Teenagers from Outer Space

I know it sounds stupid, but I saw this movie last night and it's not as bad as some of the descriptions make it out to be. Maltin gets a little hoity-toity in his reviews; a movie doesn't have to be "The Color Purple" to be worth watching.

It's not Oscar material to be sure and the effects are _awful_, but the writing is a lot better than most films of this ilk and the action/acting is OK.

If you're busting code out at 3 AM and this comes on, don't turn the channel. Kind of an interesting flick.

First off, I would like to say that have actually seen the actual film in its original form, not from watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. So my comments are entirely based on my watching the film without the benefit of Rod, Servo and the rest of those imbeciles whose names I have forgotten.

The first thing that amazed me about this film is not that its makers managed to get this film released, the fact that they managed to sell a film so cheap looking to major studio like Warner Brothers. I would love to known what sales pitch they used to sell it to WB executives. This film by the way, turned up a support feature for the second Godzilla movie, GIGANTIS,THE FIRE MONSTER, which Warner Brothers also distributed.

The acting in the film is amateurish and dialog delivery is stilted. The actors delivery of the lines is reminiscent of the stilted dubbed dialog heard in those cheap Italian made spectacles that were just about to flood the American market when this film came out. The films plot is loaded with more holes than swiss cheese. Perhaps the most ludicrous element of the film is the Gargon, which is nothing more than a macro enlarged lobster (or is it a crayfish?). On the plus side I was surprised that director Tom Graef used more camera set ups and camera movement than is usually found in a lowbudget picture of this nature. This makes TEENAGERS FROM OUTERSPACE not as dreary as other very low budget films from the same period like THE ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER.

Tom Graeff's entire film career consisted of this one film and work editing another. He shot it for $5000, performed much of the work himself, and gave his boyfriend David Love (Charles Robert Kaltenthaler) the lead role. Graeff was 28 and Love 23 when the film was shot. Graeff died 12 years later after an apparent mental breakdown; no one seems to know what happened to Love. Amazingly, Warners paid $25,000 for distribution rights for this clunker at a time when teen audiences were eating up sci-fi movies. More bizarre details about the film, including props and locations used, are at the Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt website.

'teenagers from out of space' has grown on me a LOT since the first time i saw it. true, it isn't a very good movie, but considering how they used what little they had to work with (budget-wise, acing-wise, etc.) i'd say this movie deserves a bit more respect. the effects were cleverly planned (if not well-executed), the fairly inexperienced actors weren't terrible ( except for TORCHA! guy, but he's so bad he's great), and it had a decent plot with a fairly atypical ending. (okay, there's no excuse for the lobster. the lobster was just terrible.) it's no 'godfather' (heck, it's not even 'cannibal: the musical'), but, in the vein of 'night of the living dead', 'teenagers' takes very little and makes something decent with it.

What is it about this no-budget film that gets my interest? Sure it was produced for a mere $3,000 and the effects are laughable, but there is something that's actually engrossing about its storyline: Aliens come to Earth for the purpose of breeding their man-eating lobsters called Gargons. Derek, the young,idealistic black sheep, with James Dean pretentions, disapproves of his comrades lack of compassion towards the fate of the earth people, and goes AWOL to warn the unsuspecting citizens of our world.

Derek ends up in a suburban utopia, where everyone is sincerely kind and caring of one another (this must be an alien planet). He rents a room and falls in love with the local teen queen (who is surprisingly as UN-prima-donna as they come). Unknown to the hapless pair, one of Derek's cronies, Thor, is hot on his trail, blasting everyone in sight with his focusing disintegrater (which turns the victim into a skeleton). The aliens plan to return soon with a full shipment of gargons, and our heroes only have a short time to thwart their trecherous plans.

Ridiculous? Sure. Engrosssing? Definitely. In some ways the plot is reminiscent of TERMINATOR (I wonder if Cameron saw this in his younger years). As little more than a home movie, it's not really that bad. You could tell that filmmaker Graeff (who plays Joe the reporter under the name of Tom Lockyear) compensated for an inadequate budget, with heart, imagination and soul, and has produced a picture that has some surprising moments of brilliance. It would have been curious to have seen how this production would have turned out if Graeff had had a decent budget. This film doesn't lack creative inspiration or intelligence (you can rank it above Ed Wood or Larry Buchanan), but simply money. When it comes to the mega-budget likes of INDEPENDENCE DAY or GODZILLA - money isn't everything!

The performances here are pretty poor, but I came to really care about the characters. Figure that. The film also takes on a certain hallucinatory quality that actually makes it memorable.

This also has the significance of being one of the first independently produced films to be released by a major studio, long before Indies became a tired trend (I'm not much of a Sundance freak). Graeff originally entitled this THE GARGON TERROR and managed to sell it to Warner Brothers (no small feat, believe me). The studio, in turn, changed its title to the more drive-in exploitative TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE. One could tell, if they drop their prejudices and pay close attention, that Graeff was sincerely trying to produce a worthy effort. The man deserves to be congratulated for his attitude, even if the results fall short, due to lack of funds. He was desperately trying promote a stronger understanding between the adults and the kids, hoping for a less troubled world. How can one be faulted for that?

Naturally, MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 had a field day lampooning it, but I sometimes wonder what its producers and fans criteria really is? Is it all just superficial budget and effects with no regard for content? Sounds pretty shallow to me.

I won't recommend this to most, but if you put aside high-tech, you may want to trip back to a different era for curiousity sake if nothing else.