Customer Reviews

Teenagers from Outer Space

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Tom Graeff's "Teenagers From Outer Space" is some kind of strange, perhaps accidental masterpiece. How did such a low-budget effort,using unknown (mostly untalented) actors wind up being so entertaining?

One big reason for this movie's 'success' is its pulp sci-fi look and feel. Watching it is like reading a 1950s sci-fi comic book, or like reading a sci-fi short story from the same period. The pulp look derives from the costumes and choice of locations used, as well as that of the monster "Gargan". A pulp feel results from the fast pace (actually rare in the sci-fi B-movie genre), some surprising violence, and the earnest, if inept, acting style.

A few scenes betray Tom Graeff's directorial talent: the laser gun attacks at the gas station, and especially, the unexpectedly effective car chase. These may frustrate some viewers; they suggest how much "better" the film might have been. But for some, they are balanced by the wonderfully comatose performance of the lead actor and the ludicrous spectacle of the "Gargan".

The DVD issue of "Teenagers From Outer Space" deserves a top recommendation. The film transfer is clear and rather impressive, the sound more than adequate. Inside the colorful keepcase there is a really informative essay. Another big plus is the collection of original trailers for other films in the B-Sci-Fi genre, most of which are in fine shape and--in some cases--are more interesting than the films themselves. Included here is, fortunately, the rarely seen trailer for "Teenagers From Outer Space": the wondrous film that includes NO teenage actors, but will entertain generations to come.

Derek, a rebel teenager from outer space, strays from his alien pack when he finds that the men of his saucer will release their herd of Gorgons (giant lobsters) on Earth, at the expense of human life. Stumbling into town in his spacesuit, he quickly finds a room for rent (the landlord says he can just "pay later" if he doesn't have the cash immediately... try doing that in California nowadays). Enter the "bad" (albeit really cute) teen alien, who attempts to recapture Derek and return him to his own world.

There are two scenes worthy of hearty praise in this fine film.

I was very fond of the scene in which Derek single-handedly fights the Gorgon (aka the giant lobster). The lobsters - er, Gorgons - don't really crawl anywhere more than they seem to be held and shook off-screen; this was no doubt expertly performed by an imported British nanny.

Another superior scene is when the dishy, oversexed blonde in the swimming pool gives the "teen" alien Derek the up-and-down and invites him into the pool with her (and who wouldn't?). This woman could have won an Oscar for this performance, particularly when she gets zapped by the alien's raygun and turns instantly into bones. Now that's acting. I doubt there are many, if any, actresses in Hollywood today who can turn into bones on demand like that.

But outside of the many meaningful performances one will find here can be found the unique aesthetic vision of the director. It's here you'll find a world chock full of pomaded hair on cute '50s boys, great shots of vintage automobiles whizzing hither and tither, and giant alien crustaceans. And what a world it is -- sort of like a space-age, suburban Bali Hai, but located in the outskirts of Baltimore circa 1959.

I was so awed by this masterpiece that I created a cocktail for viewers to consume while watching the film. It's called the Teenagers from Outer Space Cocktail, and is made up of: 1 cup pineapple juice, 1/3 cup coconut rum, and a dash of Blue Curacao. Serve over ice, and garnish with a plastic lobster.

I'd been waiting to see this movie for years (somehow it's never played on TV in the Chicagoland area), and after reading some of the other reviews here my expectations were high. I am not disappointed. 'Teenagers' starts off a little slow, but stick with it; the absurdities pile up steadily until the completely ludicrous finish causes your lower jaw to drop open in amazement. It actually gets better with each viewing. Some of my favorite cheese factors: the alien analyzer machine clearly labeled "multichannel mixer"; the Fabio and Harry Chronic-lookalike aliens; the heroine's salacious hag of a girlfriend; the so-cliched-he's-brilliant TV newscaster; and the disorienting effect of hearing the 'scary' music cues from Night of the Living Dead in this context. Plus, whenever someone gets zapped, their skeleton is curiously held together with metal clips; the high-tech aliens are extremely dependent on human automobiles for getting around; and at bottom the story is really a soppy romance peopled with Mayberry and Mayfield refugees. All alien/hero Derek really wants is a home and family! And of course there's the Gargan; you have to admire their chutzpah and utter shamelessness in using the silhouette of a crayfish (not the actual crayfish mind you!) for their monster. There's something quite Ed Woodian about the whole thing; the naive enthusiasm of the cast, the non-sequitur dialogue, the poverty-stricken effects. Hour of fun for the bad movie connoisseur!
Ironically, Image's DVD presents the film in as pristine a state as could possibly be expected. The tonal values, sharpness, and detail are excellent, and you have to really watch closely to see any speckling or blemishing. The chapter stops are on the main menu, and a trailer for 'Teenagers' is included, as well as five of the same handful of trailers that are on other similar Image releases. Informative production notes are on the box. A solid entertainment value at the price.

A landing crew from space arrive on earth with a mission. To find a planet suitable fro raising Gargon livestock. What is a gargon you ask? Well it's a lobster. And in earth's environment it can grow to the size of a house.

