RiffTrax, as I’m sure we all know by now, is the post-Mystery Science Theater 3000 project starring Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett. It started out as a purely downloadable form of entertainment, but has since grown popular enough to sell real, physical DVDs. These include RiffTrax Shorts Volume 1, previously reviewed on this site, as well as our current subject, RiffTrax: Plan 9 from Outer Space LIVE! Nashville 2009.

Yes, not only is RiffTrax popular enough to produce real DVDs, but they’ve also earned the clout to put on live shows out in the real world, giving their fans a rare excuse to actually leave their homes. In 2009, a live event was staged in Nashville, Tennessee and broadcast to theaters all across the country, featuring the RiffTraxers (RiffTraxians?) taking on one of the most infamous “bad” movies of all time, Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. And as you may have already guessed from the title, this DVD is a document of that event.

If you’re like me, you’re used to hearing the voices of Mike, Kevin, and Bill riffing on cheesy movies, but seeing them do it live takes things to a whole new level. Not only do you hear the riffs, but you also get to see the guys play off each other, make each other crack up throughout the film, and feed off the audience reactions.

Plus, in the case of this particular DVD, you get to see the sweet perm that Kevin got especially for the show!

Prior to the main event, the guys warm up the crowd by riffing on a short called Flying Stewardess, which harkens back to the early days of commercial aviation. The guys get a lot of mileage out of the massive changes in air travel between then and now (they used to have foldout beds on airplanes? Really?) and get their biggest laugh with a cheap Snakes on a Plane reference (people were laughing at cheap Snakes on a Plane references in 2009? Really?).

All in all, it’s a solid 15 minutes of riffing in the style of any ‘50s educational short these guys took on back in their MST3k days.

In the interim between the short and the movie, we get a few sideshow acts. First comes Jonathan Coulton, geek folk singer, to perform two terrible joke songs. I’ve never heard of this guy before, but apparently his shtick is singing about nerdy topics like zombies, robots, and computer programming. And when he does his song about zombies, Kevin comes out and joins him in an attempt to make this funny. It doesn’t work.

You know how when you go to a comedy club, and there’s always that one standup comic with a guitar, and you know from the second he walks out onto the stage that his routine is going to be the worst thing ever? That’s Jonathan Coulton. I mean, bad “joke” folk music? Zombie humor? I don’t think it’s possible to combine two things I detest more.

Like I said, I’ve never heard of this guy before in my life, but I guess he has his fans; we see them in the crowd, singing along, and knowing every word by heart. Incidentally, I’ve long had a theory that you can tell the talent of a musician by the quality of his groupies. Well, here are some of Jonathon Coulton’s groupies.

I believe my work here is done.

Next up, Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka of Something Awful shows up, and he’s brought along a couple of spoof ads he created. The first is an ad for a flour and grain expo done in the style of a commercial for a monster truck rally, and the second is for a company called “Berry Watch” that provides security for your berries. It’s basically “weird for weird’s sake” humor, but mostly amusing, and downright hilarious compared to folk songs about zombies.

At long last, the Rifftrax guys return to the stage, this time calling themselves the “Rifftones” as they perform one of Bill’s songs along with Jonathon Coulton. The song is written around Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Bill gives us a rundown of Plans 1 through 8 (“6 and 7 depended on Gary Busey”), while Mike plays the nose whistle. If nothing else, I hope this experience taught Coulton what a genuinely funny joke song is all about.

And with that, we finally get to the main event, where the guys riff on Plan 9 from Outer Space. And they’re riffing on the colorized version, which doesn’t surprise me. Legend Films, which started up the whole RiffTrax thing when they hired on Mike Nelson, was originally founded to do digital colorization of older black and white movies, Plan 9 among them.

