Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) - Video On Demand

Teenagers from Outer Space - Movie Review

Bad acting, a bad script and some truly bad special effects - the alien is just a lobster, for God's sake, when was the last time you were scared of a lobster? - somehow synergise to produce a B-movie that's so bad, it's campily brilliant. This is the sort of movie that would have made Ed Wood jealous.

Teenagers from Outer Space is a 1959 science-fiction B-movie about an extraterrestrial ship landing on Earth to use it as a farm for its food supply. The crew of the ship includes several teenagers (who ironically look quite old for teenagers), two of whom oppose each other in their activities. They have been searching the galaxy for a planet suitable to raise their herd of "gargons", a lobster-like (but air-breathing) creature which is a food staple on their homeworld.

Teenagers from Outer Space was filmed on location in and around Hollywood, California, with a number of tell-tale landmarks like Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park and Hollywood High School giving away the film's hazy locale. One notable aspect of the film is that it was largely the work of a single person, Tom Graeff (1929-1970), who, in addition to playing the role of reporter Joe Rogers, wrote, directed, edited, and produced the film, on which he also provided cinematography, special effects, and music coordination. Producers Bryan and Ursula Pearson ("Thor" and "Hilda") and Gene Sterling ("The Leader") provided the film's $14,000 budget, which was less than shoe-string by the standards of the time.

According to Bryan Pearson, the crew employed many guerrilla tactics in order to cut costs. Director Tom Graeff secured the location for Betty Morgan's house for free by posing as a UCLA student (while Graeff had attended the school, he had graduated 5 years earlier). The older woman who owned the house even let the crew use her electricity to power equipment.[1]

Graeff shot in many nearby locations — mostly in the vicinity of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue — to double as more important city landmarks. Graeff's steady hand and framing kept most of the real locations under-wraps, creating a great low-budget illusion of a small town.

Other cost-cutting ideas didn't pay off as well: the space costumes were simple flight suits clearly decorated with masking tape, dress shoes covered in socks, and surplus Air Force helmets. The use of stock footage in lieu of special effects and Spielbergian "looking" shots replacing actual visuals of the invading enemy spaceships seriously undercut the urgency of the ending. Props included a single bolted-joint skeleton re-used for every dead body, and the infamous dime-store Hubley's "Atomic Disintegrator" as the aliens' focusing disintegrator ray

Teenagers from Outer Space - Cast & Crew

Add New Tags