Teenagers from Outer Space
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Tom Graeff
David Love
Dawn Anderson
Bryan Grant
Harvey B. Dunn
Tom Lockyear
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Extraterrestrial teenagers Derek, Thor, Moro, Saul and their captain land on Earth in a deserted desert to test whether the grazing land will sustain their main food source called gargons, lobster-like creatures which can grow into large vicious beasts. After the extraterrestrials find a dog, the insensitive Thor immediately kills it with his ray gun, which disintegrates the animal's flesh while leaving the skeleton intact. When Derek finds the dog's tags, he reprimands the others for their cruelty. Through reading books forbidden on his planet, Derek has learned that his people were once caring families, not robot-like creatures raised in cubicles as they are now. When Derek, feeling empathy for the earthlings, orders the captain and the others to leave the planet and find an uninhabited place for the gargons, the captain grabs Derek's weapon and tells him that he has been brainwashed by the books. However, when the gargon that they have brought on their journey grows weak, the captain decides to search for a more suitable planet. After the captain declares that they will return to their planet first so that Derek can be tried for treason, Derek flees. In Derek's absence, the captain informs the others that Derek is unaware that he is the son of their leader and therefore will be pardoned for his crime. When the gargon suddenly recovers and grows exponentially, the extraterrestrials secure the creature in a nearby cave, with plans to return later to monitor its growth rate. They then blast off for home, leaving Thor behind to find Derek. Meanwhile, Derek runs to a nearby town and shows a gas station attendant the dog tag, which has an address on it. The attendant points him in the direction of a house, where Betty Morgan and her easygoing grandpa offer him the room they have for rent and lend him clothes to change out of his strange uniform. Meanwhile, Thor gets a ride into town from a stranger, who stops at the same station. When the attendant recognizes Thor's uniform as similar to Derek's, Thor badgers him for Derek's location, then kills the attendant and driver. Meanwhile at the Morgan house, Betty's erstwhile boyfriend and local reporter Joe Rogers cancels their date to go swimming at their friend Alice's, explaining that he is covering a UFO story. Betty instead invites Derek to Alice's, where Derek shows Betty the dog tag and explains that he knew the men who killed her pet. Betty then asks to be taken to the dog's remains. Meanwhile, Thor arrives at the Morgan house where Grandpa, believing he is Derek's friend, directs him to Alice's. Thor then kills Alice with his ray gun, disintegrating her flesh and leaving her bones in the pool. Meanwhile, when Derek tries to explain the advanced weaponry that disintegrates flesh, Betty, unable to comprehend, suggests they visit college professor Simpson. Smitten with the earthling, Derek worries that when Betty discovers that he is an extraterrestrial she will feel differently about him, but Betty reassures him that she trusts him. When they return to the Morgan house, Betty writes the sleeping Grandpa a note before leaving for Simpson's office. Soon after, Thor returns to the house, where Grandpa, still unaware of Thor's violent behavior, explains that Betty and Derek went to the college. Thor reaches Simpson first and kills him. When Derek and Betty discover his skeleton, they realize that Grandpa told Thor where they were going. Fearing Thor will kill Grandpa, Betty calls and asks him to meet them at the city hall. As Grandpa is about to leave, Thor arrives at the house and forces Grandpa to drive to city hall, where he kills several officers with his ray gun. Wounded in the crossfire, Thor hides in Betty's car, forcing Derek and Betty at gunpoint to drive him to Dr. Brandt's office to remove the bullets. During the operation, Thor reveals that their people are returning with more gargons and then, to Derek's surprise, states that Derek is their leader's son. Thor then loses consciousness, thus allowing Derek, Betty and Dr. Brandt to escape. Soon after, the doctor's nurse, Miss Morse, arrives at the office and, unaware of the situation, gives the unconscious Thor an injection to revive him. When Thor awakens, he forces Miss Morse to take him to the cave. Meanwhile, Joe takes Officer Mack to the dog's remains, and when the policeman enters the cave, he is killed by the growing gargon. Upon reaching the cave, Miss Morse refuses to drive Thor close enough to kill Joe, prompting the alien to knock her unconscious and commandeer her car. As Thor pursues Joe in the nurse's car, Miss Morse revives and jumps from the car just as Thor loses consciousness from his wounds and crashes over a cliff. After capturing Thor, the officers find the cave empty and begin a ground search for the creature. While looking for Thor's missing ray gun at the crash site, Betty and Derek accidentally fall into each other's arms and Derek explains that he is not from this planet. Saddened that his people are genetically engineered like livestock, Derek vows to make Earth his home and kisses Betty. Suddenly, the gigantic gargon rears up from behind a hill to destroy them just as Derek finds the damaged ray gun and flees with Betty. After determining that the gun needs to be charged by an alternate energy source, Derek and Betty find the monster, connect the gun to nearby power lines and kill the beast. Leaving Betty behind, Derek drives to the Morgan house, where he finds Joe. After changing into his uniform, Derek holds Joe at gunpoint and demands to be taken to Thor. Using the ray gun, Derek frees Thor and states that alien ships have spotted nearby and he wants to return home with them. Despite Derek's change in behavior, Betty believes he will keep his promise to make Earth his home and goes with Grandpa to the cave, where hundreds of spaceships hover over the Earth. Derek's father is the first to land and quickly forgives his son for abandoning the mission. Derek then promises to return to their planet to prevent other mistakes and offers to guide the other ships in for landing. Believing that if their leader is eliminated, the remaining people on his planet might start a revolution, Derek takes action. Entering his father's ship alone, Derek misdirects the remaining fleet, causing them to crash to the ground, destroying all the ships, his father and himself and consequently keeping his promise to Betty: to make Earth his home.
Director
Tom Graeff
Cast
David Love
Dawn Anderson
Bryan Grant
Harvey B. Dunn
Tom Lockyear
Robert King Moody
Helen Sage
Frederic Welch
Carl Dickensen
Sonia Torgeson
Billy Bridges
James Conklin
Gene Sterling
Ralph Lowe
Bill Deland
Ursula Hansen
Bob Williams
Don Deculie
Don Chambers
Jim Macgeorge
Kent Rogers
Sol Resnick
Robert Regas
Horst Ehrhardt
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Teen Terror Collection - TEENAGE DOLL, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE & TEENAGE MONSTER - A Raging Hormones Triple Feature on DVD
Directing sensation Roger Corman hit his stride in 1957, pumping out a half-dozen separate features for the drive-in crowd. This 'teenage problem' movie adheres closely to the Production Code while talking a tough line of hood-speak. It features a full cast of name talent from the then-topical Juvenile Delinquent sub-genre.
Synopsis: After a gang fight, Barbara Bonney (June Kenney) is convinced she pushed Tarantula gang member Nan Baker to her death from a rooftop. While the Tarantulas consider her fate, Barbara runs to her con-man boyfriend Eddie Rand (John Brinkley), the leader of the rival Vandals gang. Various gang members have alcoholics, adulterers or repressive fools for parents. Younger sisters and brothers are neglected in sordid home situations. With a gang fight expected, Barbara has to decide whether to run away with Eddie or turn herself into the cops.
Teenage Doll does its best to talk tough. Corman regular Chuck Griffith's script sags under the weight of painfully neutered euphemisms like, "I don't give a flying flip," and "I was weaned on a .38!" The atmosphere is low-budget Corman all the way. Except for a junkyard and a few street scenes most of the settings are improvised on bare sound stages or poorly dressed soundstage exteriors. Floyd Crosby's lighting is professional but flat and Corman's direction rushed. A tame, brief gang fight is hyped with huge "punch" sound effects. Although provocative words like "naked" are frequent, the strongest visual is a close-up of a bra strap being hooked.
Corman may have recruited some of the cast from his acting class. Genre fans will feel right at home with familiar Corman faces Barboura Morris and Richard Devon, and June Kenny, Fay Spain, and Ed Nelson. Many of the performances, though, are downright embarrassing. The teens talk like 14 year-olds but look to be pushing 25. Each is afforded a fat 'audition' speech to strut their stuff, making the dramatic structure resemble a string of amateur improvs. Although Ziva Rodann does a nice job as a gang-ette named 'squirrel,' one young hood menacing Barbara ruins several scenes with his overacting. June Kenney looks distraught but keeps a perfect wave in her hair throughout, while Fay Spain barks out unconvincing threats and orders like a bad imitation of 'Anybody's' in West Side Story.
The rushed, cheap picture lasts only 68 minutes; some of Corman's science fiction and horror pix of the period are lavish by comparison. An Allied Artists release from the Woolner brothers, Teenage Doll is recommended for Corman fans and hardcore devotees of the teen-pix subgenre.
Image Entertainment's DVD of Teenage Doll looks clean and snappy. The crisp photography is handsome but the transfer may be slightly cropped at the sides. The accompanying trailer ("Hellcats in tight pants!") is almost identically framed.
This impoverished production was actually a winner in the 1950s independent sweepstakes. Warner Bros. reinvented Toho's Godzilla Raids Again as Gigantis: The Fire Monster and needed a co-feature to send out on a quickie double bill. A look at what was available turned up Tom Graeff's affable turnip of a space invasion picture, a homemade but rather handsomely shot poverty picture with a clear plotline and characters a seven-year old could understand. In fact, the movie played best to monster-crazy seven year-olds.
Synopsis: A flying saucer lands outside Los Angeles, disgorging four young aliens in search of a planet suitable as grazing turf for millions of giant Gargon monsters. Sensitive Derek (David Love) objects when he finds signs of intelligent life, and runs away. The commander dispatches the hateful Thor (Bryan Grant) to bring Derek back. Not realizing he's being followed, Derek meets cute Betty Morgan (Dawn Anderson) and her pleasant grandfather (Harvey B. Dunn). In his pursuit Thor 'skeletonizes' several unlucky people with his disintegrator ray. Government security agents and Betty's journalist boyfriend Joe Rogers (Tom Lockyear, actually director Graeff) track down Thor, while Derek takes steps to see that his alien comrades menace the Earth no more!
With a title like Teenagers from Outer Space nobody expects anything watchable, let alone good. By 1959 the 'teenage' craze was fading and the majors were driving cheapie productions off the market by releasing fantastic films in color (The Blob, The Fly, The 4-D Man). Tom Graeff's little one-man show is more coherent than many broken-down efforts from the same year, like Attack of the Giant Leeches and The Brain Eaters. It looks every bit as professional as television productions of the time, and plays out at the measured pace of a TV show like Father Knows Best.
The painfully literal script gives all the players expository speeches that pigeonhole them into neat character slots. The sweet girl-next-door adopts Derek practically as a replacement for her lost puppy. Grandpa fills every conversational gap with mellow happy-speak. Joe the reporter wears a hat suitable for 1930 and affects a gee-whiz manner to match. The soul-sick Derek, a disillusioned defector from a brutal interplanetary civilization, waxes philosophical about his particular cosmic predicament. He's a stranger in a strange world and adopts Earth as his new home. Everyone's speech patterns have a measured cadence; Graeff once offered the information that, because he could not afford live audio recording, he carefully timed out and then pre-recorded all of the film's speeches. The tapes were played back on the set and the actors did their best to match their lips to them, a method tried and abandoned by Orson Welles at RKO in 1940. Whether or not the dialogue had to be re-looped, the pitch of the performances was established before the chaos of filming, reducing director Graeff's workload on the set. The filming style must have been the exact opposite of improvisation.
Production-wise, Teenagers from Outer Space is staged at the level of a high-school play. The aliens wear cheap jump suits, use Air Force surplus jet helmets and tote ordinary footlockers to carry their gear. One Gargon monitoring device bears the markings of an audio mixer. Thor's disintegrator gun looks like an antiquated dime store Flash Gordon toy, and the ray gun firing effect is simply a mirror reflecting sunlight. Graeff's clever cutting sells the idea of victims instantly converted to skeletons, as noted in the promotional hype about a "Ray Gun Rampage" and the sight of "Flesh Blasted from Bones." The skeletonized victims come complete with sawed skulls, metal brackets and wire rib holders, indicating that the "prop" had to be returned to the school science lab after filming.
The sight of the corkscrew-shaped flying saucer worming its way into the ground is cleverly done, but by the last reel the special effects go way downhill. The cast points upward and tells us that hundreds of Gargon transport ships are converging in the sky, but Graeff neglects to show any of them. The worst visual is the Gargon itself. Seen when small as an ordinary, unhappy-looking lobster, the giant Gargon is a crudely matted silhouette that may be the least convincing effect of the 1950s.
Tom Graeff's film works because its heart is in the right place. Derek is peace loving and gentle, Thor is a nasty baddie, and poor Betty loses both her dog and its romantic replacement from the stars. The primitive theatrics are actually quite touching -- the show finds its own humble level of dramatic integrity.
Image's DVD of Teenagers from Outer Space looks fine, and may come from Tom Graeff's original elements. His photography is consistent and clear. Hollywood residents will notice many locations. A high angle shot of the town is the entrance to the Beachwood drive enclave, and we get a good look at the side of the Cole Street fire station as well as an entrance to Hollywood High. The marble steps seen in the big G-Man battle (with scratched film representing the guns firing) may be the Wilcox Post Office, and a winding hillside road may be the one leading to the Hollywood reservoir dam.
Jacques Marquette must have made Teenage Monster with money left over from The Brain from Planet Arous, a much more enjoyable film. Originally titled Meteor Monster and shown under that title on television, this is one of the dullest of the late 50s drive-in quickies.
