Teenagers from Outer Space

Teenagers from Outer Space (a.k.a. The Gargon Terror (UK title), The Boy from Outer Space, and originally titled The Ray Gun Terror) is a 1959 American independent black-and-white science fiction cult film released by Warner Bros. The film was produced, written, and directed by Tom Graeff and stars David Love, Dawn Bender, Bryan Grant, Harvey B. Dunn, Tom Graeff, and King Moody. Teenagers from Outer Space was distributed theatrically by Warner Brothers on a double feature with Gigantis the Fire Monster, the English-dubbed version of the 1955 Japanese giant monster film Godzilla Raids Again.

This article is about the film. For the comedic role-playing game, see Teenagers from Outer Space (role-playing game).
Teenagers from Outer Space
Directed byTom Graeff
Produced byTom Graeff
Screenplay byTom Graeff
StarringDavid Love
Dawn Bender
Bryan Grant
Harvey B. Dunn
Tom Graeff
King Moody
Music byTom Graeff
CinematographyTom Graeff
Edited byTom Graeff
Production
company
Tom Graeff Productions
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date
  • June 1959 (1959-06)
Running time
85 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$20,000[1]

In the film, a young alien named Derek abandons his crew to search for a new life on Earth, while one of his crewmates is sent to find him while they attempt to eradicate human life in order to farm Earth with giant lobster-like livestock they call Gargons.

Plot

A flying saucer arrives on Earth while searching for planets suitable to raise "Gargons", a lobster-like but air-breathing monster that is a delicacy on their home planet. Thor (Bryan Grant) shows his alien contempt for Earth's creatures by vaporizing a dog named Sparky. Crew member Derek (David Love), after discovering an inscription on Sparky's dog tag, fears that the Gargons might destroy Earth's native inhabitants. This makes the other aliens scoff at the thought. Being members of the "supreme race", they disdain "foreign beings", no matter how intelligent; they pride themselves that "families" and "friendships" are forbidden on their world. Derek turns out to be a member of an underground rebellion that commemorates the more humane periods of their world's history.

The Gargon they brought with them suddenly falls sick to Earth's atmosphere. While his crew members are distracted, Derek escapes on foot. Eventually, the Gargon revives from being unconscious. When the Captain gives his report, Derek is quickly connected to the Leader of their race (Gene Sterling); revealing to be his son, although Derek is unaware of this. Thor is sent to hunt down Derek, with orders to bring him back alive or kill him and any other intelligent beings to protect their mission to Earth. The rest of the crew returned to their homeworld, leaving the Gargon behind in a near by cave.

Meanwhile, Derek finds the home address he found on the dog's tag. There he meets Betty Morgan (Dawn Anderson) and her Grandpa Joe (Harvey B. Dunn). They have a room to rent, and Derek inadvertently becomes a boarder. When Betty's friend, reporter Joe Rogers (Tom Graeff), cannot make it to their afternoon swim at Alice Woodward's place (Sonia Torgeson), Derek tags along with Betty. He shows the tag to Betty, who recognizes it immediately. Derek takes her to the place where the spacecraft landed and shows her Sparky's remains. She does not believe him, so he describes Thor's weapon that can also vaporize humans. Betty takes this surprisingly well and vows to help Derek stop his crewmate.

For the rest of the day, Betty and Derek have several run-ins with Thor, and Joe follows up on stories of skeletons popping up all over town. Eventually, Thor is wounded, and he kidnaps both Derek and Betty to help him receive medical attention, in the process revealing Derek's true parentage to them. Two car chases and a gunfight follow, and Thor is finally captured by Earth authorities after plummeting off a cliff in a stolen car.

Shortly after, the Gargon grows immensely large, after killing and devouring a policeman investigating the alien's landing site, and attacking numerous people. Derek and Betty go to the car wreck site to look for Thor's raygun. They share a kiss, and Derek vows to stay on Earth. The Gargon suddenly appears and ruins their romantic moment, but Derek finds the disintegrator ray under a rock just in time for them to escape. Unfortunately, it is damaged and out of power. The giant Gargon begins heading towards the town. They follow and confront it, having used the electricity from the overhead power lines to fuel the raygun's components. Derek eventually kills the monster, but it is too late. The invading fleet appears in Earth's orbit.

Derek retrieves Thor from the police and the whole gang, including Joe and Grandpa, hurry to the landing site. He then reunites with the Captain and meets his father for the first time. Derek pretends to feel regret for his insubordination and offers to help guide the spaceships to land. Derek then goes into the spacecraft alone, making the ultimate sacrifice. Leading the invasion fleet at full speed directly towards his ground location, causing a massive explosion, killing his father, the Captain and Thor in the process. Derek does not survive the blast but is remembered by Betty for declaring, "I shall make the Earth my home. And I shall never, never leave it."

Cast
  • David Love as Derek
  • Dawn Bender as Betty Morgan
  • Bryan Grant as Thor
  • Harvey B. Dunn as Gramps Morgan
  • Tom Graeff (billed as Tom Lockyear) as Joe Rogers
  • King Moody as Spacecraft Captain
  • Ralph Lowe as Morro, Spaceship Crew
  • Bill DeLand as Sol, Spaceship Crew
  • Billy Bridges as Motorist picking up Thor
  • Sonia Torgeson as Alice Woodward
  • Jim MacGregor as Detective Mac
  • Frederick Welch as Dr. C.R. Brandt, MD
  • Helen Sage as Nurse Morse
  • Gene Sterling as The Alien Leader
  • Sol Resnick as the Junior Astronomer
  • Don Chambers as the Senior Astronomer
  • Carl Dickensen as Gas Station Attendant
  • Ursula Hansen as Hilda, Simpson's Secretary
  • James Conklin as Professor Simpson

Production

Teenagers from Outer Space was filmed on location in and around Hollywood, California, with a number of tell-tale landmarks like Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park and Hollywood High School, which gives away the film's otherwise sketchy location. One notable aspect of the film is that it was largely the work of a single person, Tom Graeff, who, in addition to playing the role of reporter Joe Rogers, wrote, directed, edited, and produced the film, on which he also provided cinematography, special effects, and music coordination.[2] Producers Bryan and Ursula Pearson ("Thor" and "Hilda") and Gene Sterling ("The Leader") provided the film's $14,000 budget, which was less than shoestring even by the standards of the day.

