Manos, The Hands of Fate actually grates on the viewer. If it's marginally less inept than Plan 9, it's far more pretentious. The actors fancy themselves thespians, while the Plan 9 players dared to be hams.
And yet, Manos bore the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment to hilarious effect, while Plan 9 (in the opinion of the MST3K creators) would not, because not enough action takes place.
I totally agree i liked it when i saw it on tv recently
I haven't seen Manos, but I would consider Plan 9 to be exceptionally pretentious. But it manages to be pretentious and self-effacing at the same time, which is a pretty unusual trick. One might analogize it to someone who walks around wearing a $5000 suit whose pants have a small hole that's patched with duct tape and who acts as though the suit is perfect. If the guy acted as though he knew the suit's flaw was obvious, it wouldn't be funny, and if the suit were repaired competently but imperfectly it wouldn't be funny. What becomes funny is when the flaw is so obvious the person couldn't help but believe it to be so, and yet he does not.
And yet, Manos bore the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment to hilarious effect, while Plan 9 (in the opinion of the MST3K creators) would not, because not enough action takes place.
A movie like Plan 9 doesn't lack action. Rather, the problem with doing an MST3K treatment would be that the film is sufficiently outrageous that there's not much for Tom Servo et al. to add. When a character says "Atomospheric disturbances in outer space often interfere with transmitting", what more can one say that wouldn't seem lame by comparison.
There was one movie I saw on MST3K where some characters drove through the "squealing swamp", so called because of the squealing noises whenever the car's tires skidded on the dirt road. To be sure, it's pretty clear that tires can't squeal on dirt, but I wouldn't have noticed it were it not for the comment. But Plan 9's quirks are sufficiently glaring obvious that there's no purpose to pointing them out.