Many movie critics name Edward Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space, starring Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, and Vampira as the worst picture ever made, notwithstanding the fact that I can think of some Jack Nicholson examples which should by all rights be tied for this honor. Plan 9, turned loose on the world in 1959, was the last movie starring Lugosi, even though Wood did not even conceive of the picture until after Lugosi's death in 1956. Wood used some stock footage he had earlier shot of Lugosi in a vampire cape and then employed Wood's wife's chiropractor as a stand-in for Lugosi for the rest of the film. Because the chiropractor bore little resemblance to Lugosi, the chiropractor was filmed in all of his sequences holding his cape in front of his face.
The Lugosi dubbing was only a very small problem with the feature, which was also a quintessential example of poor acting, paper-plate-on-a-string flying saucer special effects, contrived dialogue, rampant continuity errors, illogical plot lines, boom mikes captured in shots, and just plain weird stuff, such as a commercial airliner whose cockpit appears devoid of any instruments.
It clearly is one of those movies worth seeing because it is so bad.
Incidentally, it is quite possible that the 2008 release of The Machine Girl may have been a valiant attempt to seize the worst-picture-ever-made title away from Plan 9. Watch the trailer at your own risk. It is gory. You have been warned. I do have to admit, however, that its "drill bra" concept is rather intriguing.
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