They say that the value of a great piece of art only goes up when its creator dies. Picasso, Rembrandt, and Da Vinci, their masterpieces all saw an exponential increase in value after passing away. So what happens on the other end of that spectrum? What happens to the value of an awful piece of art after its artist is gone? Edward D. Wood Jr. is arguably the worst filmmaker in the history of film. He has become an absolute ninja on the "so bad it's good" scale since his death in 1978. If you go to some of the more popular ratings and review sites, the fact that the film is rated a "ripe" red fruit that is often mistaken for a vegetable speaks volumes about the strange fascination with his best worst movie, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Hell, even the duo of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were enamored enough with the director's hard-knock career to partner up again and tell his story in the 1994 biopic Ed Wood. Those are some heavy hitters paying homage to Wood.

Wood's films are the stuff of legend. They are legendary for being unmitigated disasters. And the most infamous of the bunch is the wildly misguided 1959 science fiction movie. All film nerds like us out there know it. If they haven't seen the movie, they most certainly have heard of it. As we said, it's legendary. But the story of how the Hollywood bottom feeder persuaded a Baptist minister to fund the travesty of cinema only adds another layer to the Wood mystique.

What is 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' About?

The Vampire Girl and Inspector Clay zombies

Plan 9, as cinephile cultists call it, is the unfortunate story written, produced, and directed by Ed Wood about grave robbers from outer space. If you read that correctly, Wood's magnum opus of cinema schlock has the most dubiously warped theme that has ever made it to the big screen. The poor people of the San Fernando Valley are in great danger when flying saucers land and aliens start reanimating the peacefully resting corpses of Southern California. We'll save you the details about the string, tin can, and coat hanger effects, but even for the era, they are comical at best, and you can read about the ineptness of the film in other articles ad nauseam. Nonetheless, Wood was able to recruit a big name and attached it to the film. Bela Lugosi was way past his prime as the preeminent bloodsucker of early Hollywood and addicted to heroin when Wood got his claws and took some small samples of test footage of Lugosi before he died in August 1956. Wood cropped together the unrelated footage and then replaced Lugosi with his girlfriend's chiropractor to raise the cloak and appear as, "the dead old man".

RELATED: From 'Jail Bait' to 'Glen or Glenda': The Best Worst Films of Ed Wood

Ed Wood Gets an Unlikely Baptist Backer for 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'

Horror science fiction and the Baptist church don't fit together like peas and carrots. Wood, who was notorious for scrambling and hustling to find the money to make his not-so-visionary epics, somehow convinced devout Baptist J. Edward Reynolds and the congregation of The Baptist Church of Beverly Hills to foot the bill for Plan 9. Reynolds was Wood's landlord at the time and when he confronted Wood with being three months behind on the rent, found out that Wood was in the film business. He explained how he and his associates wanted to make a series of religious films, but only had enough money for one. That is when Wood pounced on Reynolds with a hard pitch for "Grave Robbers from Outer Space" as it was the working title at the time, and convinced him that he could turn an easy profit from producing the film and parlay it into the religious films he was interested in making. But the money came with a couple of very specific caveats from the church's minister, and Wood was always willing to compromise his artistic integrity for financial backing. First, the Baptists insisted upon a title change from the original, "Grave Robbers From Outer Space", to Plan 9 From Outer Space because the idea of disturbing the dead was way too blasphemous for their taste. The fact that there is actual grave robbing in the movie leads us to believe that Wood pulled a fast one on the Reynolds in the final edit.

A Full-Body Baptism in Exchange for Cash

Malia Nurmi in Plan 9 from Outer Space
Image via Valiant Pictures

Wood and several members of the cast and crew were also heavily encouraged to undergo a full-body baptism at Reynolds' church. They all acquiesced just to further the relationship with the minister. Wood was a morally ambiguous man with malleable ethics and didn't think twice about subjecting his friends and employees to the religious rite of passage. Apparently, professional wrestler turned actor by Wood, Tor Johnson, and several other members of the cast played as if they were drowning during the ceremony. Once Wood agreed to make Reynolds the executive producer of the project, he was done placating his generous donors and had his nest egg. Wood went from having $800 earmarked for the movie to an astounding $60,000. And that's in 1959 dollars, which would equate to well over half a million bucks today.

Ed Wood was Right About One Thing

Real-life Ed Wood banner
Image via Collider.com

There is a scene at the end of the Burton-Depp biopic where Ed Wood is in the audience watching the grand opening of the film and his face is radiant as he says, "This is it! This is the one they'll remember me for!" He was right about that, and he has Baptist minister J. Edward Reynolds to thank for it. Never mind that he isn't remembered for the reasons he anticipated. Sometimes a misunderstood and likely delusional artist delivers unintentional gold. There's always a chance that he was just an innocent, cockeyed optimist who couldn't see the forest for the trees. Whatever the case, the film world is a much better place for having Edward D. Wood Jr. in it. And the fact that the cross-dressing World War II veteran found himself behind a camera is just icing on the cake. Plan 9 From Outer Space is the crown jewel in a career that was so bad, it became masterful.