Too much of everything

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Best movie ever!

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Originally titled, 'The Ray Gun Terror' and rereleased in the UK as 'The Gargon Terror'. This film original played on double-bill with 1955's 'Godzilla Raids Again' during its theatrical run. Directed, produced, & written, by Tom Graeff, the movie tells the story of humanoid alien named Derek (David Love), who abandons his crew, after he made a moral objection, to the idea of terraforming a planet of intelligent life to cultivate herds of lobster-like creatures. Having escape, Derek must make his way to the nearest town, to let the people know, of the oncoming threat. Without spoiling the movie, too much, while it's an alien invasion movie, it sadly doesn't have the funds, to portray that epic of a scale. Shot only with $14,000, a lot of cost-effective measures had to take place for this film to be made. According to some members of the filming crew, they had to employed many guerrilla tactics in order to cut costs. Some of them, kinda does works. Director Graeff's steady hand and framing kept most of the real locations of LA subdued, creating a convincing low-budget illusion of a small town. Yet, some numbers of tell-tale landmarks were a bit noticeable, gives away the film's otherwise realistic location. Other cost-cutting measures didn't work as well. About half of the film is supposed to take place at night, but instead film in the day. The reasons for this, was because filming in the dark, was a little too expensive. Another problem with the production is how the aliens' costumes were simple flight suits clearly decorated with masking tape, dress shoes covered in socks, and surplus Air Force flight helmets. Also, the use of stock footage, in lieu of real special effects and "looking" shots that replaced actual visuals of the invading alien spaceships, seriously undercut the film's ending. Props included a single-bolted-joint suspended medical dummy skeleton re-used for every dead body seen on screen, a multi-channel sound mixer that was not camouflaged as a piece of alien equipment, and a dime store Hubley's "Atomic Disintegrator" toy as the aliens' disintegrator ray gun, were some of the film's biggest faults. However, the worst prop and effect, for me, has to be, how the film could not afford to construct a giant lobster, so they film, a normal-sized lobster and double its shadow size on screen. Other mistakes, this movie does, is how Graeff used pre-recorded dialogue for several scenes and had the actors lip-synchronize their dialogue with their scene actions. It made for an awkward watch, when the lips don't match up with the words that they are saying. The film score is also hard to listen to. The film used a lot stock music that been recycled in countless B-Movies. Because of the limited budget, this movie looks really, really cheap. Since most of the budget, was supplied, by mediocre actors in exchanged for roles in the film. A lot of the performances in here, seem underwhelming. Main lead, David Love AKA Chuck Roberts was boring and dull. His on-screen lover interest, Christina Ricci look-alike, Dawn Anderson/Bender was just as emotionless as Betty Morgan. It is funny how, well, Betty takes the death of her dog. Bryan Grant, AKA Bryan Pearson was horrible as the villainous Thor with his dry Vincent Prince impression. Another jarring thing about the movie, is how none of the main actors, seem to be teenagers. So, I don't get, why this movie has that titled. Anyways, the other supporting cast was alright for the most part. By far, better than the three leads. Still, it's weird to see original Ronald McDonald actor, Robert Moody as the Ship Captain & Harvey B. Dunn act so dumbfounded as Betty's grandpa. Others problems, this film has is the pacing. There is so much padding and awkward repetitive scenes. Movie also has way too much plot holes to count, like how Betty's dog got to the quarry or how you can hot-wire telephone wires, with getting electrocuted. Also, how in the 50's, even the least qualified were allowed to drive and how Derek is a popular alien named. Plus, the tone is all over the place. Extraordinarily high body count and bittersweet ending does not mixed with good natured teen movie. No wonder, why this film failed to perform at the box office. It indeed, placed further stress on the burdened director who was already getting sued by investors, and in the fall of 1959, he suffered a breakdown, proclaiming himself as the second coming of Christ & forced into residency at a mental institution. He was released in 1964, to start a mail order business. Sadly, this didn't last long, as on December 19, 1970, Graeff was found dead, having committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. The reasons for this tragic turn, is often disputed, but many people believe, it was caused by forced heterosexuality on homosexuals by society at the time. He was buried, without receiving so much as an obituary. Despite that, his movie lives on. In 1987, 'Teenagers from Outer Space' entered the public domain due to a failure to renew the film's copyright registration. As a result, anyone could duplicate and sell a copy of this film. However, since many of them, come from extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation copies. Don't be surprised, that the copies available on the market are either severely or badly edited. While, in 1992 the film was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, not to mention, a 2010's episode of Elvira's Movie Macabre were fun to watch. They were somewhat cut, to fit with the hourly run-time of the show. Don't be surprised, if you can't find, a full made version of this film. Overall: If you like cheesy 1950 low budget sci-fi movies. Then, you'll definitely want to add this one to your collection. Full of unintended laughs and 1950 camp. It's a good bad movie that is worthy of the watch.

Oh dear. Where to begin? To say that the title is something of a red flag is a serious understatement. If the writers can't come up with something better than "Teenagers from Outer Space," then how good can the movie be? The answer is not very.The movie starts promisingly enough, with a shaggy dog running along and barking. Everyone likes dogs, right? Well, apparently not everyone, because when Fido starts barking at a fake looking saucer, the hatch opens and a masked alien shoots him with a ray gun, instantly turning him into a skeleton. The alien then removes his mask to reveal- a human. Yes, what better way is there to save money on costumes than to have the aliens look like regular people in weird clothes? It's soon revealed that these space teens have come to earth in hopes of using it as grazing land for their livestock, the grecken. A fight immediately breaks out. Derek, one of the aliens, believes it's wrong to unleash the grecken on a planet with intelligent life, and is willing to hold the others at gunpoint to prevent that from happening. Through some incredibly wooden dialog, we learn that on their home world, they have no families, and that the old and sick are killed off to preserve their "Supreme Race." Well Derek makes a run for it into town, and one of his shipmates pursues him, while the others head back into space, and the grecken is left in a nearby cave. Oh and I forgot to mention, Derek's father is the Supreme Leader, an important tidbit that didn't come up until Derek had fled. So Derek ends up boarding with a nice family through a series of highly unlikely misunderstandings, and his pursuer stays one step behind him, vaporizing anyone who seems to be getting in his way. There are poorly staged shootouts, dull car chases, and of course the hero finds a nice girl who repeatedly ignores his instructions to stay out of danger.And even when the trigger happy villain is thwarted, there's still the grecken. By this point, you're probably wandering to yourself "just what is a grecken?" It's a lobster. And not just any lobster. It looks normal at first, but after a day on earth, it's as big as an elephant… and hungry for human flesh. The scenes in which the hero battles it are among the most ridiculous ever to appear on screen, because even a five year old can tell that someone's just projecting the silhouette of a crayfish onto the screen. It doesn't even look like it's walking, it just kind of floats around, wiggling its legs.You've surely guessed by now that the acting is as abysmal as the effects. Every line is stilted. I'm not sure if the aliens ever use a contraction throughout the film. These guys have about as much personality as Microsoft Sam. And the townspeople… If you were approached by a man in a Starfleet uniform, ray gun at his side, who had never seen a car before, wouldn't you have a sneaking suspicion that something was up? But these folks don't seem to notice anything funny until the ray gun's pointed at them. I don't know, maybe they're relatives of whoever wrote this mess.

Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) ** (out of 4)Aliens land on Earth to find a new place to breed their deadly mutant creature but Derek (David Love) decides he doesn't want to hurt anyone. He heads off into town where he becomes friends with Betty (Dawn Bender) and soon the two are trying to fight off the evil Thor (Bryan Grant) who wants to kill Derek. TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE is certainly one of the dumbest movies ever made but I must admit that I get a laugh out of watching it ever so often. I think everything that can happen in a "so bad it's good" film in here including the bad acting, stupid story, awful special effects and of course the rather bland direction. However, some of these things are just so campy that I can't help but be entertained by some of them. This includes the rather bad performances with Love being way too laid back and boring to be able to carry the film. Bender isn't much better in her role but there's some laughs to be had and especially with her haircut, which I'm still trying to figure out what it is. The lovable Harvey B. Dunn plays Grandpa and you can't help but want to help him cross the road. The special effects are rather laughable with the silly ray guns but I must admit that I loved the skeletons that the victims turn into. Yes, they're obviously fake and they're quite silly but at the same time it's hard to think of another science fiction film from this era where the victims were so destroyed. This film could have been a lot more entertaining but sadly it runs way too long at 85-minutes with the final thirty really dragging. Another major problem is that the pacing is quite bad and there's way too much dialogue that just keeps the film going. Still, fans of bad cinema should find a few laughs to be had here

Obviously not a high budget production, but a good movie none the less.I was surprised after seeing this movie how good it was. I expected lot worse after seeing the spaceship land at the beginning of the movie. Then a total surprise. The story is good, and acting was very good. Characters are fleshed out pretty good, and there's decency in people's behavior.For a rumored $5000 budget to produce this movie, I can understand why there aren't any good special effects. I came to see far advanced civilization from space, and found pinnacle of our civilization in this movie. Boy have we slid down the hill since this movie was made.The producer obviously had talent, and I would have liked to see more movies from him.