illuminates what we really mean when we talk about "genius."
Sweet! It's just in time to compete with Fantastic 4 for the honor of worst movie made!
*ducks*
The best news of all is that this script--pure Hollywood gold--is now available for Michael Bay or the Wachowski brothers to work their magic.
Tom Cruise as Jeff Trent! Jennifer Lopez as Paula Trent! William Shatner as Inspector Dan Clay!
Money in the bank, I tell you. Ka-ching!
Now that it's public domain will there be a set of prequels?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Nothing beats The Skydivers, according to IMDB's bottom 100. The biggest loser, though, is 'Manos' the Hands of Fate. If you notice, only a few actors in that Manos played in other films.
Gayniggers from Outer Space is a horrible movie but definitely not at troll.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Theoretically, anyone could play it if they replaced the music (or cut the scenes which contain copyrighted music.)
How hard would it be to remove the music from the sound track of It's a Wonderful Life and leave the dialogue and foley? Then you could have a Creative Commons contest for best film score, much as one of the old movie channels (TCM? AMC?) is having for silent films.
Darn, when i read the headline, i was hoping for Extragalactic Storage Space.
This could have been a fine and secure place for my m&vie backups.. (Ohh my god, its full of stars)
as a recently joined slashdot pro, i didnt even read the comments, so mod me redundant if thats the case
Just how did this copyrighted work become no-longer copyrighted? AFAIK it's not old enough for the copyright to have expired.
Copyright owners of works first published in the United States before 1964 had to pay a maintenance fee in the 28th year in order to reap the full 56^H^H75^H^H95 years of exclusivity, or they'd lose their U.S. copyright. (The fee was abolished in 1992.) Patents still have a similar maintenance fee, due in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth year after grant.
but to give you an example of the movies considered truly bad, he used the examples of "Pay It Forward" and "Grand Canyon."
Pay It Forward did not suck.
nothing surpasses the horror of what I consider the worst film ever made, by Robert Altman, starring Karen Black, Cher
Any movie starring Sonny Bono or Cher sucks, except perhaps the original Troll. That movie sucks in a fun-to-laugh-at-it way.
Pendragon Picture's version of "War of the Worlds"
It's worse than plan 9...much, much worse.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
No. Really. Its worse than bad. We are talking beachball aliens and collander/cheese grater space equipmnet. Directed by John Carpenter and Written by the author of R. Scott's "Alien"
I think its even worse than boogie nights... which to this day I am furious I will never get those hours of my life back.
But if you've seen it you will agree - Dark Star. Worst. Movie. Ever.
Well, I really hope you lot all really do want this film, and aren't just leeching it "because it's there".
You must be new here.
Gay Nigger from outer space : 6.0/10 (1,104 votes) :3.5/10 (7,854 votes
Plan 9 from outer space
So it seems the world at large agrees with you, still I wonder how both of those film could get more than 0.5/10...Oh, well, there is something for all taste.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I have made the MPEG2 1.78 GB version of this file available via bittorrent. You can download the torrent from the following locations:
6 86368294eb5b9226a60534a442b497351c8b7c5
e ntdetails&id=356075
http://www.bogaa.org/details/185874
http://www.bitenova.org/index.php?idx=details&id=
http://www.torrentspy.com/directory.asp?mode=torr
http://www.mininova.org/tor/73675
I distribute the MPEG2 files from Archive.org via http://torrents.pdmdb.org/ but can bet that Slashdot would kill my webserver too. Hopefully it can at least handle the tracker.
Unfortunately, archive.org seems to be slashdotted at the moment, so I can't figure out what I really want to know -- How is it that this film is now in the public domain? Are there people that keep track of this sort of thing?
"It would have to save them some stupidly large amount of money in bandwidth costs."
.torrent form.
Maybe slashdot should come in
Watched this a couple of weeks ago. My eyes stopped bleeding yesterday.
