TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE (1959)

DIRECTED & WRITTEN by Tom Graeff.

STARRING  - David Love as Derek,  Dawn Bender as Betty Morgan,  Bryan Grant as Thor,  Harvey B. Dunn as Gramps Morgan,  Tom Graeff  (billed as Joe Lockyear) as Joe Rogers,  King Moody as Spacecraft Captain,  Jim MacGeorge as Detective Mac,  Fredrick Welch as Dr. C.R. Brandt M.D., Gene Stirling as Alien Leader.

PLOT -  On the outskirts of a small town in rural America, a Spacecraft lands. It's inhabitants are a humanoid looking species looking for planets to act as breeding grounds for the monsterous Lobster like Gargans, the alien's main food source. One of the crew, Thor, notices a dog and kills it with his ray gun, vapourising its skin and reducing it to a skeleton. Another crew member, Derek, notices an address tag on the dog's collar and is sickened by his crewmate's actions. Derek renounces his people's ways and flees from the scene. Thor is despatched to hunt him down and bring him back alive to be put on trial for treason, or to simply execute him and any others who get in his way.

Derek is taken in by the dog's owners, Gramps Morgan and his grandaughter Betty, after he visits thier home. There is an instant connection between Derek and Betty and the two swiftly fall in love.

However, Thor is coming for them, armed with his skeletonising ray. Thor embarks on a killing spree, murdering all who get in his way on his mission to apprehend Derek. Will Derek and Betty survive being hunted down by this alien sociopath and if they do, will they then be able to stop the rampaging horror that is...the Gargan ?...

DIALOUGE  - Detective Mac - "There's something behind this...something we don't understand. This weapon he uses, its unheard of... blasting flesh right off the bones !"

PERFORMANCES  -  The acting in this film is across the board terrible, camply terrible in fact but this just adds to the charm. All the actors portraying aliens talk in the same halting dialogue. They. All. Leave. Pauses. Between. Each. Word. As. They. Talk. I think its supposed to sound robotic and emotionless but it just slows every dialogue scene featuring these characters down and makes them all sound like idiots. Also, despite what the film's title may have you believe NONE of the aliens are teenagers. Its not just the fact that all of the aliens look to be in thier Thirties, its never stated once in the script that any of the extraterrestrials are especially young, for all we know they might all be about 200 years old and just age more slowly than earthlings.

David Love is Derek, the alien who goes rogue (what a terrible name for an alien from a far off civilisation that is technologically superior to ours...Derek. I'll bet theres probably alien beings called Trevor or Kevin on his planet too). Derek is played like all the other aliens with staccato. Robotic. Speech. He just comes across as being a bit wet to be honest.

Then we get Dawn Bender as Betty who seems to have only four modes of acting in this film - 1) Being sweet and pretty, 2) being sweet and pretty whilst staring dewy eyed at Derek, 3) being sweet and pretty and shocked, and finally 4) being sweet and pretty and upset. Thats as three dimensional as she gets. She also seems to spend the entire movie dressed in a prom dress for some reason.

Then we get Bryan Grant as Thor (who is quite categorically NOT the Norse god of thunder, just some arsehole with a ray gun), Grant varies his performance from the other people playing aliens by placing a shouty emphasis on some of his robotic sounding dialogue ie, "You. Will. Be. Taken. To. The. Homeworld. And. Be. DESTROYED !!!!". It's as awful, cheesy and funny as you would expect it to be.

We also get Harvey B. Dunn's performance as Gramps Morgan which seems to consist of nothing more than Dunn looking confused whilst wearing the highest waisted trousers in the history of cinema...

Finally, we get director, writer and producer Tom Graeff playing Joe Roberts whose acting is just as bad as everybody else's. Hmm...directing, writing, producing and acting in your own film ? Can we say "vanity project" ? Yes, I think we can. After making this film Graeff soon lost the plot (assuming he ever had it in the first place) and went through a phase of calling himself Jesus Christ the 2nd, proclaiming himself to be the second coming. He eventually settled back into being plain old Tom Graeff again, trying and failing to get back into movie making. He sadly committed suicide at the age of 41, gassing himself in his garage and dying through Carbon Monoxide poisoning. A sad end to a strange life.

SFX - As with everything else in this movie, the effects are wonderfully cheesy. Firstly, we get the skeletons that are left over from the people (and dog) who are blasted by Thor's ray gun...

These are your standard bolt jointed skeletons that are used in biology classes and medical schools, which is fine except for when you realise that people don't tend to have thier skeletons held together by metal bolts. Surely if the skin was blasted off someone's body thier skeleton would collapse into a pile of bones, not a conviniently poseable Halloween prop ?

Best of all though is the Gargan, the Lobster-like giant alien monster that goes on a rampage in the latter half of the movie. I said the Gargan was Lobster-like, what I mean by that is that the Gargan is an ACTUAL Lobster. That's right the effect of a giant Lobster alien is achieved by holding a real Lobster in front of the camera and shaking it about a bit so that it looks distressed. Sometimes Lobby the Lobster is superimposed onto a background...

Other times his menacing shadow is put into the frame to terrorise his puny human victims...

Either way it looks terrible.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Well, you get people being zapped into skeletons. Thats violent I suppose...

RATING  - Teenagers from Outer Space is a prime example of grade A 1950's B-movie cheese. It ranks up there with films like Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Giant Gila Monster for sheer silliness, ineptitude and charm. I love it. 3 skeleton slayings out of 5.