I had a blast Sunday afternoon watching a bad movie.

Not just any bad movie, mind you; the worst movie ever made.

"Plan 9 From Outer Space."

A reporter and blogger from West Tennessee whose blog I follow regularly posted an online message that she was about to start watching the movie and planned to post her reactions to it in real time on her blog. I immediately turned on the TV and switched it to (irony of ironies!) Turner Classic Movies.

I was in charge of the campus movies for the best 2 1/2 years of my life when I was in college in the early 1980s, and I actually showed "Plan 9" as part of a "World's Worst Movie" festival, along with "The Terror of Tiny Town" (an all-midget Western) and "They Saved Hitler's Brain," half of which was filmed a decade later the other half, so you have wildly different fashions and hair styles from scene to scene. We also had "The Conqueror," with a horribly mis-cast John Wayne playing Genghis Khan!

The way the festival worked was, you got in for free, but if you wanted to leave before all four movies had ended you had to pay to get out. It was a hoot.

But anyway, back to "Plan 9 From Outer Space." If you have seen Tim Burton's hilarious movie "Ed Wood," you know about the legendary movie director Edward Wood Jr., who had limitless enthusiasm, several eccentricities, limited funds and even more limited talent. "Plan 9" was his magnum opus. The movie was supposed to star Bela Lugosi, out of favor and long past his prime, whom Wood had befriended. Lugosi died just before real shooting was about to begin, so Wood took some test footage he'd shot of Lugosi and built the movie around it. In some scenes, Wood's chiropractor -- who was an entirely different height and build from Lugosi -- held a cape over his face and pretended to be Lugosi's character.

The plot of the movie, as if it mattered, concerns aliens who have learned how to reanimate the dead and want to use that knowledge to catch the attention of Earth's leaders.

Meanwhile, there's stilted dialogue, plot holes you could drive a truck through, and sets that cost about $2.98 to build. I would comment on the special effects, but that would be a disservice to the word "special." There is nothing whatsoever special about these effects.

This is one of those movies that is so genuinely and thoroughly awful that it becomes hilarious fun. As the producers of the late and lamented "Mystery Science Theater 3000" well understood, a bad movie can be the basis of great entertainment. MST3K considered giving "Plan 9" its special treatment, but producers decided the movie has too much dialogue to allow room for the required number of wisecracks. Even so, you can buy a DVD with former MST3K host Mike Nelson doing a commentary track.

In effect, that is what I and my newspaper / blogger friend, along with a couple of other people, did Sunday afternoon. Tracy blogged about the movie and the rest of us left comments, many of them in the same smart-aleck vein as MST3K. We had a truly fabulous time, and I highly recommend you have some friends over, either in real life or on the 'net, the next time the movie airs. Better yet, look for it on DVD.

John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.