Not an old, putrid carcas like "Plan 9" or some others cited; more like fresh roadkill, still steaming on the road side...
It burns my ass that people automatically assume that I'm some sort of zealot because I use a Mac.
I have to say that I try to be even handed, but I know I swing more than towards Mac advocacy (just suggesting it once if someone asks me about PC's, not the constant chatter kind).
However what makes me a Mac advocate is not owning and using a Mac, but having to use a Windows box every day at work (developer). I tell you now that using both every day is the quickest path towards Mac support of the frothing kind.
Also, I have to say that the metaphor you used is both confusing and a bit icky:
Absolutely. Like him? I wouldn't piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire.
The confusing part for me comes in that if you didn't like someone, it seems to me yoou'd be happy to piss in thier mouth and perhaps even happier if that mouth were on fire. So in a wierd way it makes it seem like you sort of like him - no offense.
Anyway, for (I think) a balanced view of Jobs (good and bad) the book iCon is worth a read if nothing else for the interesting background on Pixar and NeXT that a lot of people probably do not know well (I didn't and I used NeXT stations in school). I still think Jobs was quite petty to ban it even if parts do not cast him in a favorable light at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
not really appropriate to this discussion... but... at the same time it is... i love old movies and i love archive.org, but there is something very lacking in the world today... i grayscale video codec! what's the deal?
http://www.torrentreactor.to/torrents/view_56086
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
You've managed to get a GNAA post modded +1 informative!
I tip my hat to you sir.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I watched this from Netflix a few months back.
I think my favorite line was:
"Why are we attcking you? Because you're a bunch of idiots!"
The reason everyone cites this as "the worst movie ever made" is because movie critic (to be generous) Michael Medved has promoted it as such. He and his brother owned a print, and made a lot of money from it's undeserved reputation as such. Anyone who has seen "Manos: The Hands of Fate" knows that "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is "Citizn Kane" by comparison.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
> It has been labelled 'The Worst Movie Ever' by the Golden Turkey Awards
Clearly, the Golden Turkey Awards have never reviewed The Creeping Terror, the movie with acting that makes William "Excessive Dramatic Pause" Shattner seem stunningly on-the-ball by comparison, Jim Carey sophisticated, and Home Shopping Club announcers believable; special effects that would boggle your mind with their badness if you had to watch an eighth-grade class drama project that used them; camerawork that makes the Blair Witch Project look both conventional and brilliant; a plot more simplistic than Scooby Doo, more hackneyed than I Love Lucy, and yet more convoluted than The Fifth Element; shallower and worse character development than an Olson Twins movie, combining more stereotypes than the Smurfs with more smarmy preachyness than the Brady Bunch; writing so bad, SNL skit-writers would roll over in their graves; scenery that combines humdrum with unrealistic; lighting that manages to be too light to be dramatic and too dark to clearly show all the action, sometimes in the same scene; a sound track that would make Hanna Barbara cringe; a more transparently non-existent budget than anything ever done by Monty Python; all the humor and hilarity of televised professional bowling tournaments, combined with all the deep emotion of RFC 2616; and more. If there is anything else in the history of B-movie cinematography that even *approaches* the fantastically execrable, horrifically abominable, catastrophically horrendous piece of flotsam that is The Creeping Terror, I am sure I would not believe it even if I were to see it. I would be *deeply* surprised to discover another movie bad enough that it would deserve to be called "much better than The Creeping Terror"; any other B-movie I have seen would be insulted by such a comparison. If they made C-movies, D-movies, and F-movies, The Creeping Terror would make them *all* look like blockbusters. The *ONLY* thing I can say in its favor is that the sequel they tried to leave it open for was, thankfully, apparently never made.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Apparently it was only made so the studio could cash in on having the movie rights - it was never meant to be released. From IMDB:
So, essentially extortion: buy out our shitty movie, or we'll release it and taint your future movie.
Freedom: "I won't!"