However, Derek, a crew member has been reading a book which has warped his mind. He disagrees with his 'master race's' way of doing things. He wants families and love, not cold hearted beings grown in incubators. After a dog is disintegrated, he escapes from his crew and uses the dog tag to trace down it's owner. Here he meets Betty and the kindly, always ready to give any information to anybody, grandpa.

Thor will have none of this and chases down Derek. He must be taken dead or alive even though he is the son of the Leader. Derek doesn't know this, but the crew received these orders from the leader himself.

Derek is a kind hearted alien who loves earth and it's way of life. He longs for love and compassion, which is almost unknown to his people. Thor on the other hand will kill anyone in his way to capture Derek. With a sneer almost as deadly as his flashlight raygun, he slaughters gas station attendants, hot blondes in swimming pools, and cops. His path of destruction is aided by grandpa. The old goat tells anybody where anyone is. He's almost like "Well stranger, I have no idea who you are, but if you're looking for my granddaughter, she's at this address."

Thor has classic lines. My favorite is when he gets shot and hijacked Betty and Derek in a car.

Thor: You must take these metal pellets out of me.
Derek : That's impossible!
Betty: I know a doctor. We can take you there.
Thor: She is very wise.

Yeah. Honestly this movie is a hoot and a treat. Derek is as wooden as they come. The kid doesn't even swing his arms when he walks. Wehn he's not in his 'Mork from Ork' space suit, they got him dressed in a turn of the century Colonal Sanders suit.

When they finally do battle with the Gargon, it's a giant lobster shadow on the film. The sound effects are so bad you can tell it's just a guy going "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"

Derek ends up saving the earth when his people arrive with a whole herd of Gorgans. He calls them down on the radio and they all crash. How a bunch of spaceships cannot see the earth and crash into it is beyond me, because the original ship just landed without a problem. But with his final order "Stay on course" Derek saves the earth. The special effects of the spaceships crashing is stupendous. It looks like stock footage of an active volcano.

This is pure camp, pulp fiction fun. A feather in the cap of the great 50's atomic age Sci-Fi.

Talk about the "Buck Rodgers" toy guns and the lobster on a string, that's all well and good. Certainly, Teenagers From Outer Space is no example of cinema par excellance, the kind they make you watch in film school. The tepid acting of lead David Love, who got the gig hanky-in-pocket as it were, seals that deal. And yet, maybe this *is* film school material after all. Director/Producer/Writer Tom Graeff actually got his movie made and sold it to a major studio. And spent nary a dime of his own money doing it! The dialogue was prerecorded to cut out the cost of editing in post-production. He got the interiors of the female lead's house for just a promise to the owner that it would appear in a Hollywood film! Why this cat didn't end up working for Roger Corman is a mystery. How many film students ever make a picture, let alone manage to sell it and get it screened from coast to coast? The fact that TFOS has a cult audience nearly 50 years later is a testament to the fact that there's something more at work here than an average B-flick. Had Graeff continued to create films, he might be considered in a class with Ed Wood today. Is that something to be proud of? Just maybe.

I haven`t seen this movie for quite awhile. I remember watching "Teenagers From Outer Space" when I was a kid of 11 or 12 years old. I saw it one more time a few years ago on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". It had sad devastating crimes done by the alien invader such as slaying and disintegrating a few people from a dishy blonde in a swimming pool to a liitle dog named Sparky owned by a nice girl who met and got acquainted with the nicest alien from that planet. Despite those devastating tragedies I still would not mind seeing the movie again even if I have to buy it to own it.

Anyone who calls TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE "one of the worst movies ever made" has their head on backwards; have they ever seen "Manos The Hands of Fate", or "Beast of Yucca Flats"? If not, watch those two, and get back to me if you still think this is one of "the worst"...
TEENAGERS is a strange film; a labor of love with flashes of real talent and ingenuity between the easy-laugh fodder of toy zap-guns and giant lobsters. Its earnest, heart-on-its-sleeve nature is what really makes it a target for today's jaded, cynical audiences.
The movies' ace, however, is Dawn Bender(aka Dawn Anderson) as "Betty"... is there any male viewer out there who doesn't have a thing for her? Her unusual beauty and oddly convincing performance(even when being threatened by lobster shadows or simulating romantic tension with an obviously gay David Love) reminds me of those spooky female sung 50s ballads like "A Thousand Stars" or "Angel Baby". It's really too bad she didn't go on to bigger and better things.
The MST3K crowd can goof on TEENAGERS... all they want, but there really is nothing else quite like it...and that's more than you can say for all the big-budget cookie cutter drivel that comes out of Hollywood today.