Interestingly, this is the first time I’ve dared to even look at a colorized movie since seeing the colorized It’s a Wonderful Life back in the 1980s and throwing up all over myself. I have to say, the process has improved significantly in the last 25 years. There’s none of the bleed-over you used to see way back when, though all the white people in the movie (which is to say, all the people in the movie) tend to have one uniform skin color.

But if I didn’t know this was a movie originally filmed in black and white, I’d probably be fooled into thinking it was a genuine color film. But then again, I was also fooled into thinking that Paul Freeman in a wig and a moustache was a totally different guy.

So, what is there really left to say about Plan 9 from Outer Space that hasn’t already been said? It was probably the first film to ever be called “the worst movie of all time” and celebrated for it, back when the Bad Movie Movement was in its infancy back in the early 1980s.

Of course, Plan 9 is not the worst film of all time. Not even close. It only gained that title because it’s an easier way to express what the movie really is: quite simply, the most unintentionally hilarious movie ever made. Seriously, this movie doesn’t even need riffing to be funny. Even the RiffTrax guys spend a lot of time during the show just cracking up at the insanity of it all.

What makes Plan 9 from Outer Space hilarious? So many things, including:

—The “airplane cockpit” consisting entirely of a curtain, cardboard steering wheels, and a clipboard mounted to the wall.

—The clearly visible strings holding up the flying saucers.

—The way this movie was cobbled together from unused footage that Ed Wood shot of Bela Lugosi just before he died, which also necessitated the use of a stand-in who looks absolutely nothing like Bela Lugosi.

—The constant switching between daytime and nighttime footage.

—Tor Johnson’s accent making all of his lines completely incomprehensible.

—One of the cops accidentally knocking over one of the “tombstones” in the graveyard.

—“Visits? That would indicate visitors!”

—A police detective’s insane habit of using his gun to point at things, and gesturing with his gun for effect. The RiffTrax guys have a lot of fun with this, constantly ducking out of the way when Detective McTriggerHappy waves around his sidearm.

—Howling wind sound effects in outer space.

—“Clay’s dead! Murdered! And somebody’s responsible!”

—Tor Johnson getting reanimated as a zombie, and due to his massive girth, having serious trouble climbing out of his grave.

—The aliens’ hilariously effeminate leader, who dresses like a waiter at Medieval Times, and in a few scenes is blatantly reading his lines off a cue card.

—The scene where the Fake Bela Lugosi attacks a cop, and his cloak very nearly falls off.

—The scene where our heroes finally enter a flying saucer and confront the alien invaders. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call this one of the most wildly overacted scenes in movie history.

—The whole “Solarmanite” discussion, the highlight of which is how every single actor in the scene pronounces “Solarmanite” in a different way.

—“You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!” If I were one of the heroes, I think I would have gladly surrendered to the alien invaders if it meant not having to deal with that guy’s patronizing attitude anymore.

—The humans somehow defeating an entire alien invasion by setting fire to just one flying saucer.

Personally, I have nothing really to add on the subject of Plan 9 from Outer Space, especially since the making of this film has already been covered in great detail in the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood, available on the Plan 9 DVD, not to mention in Tim Burton’s excellent (though extremely embellished) film Ed Wood.

But thankfully, the RiffTrax guys do have a lot to add to the movie, which makes this DVD a great time for all. Like I said, you don’t need riffing to enjoy the movie, but the riffing that’s there only adds to the hilarity without distracting one bit from the pure unintentional comedy that is Plan 9.

There’s also a bit of eye candy in the form of host Veronica Belmont, who apparently hosts some techie geek show online. I wouldn’t necessarily call her blazingly hot in a not-Natalie Portman kind of way, but I would not be violently opposed to googling her to see if there are any photos of her online in skimpy outfits.

[Five minutes later] Bupkis.

Well, it looks like the RiffTrax guys are at it again; They’ll be doing another live event later this month, from the very same Nashville theater, which will also be beamed to theaters across the country. This time, they’ll be riffing on The House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. Click the banner below to find out where it’s showing and how to get tickets!