One of the worst movies of all time is transformed into a spooky season radio special to benefit KYRS

In 1957, Ed Wood had all the faith in the world that his new movie, “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” would be his big break.

The 80-minute film was a flop, but failure is never the end of the road for a true artist.

Over the subsequent decades, the film has become a cult classic for being so bad that it’s good.

And local residents like Maeve Griffith are among its fans.

After retiring from the Spokane Fire Department in 2020, Griffith “went back to what I was doing in eighth grade”: acting, writing, painting and watching “really bad old monster movies” and acting them out, she said.

Griffith has adapted a radio production of “Plan 9 from Outer Space” she’ll direct live Saturday at the downtown Spokane Public Library to celebrate KYRS Thin Air Community Radio’s 20th anniversary.

The spooky show will be rebroadcast on Halloween.

‘The worst movie of all time’

Early this year, Griffith and Michael Moon Bear, station manager at KYRS, were talking about their childhoods spent watching “really bad old monster movies.”

Moon Bear shared his longtime idea of turning the film into a radio play. He had found the film’s script online and heard of other comedians and performers doing live events.

When Moon Bear and Griffith made their monster movie connection, she ran with the idea.

“That’s what you need for nonprofits and community organizations,” Moon Bear said. “It’s nice to have ideas, but you need somebody to do it.”

Griffith first saw “Plan 9 from Outer Space” at the Starlight Drive-In in 1978 as a teenager attending the World’s Worst Film Festival.

The science fiction-horror film premiered in 1959. The film follows aliens trying to conquer the earth by resurrecting the dead.

The film was relatively unknown until it was named “worst film ever made” by Michael and Harry Medved in their 1980 book “The Golden Turkey Awards.”

The movie was bad and not that memorable, but as she aged, Griffith grew fond of the film.

“I’ve really come to admire the movie and Ed Wood, an individual who really had a lot of things stacked against him, who wanted to make art and wanted to make things that people would enjoy,” she said.

Wood stole props from studios, made sets out of cardboard and, in the case of “Plan 9,” enlisted the help of a Baptist congregation to make the film.

The film’s plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, Griffith said. The visuals don’t make much sense either, she said, but they’re funny.

So transforming the movie to a radio show was tricky. Griffith beefed up the narration through a character named Criswell and added a litany of sound effects.

“Trying to keep it interesting yet funny just through audio was probably the main thing,” Griffith said.

Griffith also enlisted well-known Spokane actors like Jeffrey St. George, Jacqui Sandor and Jerrod Phelps, among others, to bring the show to life.

“We’ve just got a ton of people who are really good at voice work, so they’ve played it really hammy when they need to or flat when they need to,” Griffith said.

The radio play is the epitome of what community-run KYRS stands for, Moon Bear and Griffith said.

Volunteers run their own radio shows full of local and eclectic music and diverse perspectives, she said. Moon Bear is one of two employees who makes the station located in the central Spokane Public Library possible.

“It’s just because people want to make people happy, I guess,” Griffith said.

The radio play brings back something now only seen in the movies: an audience watching live radio be made.

“Having the opportunity to see that in person is really fun; it’s a really wonderful thing,” Moon Bear said.

The “Plan 9” material is so campy it’s perfect for live radio – any mistakes or mishaps just add to the kooky story.

“It makes it almost foolproof that if anything goes wrong, it’s funny automatically,” Moon Bear said. “The stage could collapse, and it would still be funny.”

KYRS is celebrating 20 years on air with “Plan 9 from Outer Space” as the evening’s entertainment. Donations made Saturday night will be split between the actors and the radio station. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.

The radio play will be rebroadcast at 10 p.m. on Halloween on KYRS 88.1 or 92.3 FM.