Customer Reviews
ALPHA DVD VERSION 
2006-10-09
AS WE ALL KNOW, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE IS ONE OF THE ALL-TIME CLASSICS OF SO-BAD-IT'S-GOOD CINEMA, GARGON & ALL! DEREK & BETTY FIND TEEN LOVE AS THOR BLASTS THE FLESH OFF IDIOT EARTHLINGS WHO WOULD'VE PROBABLY BEEN BETTER SERVED AS GARGON FODDER. STUPID YET FASCINATING...INANE YET COMPELLING...AN ABSURD MASTERPIECE OF LOW-BROW SCHLOCK THAT TAKES PLACE ALL WITHIN A 12-HOUR TIME-FRAME OF ERRATIC DIALOGUE & IMPLAUSIBLE SITUATIONS. AN ABSOLUTE MUST FOR LOVERS OF THIS KIND OF CRAP (LIKE ME ).
THE ALPHA DVD TRANSFER IS CLEAR & CRISP & WORTHY OF PURCHASE IF YOU WANT A QUALITY VERSION AT A BUDGET PRICE...THIS IS THE VERSION IN MY COLLECTION & I FEEL NO NEED TO UP-GRADE. BUY IT....& ENJOY!!!!
Fear the Giant Lobsters! 
2006-06-24
David Love stars as Derek a Martian who winds up coming to Earth since he finds out that there is intelligent life on the planet. His fellow Martians are coming to Earth to raise the Gargon Herd which is a bunch of giant lobsters. Derek comes to town and winds up meeting Betty played by the lovely Dawn Bender (Island in the Sky, The Actress). She takes interest in Derek right away. Thor played by Bryan Grant comes to town looking for Derek and to bring him back so that they can unleash the Giant Lobsters. Derek has to make a sacrifice to try to stop the oncoming monsters and save Earth from what's about to happen. I would of given this a star but this was too much fun. Grant it's a horrible movie with bad acting, script etc.... but I just love it. The giant lobster was awesome. Also starring Harvey B. Dunn (My Fair Lady as Grandpa Morgan, King Moody (Nutt House, Sweet November) and the director Tom Graeff. He edited, produced, wrote and did all the things. Classic campy fun.
Filmmaking 101: Shooting on a non-existant budget 2006-04-22
Talk about the "Buck Rodgers" toy guns and the lobster on a string, that's all well and good. Certainly, Teenagers From Outer Space is no example of cinema par excellance, the kind they make you watch in film school. The tepid acting of lead David Love, who got the gig hanky-in-pocket as it were, seals that deal. And yet, maybe this *is* film school material after all. Director/Producer/Writer Tom Graeff actually got his movie made and sold it to a major studio. And spent nary a dime of his own money doing it! The dialogue was prerecorded to cut out the cost of editing in post-production. He got the interiors of the female lead's house for just a promise to the owner that it would appear in a Hollywood film! Why this cat didn't end up working for Roger Corman is a mystery. How many film students ever make a picture, let alone manage to sell it and get it screened from coast to coast? The fact that TFOS has a cult audience nearly 50 years later is a testament to the fact that there's something more at work here than an average B-flick. Had Graeff continued to create films, he might be considered in a class with Ed Wood today. Is that something to be proud of? Just maybe.
Kind of Fun 2006-01-26
This movie is a classic B-movie. The acting is almost bad, the monster special effects are awful, and yet there are some moments of charm.
Down from outer space come aliens. These 1959 aliens are far superior to humans and are prepared to use earth as a grazing ground for their gargon herds. We debated whether gargons were crawfish or lobsters when watching the movie. Several sources indicate it was a lobster. In either case, I feel sorry for the poor lobster, which looked like it was trying to escape from the movie each time it appeared.
Anyway, one of the aliens thinks there might be intelligent life on earth (was he ever mistaken), and counsels that perhaps they should not use earth as a gargon grazing ground. When the other try to restrain him, Derek (David Love) escapes, and eventually encounters teeny-bopper Betty Morgan (Dawn Bender aka Dawn Anderson), who immediately likes him. Alien ship mate Thor (Bryan Grant), is soon on the trail of Derek with the intent of bringing him back. The rest of the movie becomes one long chase scene between Thor and Derek, with Thor killing regularly, apparently because he finds killing to be expeditious, or fun, or both.
One of the things I found endlessly fascinating is that Betty was no wall flower. Derek and several others kept telling Betty to stay put, and she kept doing the exact opposite. I am sure that Betty became a leader in the women's liberation movement in the 60s. On the other hand, Betty generally kept her wits about her, even when she was running into harm's way.
Eventually we arrive at the end of the movie with the typical "surprise" ending of the movie, which had a bit of a nice moral to it. What was really surprising is that this movie is actually okay. The 50s were a great decade for made for drive-in movies, and this one clearly had that feel. I can almost imagine people just a bit younger than my parents necking while watching this movie as the second movie of a triple feature at a drive-in. The worst part of the movie is the lobster, followed by the hammy acting of Thor. Other than that, the movie had a nicely paced plot, with a couple of decent car chases, and the spaceship effects were interesting and, to my knowledge, unique.
Sure, this movie does not qualify for one of the greats of science fiction, but if you are looking for a fun watch from the 50s, you could do lot worse. Buy a couple more like this, fire up your high definition projector, and pretend like you are in a drive-in. Be sure to stay for the third feature; I heard it was pretty good.
I'll get you and your little dog too 
2005-11-27
Outer space teenager Derek (David Love) has a few characters flaws; he has a respect for other beings, he wants to know who his parentage is, and he reads forbidden books. Thor (Bryan Grant) has none of these hang-ups and a propensity to use earth creatures such as swimming beauty Alice Woodward (Sonia Torgeson) and little dogs for target practice. The rest of the crew are ambivalent and just want to test the earth as a possible place to grow giant man eating lobsters.
Looks like Derek escapes before they can tell him he is the son of (oh no, watch the movie and find out.) He takes a room in the house of the beautiful Betty Morgan (Dawn Bender, as Dawn Anderson) and her gullible and accepting Grandpa Morgan (Harvey B. Dunn). Grandpa is so dumb you keep wishing he was the first victim.
The film is well played out and the script sophisticated for the genera. The props were really cheep, including using the same skeleton for all the disintegrated victims. You can see where the plastic ray-gun was stamped together and the authorities used Luger Parabellums to shoot "metal pellets". The dialog deplorable and the lobster too recognizable.
It Came From Outer Space
Those Crazy Kids 2008-02-16
A group of aliens are scouting the universe in search of a planet where they can raise giant lobsters for their food supply. Unfortunately it's Earth they choose, but you do have to appreciate their taste in fine dining. One of the "Teenagers" called Derek(an alien name if I ever heard one) has a soft spot for inhabited planets and goes AWOL, leaving the other aliens to go back to their planet to pick up the load of giant lobsters(goes to show teenagers are rebellious regardless of where they're from). Derek befriends a hot chick named Betty and her grandfather and attempts to live a peaceful earth life. That's quickly shattered by one alien called Thor who stayed behind to find and capture Derek. Thor goes on a rampage trying to find Derek, killing everybody who gets in his way. The weapon of choice for these aliens is a nifty ray gun that lights up and reduces people to bones. Then it's a game of cat and mouse involving Thor, Derek, Betty, and of course Gramps. But wait, there's more! The original guinea pig lobster has now grown to monsterous size and is killing folks and making it's way towards the town. Derek is now caught in a pickle as he has to stop the monster and the forthcoming invasion, but now has feelings for Betty and is quite eager to learn the many wonderous delights of the human female. Will he succeed?
This is a better than average "bad" 50s sci-fi flick. It's got all the schlock fixins for the genre with a more interesting plot. Sure there isn't a single teenager in the film(they all look to be in their 20s), the bones of the victims look like the same skeleton from a school classroom simply laid out in various locations, and the giant lobster is a a shadowy image of a real lobster superimposed onto the film. But hey, these are the kind of things we love about these films, right? Horror fans will notice that most of the music on the soundtrack is the music that would be used throughout Night of the Living Dead years later, and it is hard to hear that music without thinking of that film. A fun little movie is you like this kinda stuff, and you damn well should if you're reading a review page of this movie.
Ludicrous, Horrendous, and Often Entertaining If You Go In For That Sort Of Thing 2007-07-11
While most bad films are simply bad and that is all, now and then you encounter one SO bad that it becomes amusing. TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE is all of that and then some, so ludicrously, incredibly bad that it more or less ended the careers of every one associated with it.
An all-male, teenage crew of aliens land on earth to see if they can grow their cattle, a creature they call "gargons," on it. When good-boy alien Derek (David Love) realizes the planet is inhabited, he takes off to warn the earthlings, with bad-boy alien Thor (Bryan Grant) in hot pursuit. Both meet a lot really bad actors, including Dawn Anderson and Harvey B. Dunn, and Thor reduces several of them to skeletons clearly borrowed from a high school science lab for cinematic purposes. In the mean time, the test-case gargon grows and grows to man-eating size, and we are startled to realize that it is actually a really big lobster--or, more accurately speaking, the really big shadow of a regular sized lobster used in the hope that viewers will be terrorized.
Ah, no, not really. There are lots of horrendous things going on here, and some of them may actually make you close your eyes, but if you do it will be more out of embarassment for the players than out of fear. Yes, it really is that bad, and it is dosed up with some truly uninspired Cold War allegory for good measure. The whole thing is impossibly dire, and you are in the right frame of mind it can actually be extremely entertaining in a sort of sado-maschochistic kinda way. Drug use would probably also help.
The film quality is very ify. The contrast is atrocious and the first few scenes are riddled with artifacts, and while both issues get a bit better as the movie progresses they are never really resolved. And let's be honest: this isn't a quality product, so it probably never looked all that great even in its first run. Recommended, but only if you have a taste for the worst of the worst in late 1950s B movies; all others will likely find it so cringe worthy that they can't get past the first few minutes.
GFT, Amazon Reviewers
low budget, poor acting, so bad it's good! 2007-04-18
Actually, this movie is not as bad as I remembered it. But there are a lot of issues.
To start with,I guess you would have had to have lived through the fifties to understand the significance of the title. At that time, the word "teenager" was actually synonymous with "juvenile Delinquent" or the modern term "gangster". Normal people of that age were "youths", "young adults" or some other neutral term. "Teenagers" were hormone-driven bundles of rage and rebellion. To imagine such recklessly destructive persons equipped with alien weapons capable of mass destruction was to trigger every parents darkest nightmare.
The story line is pretty thoughtful. We have an alien civilization which is what might have happened if Hitler or Stalin had taken over the world. Children are raised in farms and never know their parents, except for those of high party members, who are not told until maturity.
The main food source for this civilisation is the gargon, a crustacean-like creature which eats anything or anyone that it can catch and being quite huge, it can catch just about anything.
In the opening a scout ship from this civilition lands near an American town. It is crewed by one adult and two teenaged helpers. Their mission is to place a specimen of gargon on Earth to see if it will prosper there. One of the teenagers detects signs of human life and argues against planting the voracious gargons here. He is apparently a member of an underground working against the oppressive government. The other teenager can best be described as a Hitler Youth with ambitions of becoming an SS thug. The good teen is threatened with arrest and runs away. The adult leader then reveals that he is really the son of the Party Leader and must be brought home safely. A small gargon is left in an abandoned mine and the vicious teen is left behind to hunt down and arrest the escapee. The next act of the movie sees the good teen becoming more and more fond of Earth's way of life, while the vicious teen hunts for him, leaving a trail of bodies reduced to skeletons by his ray gun. The vicious teen is eventually captured and his ray gun damaged.
Meanwhile, the gargon has grown huge and broken loose from the mine. It is now roaming the countryside, killing everything and everybody in sight. The good teen struggles to repair the ray gun and finally, using power from a high voltage line, uses it to destroy the gargon.
The scout ship returns bringing the Party Leader intent on recovering his son, and leading a fleet of ships carrying large packs of gargons to be released on Earth.
The good teen seizes control of the scout ship's radio and causes the whole fleet to crash on him, killing the evil teen, the Party Leader, all of the gargons, and himself. By his sacrifice, he saves the Earth and opens the way for revolution on his homeworld.
I think that the reason that this movie hangs on as a cult favorite is that it really is a good basic story. With a good script and and a more experienced director, as well as a good budget for special effects, this could have been a classic. the cast and crew did the best they could with the resources available to them, but those resources were limited and it shows in the finished product. The main complaint, as it is with so many of these low budget movies is wooden acting. A good script writer would have given them the language to express the concepts they were clearly trying to explore, and a good director would have guided them in better ways to perform the lines. Budget enters in too, since they clearly could not afford the film needed to repeat unsuccessful takes.
Bad marks for special effects. The ray gun is clearly a flashlight with a fancy pistol grip and a few useless decorations. But the worst effect is the gargon. It is clearly the shadow of a half dead lobster superimposed over the screen. In the hands of a good stop action animator it would have been a prize-winning effect, but that would have cost more than three times the whole budget for the movie. Such animation is expensive and time consuming.
we really should give good marks for costume. The Alien uniforms really look authentic down to the white footgear.
This movie was originally released on the same bill as "Gigantis, The Fire Monster", Which has recently been released in its original Japanese title as "Godzilla Raids Again". For an evening of fun watching, buy them together.
"Teenagers From Outer Space" is priced low enough to be worth the effort.
Everyone Needs To Start Somewhere 2007-01-10
Teenagers from Outer Space is a classic B-movie. New actors need somewhere to start! Movies like this are fun, exciting - and a bit humorous. Remember, Peter Graves (Mission Impossible) started his career in classic B-sci-fi movies!
Thomas
A Pulp Sci-Fi Classic! 2006-10-14
This film frightened me as a kid, when I first saw it on television, and the images stayed with me for a lifetime. There is a metaphor for pure evil in this film, although I find it hard to describe.
The "bad alien" did not have to blast his ray gun at the woman in the swimming pool as she tried to get help. Skeletons don't swim, or float. They quietly sink to the bottom. Brrrrrrrrr!!!!!!