For example I have not yet found an online collection of Winsor McKay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. Maybe we could start a site of torrents for public domain films and comics. (I think Gutenberg has literature covered)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This is.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
Public Domain in Australia? Australia recently extended copyright to life + 70 I think, for a relatively un-free free trade deal with US, but I'm not sure if it was retrospective.
Bono didn't cover everything, not by a long shot.
For instance, the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) has never been under copyright. Never, because back then, you had to put a copyright notice on your film or it was automatically in the public domain. NOTLD became a wild success, and sadly the original creators never saw much money from it.
No copyright law, extension or otherwise, has since fixed this problem. George Romero talks about this on pretty much every DVD commentary he's done.
It's maddening that something like NOTLD never made its creators any money, and yet Disney still rakes in billions from movies it made 70 years ago.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Mod Parent Up
It is one of the worst movies ever which is actually good, the movie is cult and probably one of the most interesting movies ever film historywise, because it shows the last materials ever shot with Bela Lugosi. If you want to see the worst movie ever made, which actually not even is good, then have a look at Gay Niggers from Outer Space, that one ranks the absolute low in my ranking.
You will not be disappointed!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_movies_that_h ave_been_considered_the_worst_ever
Jonathan
http://donkeydoeslondon.freeservers.com/
...Throg, the Movie? Makes Plan 9 look like a Paul Verhoeven flick.
I drank what? -- Socrates
This is the worst movie I've seen
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0106642/
now i can even watch Plan 9 and find it interesting....
You insensitive clod, he just became unavailable.
But seriouslloyd, he actually left this mortal coil
over a year before Plan 9 was made, but Ed Wood
had footage he'd shot of Bela he repurposed
synergistically for the film. Read Nightmare
of Ecstasy for the full story, you stupid, stupid
humans!
archive.org may be a great idea.....but its crippled by bandwidth..... on a 2Mb line I expect more than 30kb/sec...... great idea guys ...but if your gonna put the news like that on slashdot.....get your bandwidth sorted FIRST
If your disks are used for swap space, all that is needed is to commit the memory of all the processes to the swap space before powering down.
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
What seems to happen here is that a person uploads a movie to Archive claiming that it's public domain and Archive does whatever research they do and decide whether to distribute it.
Another post points out that the Copyright Office database says Plan 9 was registered in 1958 and renewed in 1986, so the reasonable assumption would be that it's still covered unless the owner places it in Public Domain.
Archive's page for the movie says the uploader's site is at www.k-otic.com, a site which is basically an uploader's blog which does claim to have uploaded it.
The person who uploaded it doesn't seem to really do any research on movies' copyright status before uploading; (s)he says in a post about another upload that:
This does not really lead me to believe that the uploader contacted whoever owns the rights to Plan 9 and arranged for the film to be placed in the public domain.Summary: there's no reason to believe Plan 9 actually is Public Domain, since the first person to make the claim (the uploader) admits that (s)he has no way to be sure about the status of the movies (s)he uploads and Archive gives no evidence to support the claim except the uploader's original assertion.
-robin
Archive.org has either been duped, or is complicit in the copyright infringement. It's still covered by copyright, and was uploaded through some fool blog who is NOT the copyright owner.
Ice Pirates should certainly be up there (or down there?) in the worst movie list.D 0yMHxsbT01MDB8dHQ9MXxmYj11fHBuPTB8cT1pY2UgcGlyYXRl fGh0bWw9MXxubT0x;fc=1;ft=20;fm=1
D 0yMHxsbT01MDB8dHQ9MXxmYj11fHBuPTB8cT1TYW50YSBDbGF1 c2UgQ29ucXVlcnMgdGhlIE1hcnRpYW5zfGh0bWw9MXxubT0x;f c=1;ft=1;fm=1
http://imdb.com/title/tt0087451/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxte
Also, Santa Clause Conquers the Martians.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0058548/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxte