Review: Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)

In the drive-ins and neighborhood theaters of the 1950s, Earth was invaded over and over again by aliens, most of them hostile, ugly and intent on either destroying or subjugating our teeming masses. Some of them were globs of flesh-consuming goo; others were little guys with lightbulb-shaped heads who shot their victims up with alcohol from needles in their hands; still others were ambulatory eyeballs. (The 1950s were kind of messed up, folks.)

In Teenagers from Outer Space, released at the ass end of the decade (the same year, in fact, as Plan 9 from Outer Space--wow, 1959 was a vintage year for bad movies), aliens--none of whom look remotely like teenagers--land outside a desert town, intent on using our fair planet as a breeding ground for their livestock, which they call Gargons. What, you may reasonably ask, are Gargons? As presented in this film, they're back-projected, silhouetted lobsters. That roar.

No, I'm not making that up. I wish I were.

One of the alien "teenagers" ("David Love"--actually Tom Graeff, the director/writer of this crap) is a sensitive type who doesn't think the natives of Earth--hey, that's us!--deserve to be fed to giant back-projected silhouetted lobsters that roar, so he makes a run for it and winds up meeting a really cute girl (Dawn Anderson). And, of course, they fall in love in milliseconds.

But things aren't so simple. (Are they ever?) The good alien and the really cute girl spend the rest of the movie on the run from the bad alien "teenagers," who carry ray guns that turn living creatures into instant skeletons (not very nice). Then things get even worse: One of the Gargons starts to grow out on control and rampages across the countryside, tearing up shit and roaring as only lobsters can.

Teenagers from Outer Space has just about everything you'd expect from an ultra-low budget sci-fi flick from the '50s: lousy acting, spaceships that look like they were built by enterprising 12-year-olds and extremely cheap special effects. It's all laughably bad.

And did I mention the roaring lobsters?

The best that can be said for this movie is that much of the musical score turned up years later in a much better movie: George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. At least something good came out of this mess. It's not much, but it's something.