Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills

But, yes bad. The writer-producers were initially promised they'd have either A: Japanese monster footage from Tsuburaya,or B: A reasonable American alternative. They got C: crap. When you get crap, you make the best of it, which they did. Was it a parody? Mr. Fisher and Mr. Staahl came from Chicago's Second City, so you make the judgment. Made the judgment yet? It was a joke. It would have been a more successful joke if the shows had more than a ten cent budget, but everyone did the best they could. And if it hadn't been at least a slightly memorable joke, you wouldn't be reading this now, would you? Personally, I think David Lander's portrayal of Lechner totally rocks. Well, rocks a bit.

I came across this gem of a program during an episode where somehow, for some unknown reason, the 2 male characters and 2 female characters switch bodies. Basically the female voices were coming out of the men's bodies, and vice versa. Before my friends and I had a chance to catch the real name of the show, we lovingly referred to it as "The Gender Morphers".

But my glee turned to horror the day of my birthday. On that day, we were all gathered round the tube, watching this horrible show, when the character named Lechner announced it was HIS birthday. I HAVE NEVER LIVED THIS DOWN!! I am reminded every year that, yes, I share a birthday with a badly stitched puppet named Lechner from an ultimately campy show named "Tatooed Teenage Alien Fighters".

Wow. I can't believe how relieved I am that this show actually exists.

You see, I clearly remember it from way back when I was a little kid. Four teenagers with strange magical tattoos would tel-port into this black room with a pedestal. On the pedestal was a blob of slime called Nimbar that gave the teens missions. They would then transform into laughably bad costumes and fight villains. The whole thing was like an incredibly low budget power rangers. I honestly don't remember much of what went on, but for years I've remembered this show but have never seen anything else about it until now. It just vanished like the vapor it was.

I only remember one episode, in which a monster sprayed the teens with a gas, then all sorts of bad things happened, including the death of Nimbar. Finally the token African girl said that everything bad had happened since they got sprayed. Then they will themselves to wake up. They had been sharing a dream, or something for 18 minutes since they'd been sprayed, and THE MONSTER FREAKIN' DID NOTHING the whole time they were asleep. Even at seven I wondered what the Kessel was with that.

That is how dumb this show's plots were.

I loved this show which contained the campy youthful humor of shows like Saved By The Bell and California Dreams and mixed it up with action to capitalize on the Power Rangers / Superhuman Samurai / VR Troopers / Beetleborgs craze of the 90s! Four teens were given the power to turn into giants to fight equally gigantic monsters, and strangely enough, always in the same city set! The monster suits were cheesy even by campy Godzilla standards and when necessary, the teens joined together to form...not a giant robot, but a cheesy knight in shining armor! By not taking itself seriously, it was actually more entertaining to me than the higher budgeted shows aforementioned. I'd love to see them collected on DVD but am equally sure they never will be. From the USA Network!

In the long history of television oddities, this one has to rank darn near the top. It was a cheap attempt to cash in on the Power Rangers craze of the time, and featured special effects that would make Edward D. Wood Jr cringe. Basicly the storyline was that four teenagers were chosen to protect earth from this bad guy who looked like Darth Vader sitting in a dentist chair. They were called to action by their glowing tatoos, which summoned portals that somehow replaced them with bodybuilders in spandex who looked pretty much nothing like the original actors. This looked friggin hillarious, because you'd see these stand-ins fighting a guy in the rubber suit that always looked like he was about to tip over, while stomping on a cardboard city. Eventually, the heroes would all lock wrists and turn into and incredibly cheesy looking giant knight. I make none of this up, I swear to God.. this show actually existed! There had to be only 5-10 episodes, because I remember after telling everyone in school about it, I turned on the TV like a week later to see that it was no longer on. Trust me, I was devestated. I'm suprised that to this day I've been unable to find a video of this show on ebay or anywhere else on the net, and I'm also very suprised this classic has yet to pick up the cult following that it deserves.