FORTY YEAR MYSTERY SOLVED: THE MUSIC BEHIND PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
by Paul Mandell

"Now, for the first time, we are bringing to you the full story of what happened on that fateful day..."
-Criswell

Ed Wood, Jr.'s 1956 reverse-classic Plan 9 from Outer Space may not be the Worst Film of All Time (The Creeping Terror, The Atomic Brain, and The Beast of Yucca Flats make it look like a noir masterwork by comparison), but in its total conviction, strained seriousness, wacky syntax, absurd non sequiturs and deliriously inept direction through Wood's bullhorn, it was certainly the most entertaining slice of '50s kitsch. (Hey, the guy was making a statement.) Those who caught its initial airdate on Chiller Theatre in 1961 found it a hallucinatory experience; today, it's a "really cool" retro-hip phenomenon. What made the film work was the underscore, a compilation of pastorals, stingers and horror themes pre-written by England's top composers of library music.

For decades, Plan 9's music credits have been shrouded in mystery. Misinformation was legion. A cue sheet was never filed with ASCAP or BMI, which made the identification process a real bear. A bootleg LP issued in 1980 by a nameless outfit (a vinyl transcription of the entire movie) had bogus liner-notes by "Ed Wood, December 1978", with Wood congratulating music supervisor Gordon Zahler for "his wonderful Plan 9 score." Zahler didn't write a note. In 1989, Performance Records came out with a Plan 9 from Outer Space CD calling itself "the original motion picture soundtrack" which, like the LP, was a transfer of the edited optical track. Great for parties, but it didn't showcase the music (As Wood might have put it: "Soundtrack. That would indicate sound.") In his 1992 Ed Wood biography Nightmare of Ecstasy, author Rudolph Grey insisted that Plan 9's main theme was actually Russian composer Alexander Mosolov's "Iron Foundry", which prompted a New Jersey post-grad student to write her thesis examining the relationship of Mosolov's music to Wood's imagery. Regrettably, that too was fiction.

Truth to be known, the "score" for Plan 9 from Outer Space consisted of cues taken from Britain's Impress Mood Music Library published by Inter-Art under various copyrights spanning 1955-1961. The library was formed by entrepreneur Gordon Barnes with the backing of a rich postcard manufacturer. The name Impress was invented by music editor Richard Taylor, later a director - the "Imp" stood for Inter-Art Music Publishers. To supplement Plan 9's score, a handful of suspense cues were rented from the Video Moods Music Library owned and operated by Mort Ascher and his son Everett in New York.

The subject of library music as underscore for motion pictures and television has hardly been broached; from 1950-65, filmed and live TV shows relied on it almost exclusively, and dozens of low-budget movies used ersatz scores derived from these music services. The big boom happened in 1952, when television went through the roof. Shows made on lean budgets needed fresh background music, from The Adventures of Superman to Mr. Ed and beyond. Music brokers like David Chudnow assembled monumental libraries like Mutel by recruiting B-movie composers, having them write action, suspense and comedy themes under phony names, and recording them on the cheap in Mexico and France. Practically overnight, English companies like Chappell, KPM, Paxton and Francis Day & Hunter put leading composers under contract - libraries burst on the scene with modern, often brilliant quality. Scores could be tailor-made by music editors; if they didn't like the cloth or the cut of the material, the library supplied a dozen alternatives. Yet throughout the '50s, library music was a pariah in the eyes of the American Federation of Musicians under dictator James Petrillo, and also by the Musician's Union in England, a situation which impelled producers in both countries to flee to Belgium, Germany and Italy to have thus music performed and recorded. But that's another story requiring a separate text.