Synopsis: A meteor kills miner Jim Cannon (Jim McCullough) and scars his young boy Charles (Stephen Parker). Fifteen years later, Charles (Gilbert Perkins) has grown into a king-sized freak with a scarred face, ugly teeth and fur that covers his entire body. He's also a murderous half-wit. Charles' mother Ruth (Anne Gwynne) has kept him hidden all these years, but the mysterious killings escalate when they strike gold, and Ruth starts seeing more of Sheriff Bob Lehman (Stuart Wade). Charles abducts waitress Kathy North (Gloria Castillo) and Ruth attempts to bribe her into silence. Instead, the conniving Kathy uses Charles to murder Marv Howell (Charles Courtney), a faithless lover. A posse closes in on the Cannon's new house, eager to kill the now-legendary monster.
Critics and reviewers can't be blamed for calling Teenage Monster sordid, as 1957 was way too early for a genre picture that featured mental retardation with an unsavory sexual angle. Gil Perkins' stammering, whining furry killer doesn't evoke enough interest to be either pitiful or unintentionally funny.
The Freudian setup quickly becomes a bad joke as furry Charlie kills people left and right, only to be really sorry when his mother berates him. Then he goes out and kills some more, demonstrating that neither of them has learned their lesson. Put Ann Blyth and Joan Crawford in the Charlie and Ruth roles and this might have been the logical horror successor to Mildred Pierce -- What's a mother to do? Charles goes off the deep end as soon as he sees Mom getting cozy with her new boyfriend, the Sheriff. Charles immediately tries to kiss and cuddle with Kathy North, his kidnap victim, but the film is too incompetent to tell us who he really wants to sleep with.
The film is so primitive that none of the ugly subtext seems to matter. The same four interior sets carry the entire film, and exterior scenes frequently jump from day to night. Marquette's action direction is terrible. The people on horseback ride as if they had their first lesson half an hour before. Plodding from event to event, the film barely holds our attention.
Impossible characters defeat the actors, even favorite Gloria Castillo (Ruby in The Night of the Hunter). Castillo does her best to act like an evil woman (yes, yet another film that puts the Blame on Mame) but her big sad eyes give her away. Although the makeup man is the legendary Jack Pierce, Gil Perkins' proto-Wookie has no menace, looking more like a victim of The Curse of the Tribbles.
The movie and especially its conclusion appear to have been filmed at Stony Point, a rocky outcropping at the beginning of the Santa Susana pass between the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley. Back in 1957 it had several impressive views; now it is hemmed in on all four sides by developments and freeways.
Teenage Monster is sourced from a better-than-average theatrical print with few scratches and only a couple of minor splice breaks. A trailer is included that cannot make the show look like anything but what it is...a real snooze.
Image's Teen Terror Collection isn't the best of Wade Williams' crop of 1950s oddities, as the third feature Teenage Monster will send any cult film freak back to the mainstream. All three are in better shape than many of Williams' offerings. The fat keep case holds three discs and is decorated with a collage of graphics from the original posters.
For more information about Teen Terror Collection, visit Image Entertainment. To order Teen Terror Collection, go to TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
Teen Terror Collection - TEENAGE DOLL, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE & TEENAGE MONSTER - A Raging Hormones Triple Feature on DVD
Quotes
When we return to our planet, the high court may well sentence you to *torture* and death for your treason.- Captain
We are the supreme race. We have the supreme weapons.- Captain
I am not going to keep a job where this sort of thing goes on.- Secretary
Trivia
The film's producers could not afford to construct a giant lobster, so only its shadow is seen - cast, no doubt, by a normal-sized lobster.
Notes
Tom Graeff's onscreen credit reads: "Written, Produced and Directed by Tom Graeff." In addition, the Los Angeles Times review credits Graeff with editing, camera work and acting in the film, while the Daily Variety reviews states that he supervised all sound and music and created some special effects. Although Graeff is not credited under his own name in the cast, the text of the Variety review indicates that he portrayed "Joe Rogers," which the Variety review credits to Tom Lockyear. The print viewed was, apparently, a British release print, as it bore the statement "presented by Topaz Film Corp." Topaz was a British releasing company.
In a scene set in an observatory preceding the opening credits, one astronomer reports to another that he has spotted a screw-shaped unidentified craft in the sky, but quickly dismisses it as an illusion. During the film, after David Love as "Derek" kills the gargon, voice-overs by various characters can be heard reminding him of pivotal incidents since he began his adventure on Earth. At the close of the film, after Derek causes the destruction of the invading aliens and himself, his voice can be heard making his vow to "Betty Morgan" that "I shall make the earth my home and I shall never never leave."
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