Tags

After viewing TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, I have a new favorite “bad” science fiction movie. It still doesn’t rival PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE as the worst film, but it’s a very close second.

The plot, such as it is, is that the aliens are looking for a planet to serve as the farm for their livestock, lobster-like “cattle” that grow to enormous proportions overnight when fed. They are the master race and care not about any inferior beings. They land on Earth and start to disperse. With names like Thor and Derek, hardly alien names, they seem more at home on Earth.

Our hero, Derek, has been reading one of the forbidden books. They describe a life much different from what he knows. Families… and LOVE!. The inhabitants are taken from their parents and raised by the state.

Now all the things wrong with this piece of cinema.

To start with, the title makes no sense. The youngest one of the aliens, our hero Derek, looks to be about thirty, late twenties at the best. The spaceship is much to small to hold the half dozen who climb out of a small round hole, below a hinged port that raises. No ladders, they walk across the hull and jump to the ground. They have a weapon that fires a focusing disintegrating beam. It strips a human, or animal, down the bone instantly. Thor seems particularly disdainful of humans and uses the weapon quite liberally.

Their “cattle,” the Gargons are never seen, just shadows in the climactic battle scene. The “ray” gun is a miracle of superior science, leaving not a drop of blood, a chunk of meat, instantly leaving a skeleton falling to the ground.

Acting is totally absent from this production. Everyone speaks in a monotone, with an occasional loud voice to enliven the scene.

The plot has Derek rebelling and fleeing, the commander sending Thor to recapture him- alive!. He’s learned that our hero is the son of the planet’s leader. The ship is leaving while Thor hunts him down to guide in the “cattle” ships.

The gun battle in front of the police station, between the cops and Thor, is quite funny. He blasts a couple of the cops who perforate him and he then manages to hide in a car parked right out front while the rest go charging off to look for him.

This thing was written, produced, and directed by someone named Tom Graeff, rivaled only by the immortal Ed Wood for futility. The movie has appeared on Mystery Science Theater and, recently, Elvira’s Movie Macabre.