When Ed Wood wrapped production on Plan 9 at Quality Studios in 1956, he hired Gordon Zahler to access the music tracks. Zahler, a paraplegic, was a bottom-rung music packager who operated under the banner of General Music Corporation. His father, Lee Zahler, was a music director and legitimate composer of countless Mascot and Republic serials in the '30s and '40s. After Lee's death in 1947, Gordon grabbed his father's cues with other music taken from acetates of old movies and turned it into a rental library, which was illegal but filled a need. An example was the Wild Bill Hickock show in 1953; the main title and interior cues were lifted from these acetates. Like Ed Wood, Zahler was never known to have played with a full deck. Often he'd pick cues from foreign libraries and assign his own cue numbers and titles to them for ASCAP and BMI royalties, which was also illegal. Various sources have told me that he and other packagers like Raoul Kraushaar and David Gordon often did not operate above board, and the lack of any Plan 9 cue sheet therefore comes as no surprise. Zahlers physical condition tended to dissuade anyone from hauling him into court. For Plan 9, Zahler chose the Impress and Video Moods libraries, which he accessed from Emil Ascher Inc., the exclusive U.S. distributor. Both libraries were new, which made them attractive. Impress was by far the better of the two: not only were the composers first-rate, it had the luxury of being performed by a large orchestra in Stuttgart, Germany. Ironically, these sterling sessions were driven by the union ban on library performance in England.

In a sense, this was "absolute music" written like classical compositions. There was no scene-spotting, no visuals to rely on. The library would request x-amount of mood pieces and the composers would write them generically, left to their own devices and imagination. The finished cues ran anywhere from ten seconds to four minutes and were catalogued by genre: dramatic, suspense, light and heavy activity, neutral, romance, regal, pastoral. Also written were volumes of links and bridges. Some libraries like Capitol Q cataloged the musical keys which made it easy for editors to tie an E-flat action cue to a compatible bridge.

Proprietary transcription discs were made, usually on heavy shellac at 78 rpm, and supplied to producers for audition. Though Ampex tape evolved in the late '40s, some libraries, especially the British ones, often recorded their masters on shellac or vinyl. Ornate catalogs were their pride and joy, and unlike the "library music" that festered in earlier decades - poorly composed and lifted from optical tracks and acetates - this stuff had to be good in order to sell. A mechanical license allowed guys like Wood to track it in for a pittance. Usage fees were cheap - libraries charged per needle drop or by package rate. Plan 9's music tab probably didn't exceed $350, and whether or not Wood actually coughed up this dough is anyone's guess.

From the discs, Zahler transferred his picks onto magnetic tape and assembled a music & effects track. Credit should be given to him for keenly deciding which cues would best enhance Wood's tacky continuity. Zahler reduced most of the cues to partials; composite cues were made to fit the action. Most of the tracking consisted of straight in's and out's. For one scene of Lugosi's double and Vampira stalking Tor Johnson, Zahler created a sloppy overlap of two partial scenes ("River Patrol" and "Dark Traffic") which seized the moment but destroyed the dynamics of the music. The consequence of pictures like Plan 9 was the cheapening effect they had on the library underscore, cloaking their orchestral values which were often spectacular. Only when the music stands alone with full fidelity can those dynamics by appreciated. The new Retrosonic CD of Plan 9's remastered tracks remedies this dilemma. The CD follows Zahler's continuity in dovetailing those two particular cues, but betters the moment with a straight edit instead of an awkward mid-cue mix.

Trevor Duncan's name probably doesn't chime with familiarity in America, but he was by far the best of the Impress composer group, a no-nonsense self-taught musician with equal flair for pastiche, horror moods, romantic scenes, and - like Holst - powerful visionary suites. David Lean approached him to do Lawrence of Arabia, but he turned it down. Born Leonard Trebilco, he worked as a sound engineer for the BBC from 1947-1954, where he demanded and received full say over the microphone placement and balance during orchestral sessions. His contempt for the BBC producers resulted in a move to Boosey & Hawkes in 1952, a venerable publishing house which gave him carte blanche on library music writing. Embarrassingly, schlock producer Cy Roth tracked some of his most regal cues into the 1952 atrocity Fire Maidens from Outer Space (unlike Plan9, Fire Maidens was just plain boring, a cardinal sin for any movie). Gordon Barnes lured him to Inter-Art in 1955 to get the Impress library started. Trebilco's name change was ostensibly inspired by Inter-Art's street address - 16 Duncan Lane.

Duncan’s jaunty, militaristic crime cue "Grip of the Law" was used as Plan 9’s Main Title theme and was looped twice during the cemetery chase. (When Nikita Krushchev came to town in 1960, CBS News used this piece under him to point up his threatening image.) Two sections of his "Dark Traffic" (a cue written in six parts) played under Inspector Clay’s murder by Vampira, and his nightmarish "The Web Tightens" blared ominously as Wood’s toy saucers flew over Hollywood street scenes. Duncan wrote Plan 9’s love music as well, and his hair-rising, unrelenting "Lynch Fever" (which in spots sounds very James Bondish) culminated in a primal musical scream under the patio shoot-out of Lugosi’s chiropractor/double.

Still active and living in a castle near the Bridgewater countryside, Duncan told me of his modus operandi in composing the "wild stuff".

"I usually found some movement of harmonies that seemed right for the atmosphere I was seeking. I’d jot down ideas and modify them at the piano, then play it over with much too much pedal so that the harmonies are all overlapping. Over that I’d sing some outrageous trumpet or horn part, searching it out, not recognizing what it was immediately. So there were the ‘primal screams.’ For me it was all cinema and exciting fun. I still have the ability to improve endlessly; I can never understand why musicians cannot. It comes in handy in church when the bride and groom get stuck in the vestry – the temptation not to be dramatic and indulge in a few bloodcurdling dissonances is always there!

"The Stuttgart session men were eager for the work and played magnificently," Duncan remembers. "I always asked for jazz brass. The lead trumpet was Horst Fischer, a genius player. All the string and woodwind were symphonic players in suits – all stiff and proper. The gulf between the jazz faction and the straight players was palpable! Franz Biehler, who spoke perfect English, was the fixer. I’d say the Stuttgart sessions were the best I had ever known in terms of satisfaction and the results. I regret the boxiness of the acoustic; no reverb devices were available back then." The Retrosonic remaster has taken measures to surmount these deficiencies.

Trevor’s name appears on the end credits of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, since Touchstone-Disney had to cough up the usage fee for "Grip of the Law" when a snippet of Plan 9 rolled. He was probably compensated more for that moment than 40 years worth of Plan 9 playdates. The Brits know this cue better as the main title of the Scotland Yards series. Duncan also wrote music for the Quatermass and the Pit show.

Like Duncan, Van Phillips was a versatile composer whose frenzied, pounding action themes ("The Tyrant", "Manhunt") were tracked in almost full-cue under scenes of the stock footage army convoy attacking the saucers. Phillip’s "Homicide Squad" was played partially when Tor Johnson and the others huddled into a police car; the full cue sizzled during the climatic punchout between Gregory Walcott and Dudley Manlove’s stunt double. In total contrast were Phillip’s haunting laments ("Mystic", "Remorse") used for Plan 9’s two funeral scenes.

From the Video Moods library came a handful of cues composed by Franz Mahl and Ward Sills (real names George Chase and Wladmir Selinsky). Chase also went under the name of Michael Reynolds. His "Dark of the Moon" (the master of which contains a minor nick) played under the scene of the real Bela Lugosi cavorting in the daylight graveyard with outstretched cape. The cue was also used in a Honeymooners episode when Ralph Kramden snoozed in front of his rabbit-eared television set. "Mystic Night" underscored Inspector Clay’s prowl in the cemetery. "Hypertension" set a mood for Lugosi entering Paula’s house. "Vigil" thumped when Kelton climbed into Clay’s unearthed grave. Sill’s "Hourglass" turned the Tor Johnson/Vampira zombie walk into an eerie ballet mechanique. (The piece was recorded in different keys and tempos as part of the metronomic time sequence for the library.) These Mahl/Sills cues enjoyed relentless plays in the 1955-56 season of The Adventures of Superman when the show’s producer Whitney Ellsworth decided to replace the British FDH and Paxton mood libraries used in the two previous years.