Cost-effective measures

According to Bryan Pearson, the crew employed many guerrilla tactics in order to cut costs. Director Tom Graeff secured for free the location used for Betty Morgan's house by posing as a UCLA student (which he had attended and graduated from 5 years earlier). The older woman who owned the house even let the crew use her electricity to power their equipment.[3]

Graeff shot in many nearby locations, mostly in the vicinity of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue, that doubled as more important city landmarks. Graeff's steady hand and framing kept most of the real locations subdued, creating a convincing low-budget illusion of a small town.

Other cost-cutting measures didn't work as well: The aliens' costumes were simple flight suits clearly decorated with masking tape, dress shoes covered in socks, and surplus Air Force flight helmets. The use of stock footage, in lieu of real special effects and pre-Spielbergian "looking" shots that replaced actual visuals of the invading alien spaceships, seriously undercut the film's ending. Props included a single-bolted-joint skeleton re-used for every dead body seen on screen, a multi-channel sound mixer that was not camouflaged (clearly bearing the label "Multichannel Mixer MCM-2") as a piece of alien equipment, and a dime store Hubley's "Atomic Disintegrator" toy as the aliens' disintegrator ray gun.

Sound design and score

Graeff also pre-recorded some of the film's dialog for several scenes and had the actors lip-synchronize their dialog with their scene actions. The film score used stock music, which had been composed by William Loose and Fred Steiner. The same stock music has been recycled in countless B-movies, like Red Zone Cuba, The Killer Shrews, and most notably Night of the Living Dead.

Release and legacy

In June 1958 Bryan Pearson, who invested $5,000 in the production with his wife Ursula, took Graeff to court in order to gain back the original investment and a percentage of any profits. The Pearsons had learned that Graeff had allegedly sold the film (originally titled The Boy From Out of This World),[4] which did not happen until early 1959. He heard nothing more on their investment or a percentage of profits to which they were entitled. The legal dispute dragged on for a year. Pearson received his $5000 investment, but the judge ruled there was no profit to share. Tom and the Pearsons, who had been good friends during the production of Teenagers, never spoke to each other again.[5]

The film failed to perform at the box office, placing further stress on an already-burdened Graeff, and in the fall of 1959, he suffered a breakdown, proclaiming himself as the second coming of Christ.[6] After a number of public appearances, followed by a subsequent arrest for disrupting a church service, Graeff disappeared from Hollywood until 1964. He committed suicide in 1970.

The film went on to become a cult classic among sci-fi fans and was later shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Elvira's Movie Macabre, and Off Beat Cinema. It was also included in the video game Destroy All Humans! It becomes unlocked and ready to play in full once the player beats the game.[7]

Critical reception

The film opened on June 3, 1959 to negative but not crippling reviews. The Los Angeles Times review stated "what a curious little film this is [...] there are flashes of astonishing sensitivity half buried in the mass of tritisms." And of the director, Tom Graeff, "when he stops spreading himself so incredibly thin, I think his work will bear watching".[8]

Public domain

In 1987, the film entered the public domain in the United States and worldwide because Warner Bros. did not renew the film's copyright registration in the 28th year after its creation.[9] As a result, the film has received numerous "bargain bin" DVD releases. MST3K's version was released by Rhino Home Video as part of their "Collection, Volume 6" box set.

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gollark: Actually, MB is 1000000 bytes.
gollark: 8 * 16 = 128, and 2.88 * 16 = 46.08.
gollark: My 8-minute tape is 2.88MB, it seems.
gollark: I don't know.

See also

References
  1. "Tom Graeff - Teenagers from Outer Space". Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  2. Rom. (June 3, 1959). "Film Reviews: Teenagers from Outer Space". Variety. p. 6. Retrieved June 16, 2019 – via Archive.org.
  3. Jessie Lilley and Richard Valley (Summer 1993). "Teenagers from Outer Space". Scarlet Street. pp. 82–87.
  4. p.72 Ryfle, Steve Japan's Favorite Mon-star: The Unauthorized Biography of "The Big G" ECW Press, 1998
  5. Los Angeles County Superior Court Records, Case No. 702 320, July 3, 1959
  6. "Read Before Printing". Time. January 11, 1960. Retrieved 2007-01-28.
  7. "tomgraeff.org | teenagers from outer space : pop culture". tomgraeff.org. Retrieved 2017-01-11.
  8. Stinson, Charles (June 26, 1959). "Space Teen-agers Not Quite Able to Orbit". Los Angeles Times. p. A8.
  9. Fishman, Stephen (2010), The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More (5th ed.), Nolo (retrieved via Google Books), ISBN 1-4133-1205-5, retrieved 2010-10-31

Bibliography
  • Warren, Bill. Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties (covers films released through 1962), 21st Century Edition. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2009 (First Edition 1982). ISBN 0-89950-032-3.
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