Teenagers from Outer Space

I first saw this film when I was only 7 and even then I knew there was something . . .well . . .different about it. For one thing those are the oldest looking teenagers I ever saw; then again all those JD movies offered actors who looked too old even for college in the roles of "kids" so we can't hold that fact against this film. The reason the aliens have come to our world is also atypical of 1950's films. They don't want to conquer the Earth, they don't want to re-populate a war devastated world. They are hungry and in need of a square meal and Earth is the perfect spot to breed the creatures they use as food! They call the creatures Gargans but they look a lot like lobsters. Of course since this is a science fiction picture, the atmosphere of Earth causes the Gargans to grow so large a single one could keep a Red Lobster in business for months! the effects budget was so low we never see the actual giant monster, just an empty travelling matte!

Most memorable are the ray guns used by the bad aliens . . .er . . .the intergalactic juvenile delinquents. As the original trailer said "They blast the flesh off humans!" and quite a few people get zapped into skeletons. There is one good alien, a sensitive fellow named Derek (David Love) who stands alone against his own people when he suggests they go raise their favourite meal on some other planet. Derek is unaware that he is the son of the leader of the planet, a fact which is not exploited nearly as much as it should be in this film.

The cast includes Harvey B. Dunn, best remembered as the police inspector in BRIDE OF THE MONSTER. Harvey was a professional clown and performed at parties with his trick bird (the bird appears in BRIDE also). Yes it's an offbeat film but worth a look. Get ready for a tearjerker ending that is telegraphed well in advance.

'teenagers from out of space' has grown on me a LOT since the first time i saw it. true, it isn't a very good movie, but considering how they used what little they had to work with (budget-wise, acing-wise, etc.) i'd say this movie deserves a bit more respect. the effects were cleverly planned (if not well-executed), the fairly inexperienced actors weren't terrible ( except for TORCHA! guy, but he's so bad he's great), and it had a decent plot with a fairly atypical ending. (okay, there's no excuse for the lobster. the lobster was just terrible.) it's no 'godfather' (heck, it's not even 'cannibal: the musical'), but, in the vein of 'night of the living dead', 'teenagers' takes very little and makes something decent with it.

Tom Graeff's entire film career consisted of this one film and work editing another. He shot it for $5000, performed much of the work himself, and gave his boyfriend David Love (Charles Robert Kaltenthaler) the lead role. Graeff was 28 and Love 23 when the film was shot. Graeff died 12 years later after an apparent mental breakdown; no one seems to know what happened to Love. Amazingly, Warners paid $25,000 for distribution rights for this clunker at a time when teen audiences were eating up sci-fi movies. More bizarre details about the film, including props and locations used, are at the Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt website.

First off, I would like to say that have actually seen the actual film in its original form, not from watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. So my comments are entirely based on my watching the film without the benefit of Rod, Servo and the rest of those imbeciles whose names I have forgotten.

The first thing that amazed me about this film is not that its makers managed to get this film released, the fact that they managed to sell a film so cheap looking to major studio like Warner Brothers. I would love to known what sales pitch they used to sell it to WB executives. This film by the way, turned up a support feature for the second Godzilla movie, GIGANTIS,THE FIRE MONSTER, which Warner Brothers also distributed.

The acting in the film is amateurish and dialog delivery is stilted. The actors delivery of the lines is reminiscent of the stilted dubbed dialog heard in those cheap Italian made spectacles that were just about to flood the American market when this film came out. The films plot is loaded with more holes than swiss cheese. Perhaps the most ludicrous element of the film is the Gargon, which is nothing more than a macro enlarged lobster (or is it a crayfish?). On the plus side I was surprised that director Tom Graef used more camera set ups and camera movement than is usually found in a lowbudget picture of this nature. This makes TEENAGERS FROM OUTERSPACE not as dreary as other very low budget films from the same period like THE ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER.