'PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE'

"Plan 9 From Outer Space" was made before Rob Schneider was even born, yet it still holds its honorary title as the worst film ever made. That said, legendary schlockmeister Ed Wood's crowning achievement is hilariously abysmal, a cavalcade of bad acting, cardboard sets, bloopers, inept direction and unspeakable dialogue. An aged, ailing Bela Lugosi and pneumatic Midnight Movie hostess Vampira play cadavers reanimated by alien grave robbers piloting pie-plate flying saucers. Hulking Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson lumbers across the screen as a police detective who soon joins the living dead. Lugosi died partway through the shooting, so Wood recruited his dentist to play the ex-Dracula's role in the remainder of the scenes, cape raised to hide his face. For the stars of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," lampooning this epic of incompetence should be like machine-gunning fish in a barrel. Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett reunite for their first big screen mock-a-thon, beaming a new colorized print of the film, and their cutting commentary, into theaters for one night only, Thursday at 7 p.m. Let the wisecracks begin. (Arbor Lakes Megastar 16, Block E, Brooklyn Center 20, Eagan 16, Eden Prairie 18, Parkwood 18, Oakdale, Rosedale 14.)

COLIN COVERT