AS WE ALL KNOW, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE IS ONE OF THE ALL-TIME CLASSICS OF SO-BAD-IT'S-GOOD CINEMA, GARGON & ALL! DEREK & BETTY FIND TEEN LOVE AS THOR BLASTS THE FLESH OFF IDIOT EARTHLINGS WHO WOULD'VE PROBABLY BEEN BETTER SERVED AS GARGON FODDER. STUPID YET FASCINATING...INANE YET COMPELLING...AN ABSURD MASTERPIECE OF LOW-BROW SCHLOCK THAT TAKES PLACE ALL WITHIN A 12-HOUR TIME-FRAME OF ERRATIC DIALOGUE & IMPLAUSIBLE SITUATIONS. AN ABSOLUTE MUST FOR LOVERS OF THIS KIND OF CRAP (LIKE ME ).
THE ALPHA DVD TRANSFER IS CLEAR & CRISP & WORTHY OF PURCHASE IF YOU WANT A QUALITY VERSION AT A BUDGET PRICE...THIS IS THE VERSION IN MY COLLECTION & I FEEL NO NEED TO UP-GRADE. BUY IT....& ENJOY!!!!

To other aging baby-boomers out there, this trifle may stir memories of Saturday afternoons at the local picture-show (circa 1959). The most laughable aspect of this movie is the lobster that keeps growing until it becomes a giant shadow of a lobster. We aren't even speaking of a Japanese guy in a rubber monster-suit here. The plot is simplistic and hokey. Earth is invaded by aliens seeking grazing lands for their herds of space cattle, which bear an uncanny resemblance to earth-bound lobsters. There is the obligatory ray-guns and guys running around in cheesy looking space-suits. A dishy looking blonde woman in a swimming pool gets zapped by a ray-gun and turned into a skeleton. There's some low-budget special effects from the 1950s showing plastic and cardboard spaceships. If one considers the corny dialogue, the bad acting, and the general low-budget look, the whole movie can be taken as fun in a low-brow sort of way. This film remains on my personal list of the all-time "so bad it's good" kind of movie. Proceed at you own risk. And remember, everybody watch the skies!

Actually, this movie is not as bad as I remembered it. But there are a lot of issues.
To start with,I guess you would have had to have lived through the fifties to understand the significance of the title. At that time, the word "teenager" was actually synonymous with "juvenile Delinquent" or the modern term "gangster". Normal people of that age were "youths", "young adults" or some other neutral term. "Teenagers" were hormone-driven bundles of rage and rebellion. To imagine such recklessly destructive persons equipped with alien weapons capable of mass destruction was to trigger every parents darkest nightmare.
The story line is pretty thoughtful. We have an alien civilization which is what might have happened if Hitler or Stalin had taken over the world. Children are raised in farms and never know their parents, except for those of high party members, who are not told until maturity.
The main food source for this civilisation is the gargon, a crustacean-like creature which eats anything or anyone that it can catch and being quite huge, it can catch just about anything.
In the opening a scout ship from this civilition lands near an American town. It is crewed by one adult and two teenaged helpers. Their mission is to place a specimen of gargon on Earth to see if it will prosper there. One of the teenagers detects signs of human life and argues against planting the voracious gargons here. He is apparently a member of an underground working against the oppressive government. The other teenager can best be described as a Hitler Youth with ambitions of becoming an SS thug. The good teen is threatened with arrest and runs away. The adult leader then reveals that he is really the son of the Party Leader and must be brought home safely. A small gargon is left in an abandoned mine and the vicious teen is left behind to hunt down and arrest the escapee. The next act of the movie sees the good teen becoming more and more fond of Earth's way of life, while the vicious teen hunts for him, leaving a trail of bodies reduced to skeletons by his ray gun. The vicious teen is eventually captured and his ray gun damaged.
Meanwhile, the gargon has grown huge and broken loose from the mine. It is now roaming the countryside, killing everything and everybody in sight. The good teen struggles to repair the ray gun and finally, using power from a high voltage line, uses it to destroy the gargon.
The scout ship returns bringing the Party Leader intent on recovering his son, and leading a fleet of ships carrying large packs of gargons to be released on Earth.
The good teen seizes control of the scout ship's radio and causes the whole fleet to crash on him, killing the evil teen, the Party Leader, all of the gargons, and himself. By his sacrifice, he saves the Earth and opens the way for revolution on his homeworld.
I think that the reason that this movie hangs on as a cult favorite is that it really is a good basic story. With a good script and and a more experienced director, as well as a good budget for special effects, this could have been a classic. the cast and crew did the best they could with the resources available to them, but those resources were limited and it shows in the finished product. The main complaint, as it is with so many of these low budget movies is wooden acting. A good script writer would have given them the language to express the concepts they were clearly trying to explore, and a good director would have guided them in better ways to perform the lines. Budget enters in too, since they clearly could not afford the film needed to repeat unsuccessful takes.
Bad marks for special effects. The ray gun is clearly a flashlight with a fancy pistol grip and a few useless decorations. But the worst effect is the gargon. It is clearly the shadow of a half dead lobster superimposed over the screen. In the hands of a good stop action animator it would have been a prize-winning effect, but that would have cost more than three times the whole budget for the movie. Such animation is expensive and time consuming.
we really should give good marks for costume. The Alien uniforms really look authentic down to the white footgear.
This movie was originally released on the same bill as "Gigantis, The Fire Monster", Which has recently been released in its original Japanese title as "Godzilla Raids Again". For an evening of fun watching, buy them together.
"Teenagers From Outer Space" is priced low enough to be worth the effort.