The Impress ballroom number "In your Arms" by Glenn Miller wannabe John O’Notes (sic) served as radio music behind Greg Walcott’s spiel on flying saucers and big army brass. Jazz artist Steve Race (the emcee of England’s version of Name That Tune) wrote a cache of suspense themes and stingers for Impress. His earsplitting "Dry Throat" played under the scene of Clay throttling Kelton and abducting Paula from the car. Bruce Campell wrote the cues used for the grave-digging murders and the droll lament "Desolate Village" for Lugosi moping in the garden over his dead wife. (Campell composed for a huge number of libraries, including CBS; his meandering pastoral kicked off the classic Twilight Zone episode, "The Hitchhicker.")

James Steven’s theremin-like flutes in his cue "Operation Room" underscored the scene of the cop and colonel entering the saucer’s gondola. Wolf Droysen composed the ethereal "Uneasy Sleep" for Eros’s pensive cosmic lament at the spaceship window. Another Droyson cue, "Generator House," provided a haunting moodset for the question, "Eros, do we have to kill them?" BBC conductor Gilbert Vinter, who brought a new dynamic to scoring for the British Brass Band, wrote the stately "Towards Adventure" for Criswell’s manic, ranting monologues.

It’s difficult to imagine the reaction of these eminent composers upon discovering their work as underscore for tacky films like Plan 9 from Outer Space. They toiled in anonymity, writing music worthy of much greater ends. Trevor Duncan, with his wry humor, waxes philosophical about all this. "Ed Wood. Oh, well. One is grateful for the pennies."

In the mid-1970s, Inter-Art went out of business. The Impress library was picked up via a quit-claim by Weinberger Ltd. in England who still licenses the cues when the need arises. Copyrights were renewed by the composers themselves when the original Inter-Art registrations expired. Video Moods folded in the ‘80s when its proprietor, Everett Ascher, got caught up in a legal harangue and went bankrupt. Copyrights on the Video Moods were not renewed.

Gordon Zahler continued to track low-budget, mostly forgettable sci-fi/horror flicks from his wheelchair in the ‘60s with the assistance of music editor Igo Kantor. Using the Weinberger Library and tracks bootlegged from composer Leith Stevens, Zahler did Ed Wood’s Night of the Ghouls (unreleased until 1983), First Spaceship on Venus (a Japanese import retracked almost entirely with cues by Hans Salter), The Human Duplicators, Mutiny in Outer Space, and The Navy vs. The Night Monsters with Mamie Van Doren. Like Wood, Zahler died in obscurity in the ‘70s.

As one watches the strange light emanating from Criswell’s platinum pompadour as he hammers his rhetoric with unblinking, masacara’ed, booze-glazed eyes, only one of his manic predictions rings true: "Evens such as these will affect you in the future!" Turns out he was right on the money: the event, Plan 9 from Outer Space, has become a cause celebre. Ed Wood, spurned by Hollywood in life, revolves in his grave with a jug of Imperial whiskey while Disney pours millions into his bio-pic. Go figure. Let us punish the guilty; let us reward the innocent.

Plan 9 endures, like an intriguing fungus festering on an oak. Forty years without slumbering. God help us all.

Paul Mandell is a New York-based writer, historian and producer of Retrosonic Records. He is completing a definitive work, Canned Music for Film & Television for the Library of Congress, as part of their ongoing Performing Arts hardbacks due out in 1997. Mandell claims to have annoyed Jerry Goldsmith to no end. He watches Plan 9 from Outer Space once a week with a glass of orange juice and a Hostess Twinkie, claiming that it betters his life on this planet while keeping him ever mindful of the evils of the Solarmonite.