Teenagers from Outer Space | 1959

TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE (1957) Reviews and free to watch online in b/w and colour

‘Teenage hoodlums from another world on a horrendous ray-gun rampage!’ Teenagers from Outer Space – aka The Gargan Terror – is a 1957 [released 1959] science fiction film written, directed and produced by Tom Graeff, who was also responsible for the editing, cinematography and appears as a reporter. The film stars David Love (Graeff’s real-life lover), Dawn Bender, Bryan Grant, Harvey B.…

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Tonight's Fracktured Freakture: Teenagers From Outer Space (Shocking Theater)

A true "classic" from 1959, and you can watch it below the fold or on my Twitch Channel. you can watch the VODs below the fold.

YouTube VOD

Twitch VOD (with "postshow")

On this day in 1959, the sci fi B-movie “Teenagers From Outer Space” premiered in the United States.

You’re probably aware of the film from Mystery Science Theater 3000 but the story behind the production could be a movie in itself. From a dime store "Atomic Disintegrator" pistol passed off as an alien firearm to an unmodified multi-channel sound mixer used as alien tech, from a legal dispute with one of the film’s investors to screenplay writer, director, producer, and star Tom Graeff’s attempt to legally change his name to Jesus Christ II, the tale of extraterrestrial invasion seems uninteresting by comparison.

Reefer Movie Madness: The Ultimate Stoner Film Guide (2010) by Shirley Halperin and Steve Bloom

Reefer Movie Madness is a guide to over 420 films in which "marijuana or other drugs are central to the story, or the movie is particularly fun to watch stoned" (8). It takes its title from the 1936 film Reefer Madness by Louis J. Gasnier, an anti-weed exploitation film in which teenagers fall into wild hysteria after trying marijuana.

Reefer Madness is part of our public domain film festival, along with the film Teenagers from Outer Space (Tom Graeff, 1959).

The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.  Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.

Thomas Lockyear "Tom" Graeff (September 12, 1929 – December 19, 1970) was an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, film editor and cinematographer. He is best known for writing, directing, producing and starring in the 1959 B-movie Teenagers from Outer Space.

Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)

My rating: 6/10

I like to watch these MST3K movies on their own where I can, both to see what they cut for time (quite a bit, it turns out) and whether the movie can stand on its own - and I'd say this one does. There's a perfectly solid script in there, and while the execution is terribly cheesy, there's a certain appeal to that as well.

Teenagers from Outer Space, Tom Graeff (1959)

Thor (aka Bryan Grant) stikes with his vaporizing laser raygun in the 1959 sci-fi/horror/romance, Teenagers From Outer Space.

Produced, written, and directed by Tom Graeff and distributed by Warner Brothers, the film was originally titled, The Ray Gun Terror.

Teenagers from Outer Space | 1959

Teenagers from Outer Space - USA, 1957 - reviews

Teenagers from Outer Space – USA, 1957 – reviews

‘Teenage hoodlums from another world on a horrendous ray-gun rampage!’

Teenagers from Outer Space – aka The Gargan Terror – is a 1957 [released 1959] science-fiction film written, directed and produced by Tom Graeff, who was also responsible for the editing, cinematography and appears as a reporter.

The film stars David Love (Graeff’s real-life lover), Dawn Bender, Bryan Grant, Harvey B. Dunn (B…

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TEENAGERS FROM SPACE on The Schlocky Horror Picture Show

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Hello, good evening, and welcome to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. I'm your host, Nigel Honeybone. Possibly the most terrible and mystifying place anything could come from is Outer Space. The second most terrible and mystifying place is, of course...Puberty. So tonight we add terror to terror in the utterly mystifying Teenagers From Outer Space. No, not one of those lame 1980s college sex romps as you might have guessed from the title, but a rather entertaining black and white effort from 1959 starring, well, ME! I was only paid once, but as you're about to see, I play just about every disintegrated character in the film! I swear, I've never had so much screen-time in a single feature! Look out for my tattoo. The film is actually about aliens who land on Earth to use it as a farm for its food supply, and the crew of the ship includes several teenagers who look much older than the title suggests...sort of like 90210 in jumpsuits. So without further ado, please allow me to semi-ambiguously present the 1959 semi-classic...Teenagers From Outer Space! BREAK: Next we invade your personal space with clawing, slimy crustaceans, and then after the ads we'll get back to Teenagers From Outer Space on the Schlocky Horror Picture Show! MIDDLE: ...and welcome back to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. I think there are far too many nice people in Teenagers From Outer Space! Well, at first, anyway. The town is filled with nothing but nice people who want to help out, just begging for disintegration. You see, we've been invaded by Bryl-creemed aliens in jump suits who want to use Earth as a breeding ground for Gargons, which are like yabbies that grow to ginogorous proportions! Teenagers From Outer Space was filmed on location in and around Hollywood with a number of tell-tale landmarks like Bronson Canyon 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, who plays Joe the reporter. He also wrote, directed, edited, and produced the film, as well as providing cinematography, so-called special effects, and music coordination. Production associates Bryan and Ursula Pearson and Gene Sterling provided the film's $14,000 budget, which was less than half a shoe-string by the standards of the time. All three played major roles as a result...not because they put money in, but because it wasn't enough money to hire more real actors. They employed a lot of 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, which would have been true five years earlier. The old lady who owned the house even supplied the electricity for free, so she deserves disintegration. Other cost-cutting ideas didn't pay off so well. The space costumes are simple flight suits clearly decorated with masking tape, dress shoes covered in socks, and surplus Air Force helmets. The disintegrator ray was a five-cent "Hubley's Atomic Disintegrator" cap-gun, for those who can't make out what's written on the side, with a small light bulb and a mirror glued to the end reflecting an offstage light providing the awesome special effects that make this weapon look almost laughable. And apart from a shadowy giant lobster that would have needed an expensive over-sized claw prop if it ever got close enough to actually attack someone, all the other events are either stock footage or take place off screen under the horrified gaze of our actors. The best effect is those ray guns leaving mere skeletons behind. It's something Tim Burton would use later on in Mars Attacks, but he chose not to ask me to reprise my role. Disintegrate him too, bastard! Strangely enough, Graeff also pre-recorded some of the film's dialogue for several scenes, and had the actors learn to synchronise their actions with the sound. The musical score of the film came from stock, the same stock score has been recycled in countless B-movies such as The Killer Shrews and the original Night Of The Living Dead, so don't

be surprised if you find yourself humming along. As you know, I don't usually harp on too much about bad acting, but I must admit that the acting in Teenagers from Outer Space is particularly bad, and the source of most of the movie's unintended hilarity. This shouldn't be too surprising, as Derek, the alien who wants out of the seafood business and runs away, is played by one David Love, one being the number of films he acted in. Production associate Bryan G. Pearson, whose real name was Bryan Grant but used a pseudonym to avoid union troubles, is Thor. I'm not doing that joke. He had one off roles in TV shows Border Patrol, Perry Mason and Daniel Boone, but in this he's the alien sent to track down renegade nephropidaphobe Derek, along the way asking a lot of questions, being rudely insistent and rather inconsiderately disintegrating people. And the occasional dog. We meet Betty Morgan, played by Dawn Bender (which I'm sure we've all had), as the owner of the dog vaporized by Thor. Vaporized, by Thor! And swept up, by Loki's beard! Bender had acted sporadically since the age of two, and bizarrely chose as her swan song a story about aliens on a sightseeing tour of middle America. Admittedly Thor is a little more murderous in his sightseeing, but not much worse than drunken backpackers. Now they need a good, firm disintegrating. Ursula Pearson, here playing Hilda was Bryan G. Pearson's wife. Of course, Bryan Pearson's real name was Bryan Grant, which means Ursula Pearson's real name was Ursula Hansen. However they were married, which I think they did just to confuse me. I could go on talking about the intersection of Inane and Insipid, but perhaps I should mention the best known actor, if not the best actor, or indeed the known actor...anyway, the one face you probably will recognize if you don't blink is the Spacecraft Captain, who is none other than Starker from Get Smart himself, King Moody. Yes, that's as grand as it gets. Much to the astonishment of nobody sane the film failed to perform at the box office, placing further stress on an already-burdened Graeff. He suffered a breakdown and proclaimed himself the second coming of Christ, which was quite deluded as Roger Corman was clearly the second coming of Christ. After a number of public appearances followed by a subsequent arrest for disrupting a church service, Graeff disappeared from Hollywood for many years. Perhaps that tinge of insanity adds to the low budget charm of Teenagers From Outer Space. One irresistible scene occurs when the love interest is in her room and she manages to change into the very same dress! It's something that couldn't be duplicated with all the money in the world, and probably shouldn't be. And won't be, if I have anything to do with it. Now lets get back to to the disintegrating conclusion of Teenagers From Outer Space! CLOSING: How do we know they're a superior alien race? Because they keep saying it all the time, that's why! It must be true, they have spaceships, big foreheads and those nifty ray guns that instantly turn their targets into skeletons. I sometimes wish I had something like that when dealing with my producers, but it's probably better that I don't. How many aliens did they manage to squeeze into that flying saucer, anyway? It turns out their flying saucer is bigger on the inside than the outside, a bit like the TARDIS. That's pretty advanced, but it still looked like a tight fit in there. They may be a superior race that's invented space travel, but they haven't invented soft furnishings yet. And how were they going to cart back a fully grown Gargon back to their home planet in such a tiny ship? Oh, and did you spot my tattoo? I was really, really drunk... Anyway, please join me next week to have your innocence violated beyond description while I force you to submit to the Horrors of the Public Domain, on The Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Toodles!

The Way The Future Was

For reasons far too trivial to go into, I had a chance to revisit several old sci-fi movies recently and the trailer for a more recent one.

(C’mon, really?   Do we need any more excuse than that for a blog post?   No?   I thought not…)

First and best is Doomwatch, a well made 1972 British film based on the popular 1970-72 BBC series. Doomwatch was the first eco-science fiction TV series, and while the series covered a variety of topics, most of them dealt in some fashion with negative human impact on the environment.

Doomwatch the movie might best be described as The Shadow Over Innsmouth done from a strictly rational scientific POV:  Investigators trying to determine why a remote fishing village is plagued with violence and genetic mutations discover it’s due to unauthorized chemical dumping in the fishing banks.

A tight, well made little move, expertly produced, but what had been a forewarning in 1972 is sadly old news half a century later.

”When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”

Next up is The Creation Of The Humanoids (1962) and the best thing I can say about this is that while it’s not a good movie it sure ain’t a dumb one.

There’s a lot of good ideas bubbling around in this one, all the more pertinent today and artificial intelligence impacts more and more on our lives.

The problem with this one is that is s-o-o-o damn deadly dull.  It’s almost all talk, no action, shot on an ultra-low budget, and directed and performed in a manner that would shame Mrs. Gilmore’s 7th grade drama club.

On the positive side, in addition to some genuinely interesting ideas, it’s photographed by Hal Mohr, a two-time Oscar winning cinematographer who knew how to light and stage scenes for maximum impact.  It looks like a first season episode of Star Trek:  The Original Series and is worth watching for that reason alone.

This was the last professional credit for legendary make-up artist Jack Pierce, who created the Karloff version of the Frankenstein monster thirty years earlier.  Sorry to say the make-up is only adequate; at least the greasepaint was evenly applied.  The dark contact lenses that cover the entire eyeball look painful and may explain why there’s so little movement in the film; more than once an actor playing a robot gropes blindly for a prop.

Dudley Manlove is in the film and I gotta say he’s convincing playing one of the primary robots (read into that what you will).  It’s interesting to contrast his stoic robot here with his near hysterical alien in Plan 9 From Outer Space.

(If you want to watch a Dudley double feature, watch Creation… first and save Plan 9 for the palette cleanser. You’ll be glad you did.)

Discussion of Creation… led to mention of two other ineptly made low budget sci-fi films.

Teenagers From Outer Space (1959) was written / produced / directed / photographed / edited by Tom Graeff, who also did the special effects and played a small supporting role.

This one played on local TV all the time when I was growing up, and it’s as bottom basement as it comes.  A semi-pro effort, Graeff funded the movie by getting the performers to pay for the production.

The performances are exactly what you’d expect from such an arrangement.

It’s dirt cheap, not even able to afford a shoestring for a budget, and has been righteously mocked by MST3K and others for its cheapness…

…but sunuvagun, Graeff completed it and got it into theaters as part of a double bill.

It looks cheap (costumes consist of lengths of duct tape on turtleneck sweaters) but it’s ingenious cheap, and considering how little Gaeff had to work with, this is as solid a production as one could hope for under the circumstances.

Gaeff, alas, came to a tragic end.  It’s unclear if the financial failure of Teenagers… drove him to a mental breakdown or if he had a pre-existing condition, but he eventually tried to change his name to Jesus Christ II then later announced he was producing a big budget movie with A-list talent…only none of the talent named knew about it.

Having sabotaged his already floundering career, Graeff left Hollywood and eventually committed suicide. 

Teenagers… is nothing special, and it’s not even half as good as The Creation Of The Humanoids but considering its origin, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

On the other hand, The Doomsday Machine (started 1967; completed 1972) is an acute embarrassment.  Originally starting production under a different title with Herbert J. Leder directing, the project soon ran out of money and sat uncompleted for…well, considering the final result, we can’t say the “better” part of five years.

Eventually the existing footage wound up in the hands of Harry Hope (there’s an ironic name under the circumstances) who called in the legendary Lee Tabor Sholem, better known as “Roll ‘Em Sholem” to push this pup out the door.

Sholem enjoyed a well earned reputation as a director who completed low budget projects on time (important) and under budget (even more important).  They cobbled together some new scenes that didn’t match any of the existing footage, threw in a bunch of special effects seemingly selected at random, and released The Doomsday Machine on an unsuspecting world.

The only thing notable about The Doomsday Machine is the bonkers cast comprised of Hollywood hasbeens Henry Wilcoxon and Bobby Van, B-movie favorites Grant Williams and Mala Powers, future TV star Mike Farrell, and what-the-hell-is-he-doing-here? Casey Kasim.

(Seriously, Doomwatch shoulda warned us about this one.) 

Finally, a movie I haven’t seen / have no interest in seeing / couldn’t even finish the teaser trailer:  Ebola Rex. Yeah, it looks just as fncking stupid as it sounds.  The company that made this has produced over 40 ultra-low budget derivative exploitation films in the last six years.  Thanx to advances in CGI now just about anybody can make a feature length video production with copious special effects and superimposed explosions.

Not convincing, but copious.

I’m not going to criticize this video unseen or the people who made it, but for the luva Mike, the makers of all the films above would have given a left arm (maybe not theirs, but somebody’s) for even that level of technical quality, can’t you do something with it a little more than deliberately cheesy pastiches of already cheesy old movies?

I mean, the people making The Creation Of The Humanoids and Teenagers From Outer Space and even The Doomsday Machine were honest to Gawd trying to make the best movie they could.

Take a look at Sean Baker’s oeuvre You don’t have to do his kind of stories but at least aim for his level of quality.

    © Buzz Dixon

Two love birds escape to the desert where they can make love. But aliens from outerspace and their man-eating lobsters have other plans.

Music Video for the song 'Oceans of Jupiter' from the Antiquated EP by Sargasm

Directed and Edited by John Flynn Footage from 'Teenagers from Outerspace' directed by Tom Graeff Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures (Public Domain) A Skye Films Production Edited and Finished in Adobe Premiere CC 2018

Sargasm:

https://www.facebook.com/sarGasmMusic https://sargasmny.bandcamp.com/