#bryan grant

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)

[movie-titlecards]

Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)

My rating: 6/10

I like to watch these MST3K movies on their own where I can, both to see what they cut for time (quite a bit, it turns out) and whether the movie can stand on its own - and I'd say this one does. There's a perfectly solid script in there, and while the execution is terribly cheesy, there's a certain appeal to that as well.

[supercultshow]

Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz!

I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Moebius” with a minor in “Movies Based on Magazinesl”) and I’ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!

This week Supercult takes you beyond the future to a universe of awesome good and terrifying evil with Heavy Metal!

When an alien spacecraft comes to Earth planning to use it as a farm to raise their alien delicacies, the majority of the crew show little but contempt to the pitiful inhabitants. But the young Derek is different from his scoffing comrades and inadvertently finds solace with local girl Betty Morgan and her Grandpa. Can Derek save his newfound love from his former crewmates and their devastating disintegrator ray? And what of the alien creature the team brought with them? Only a miracle can save the Earth from…Teenagers from Outer Space!

“Before – A Beautiful Girl. One Moment Later – A Skeleton!”

“We are the supreme race. We have the supreme weapons.”

Grr! Lightbulb, right in your eye!

“Thrill-crazed space kids blasting the flesh off humans!”

“You make me angry. But I like you very much.”

Behold the alien delicacy, Gargon, which goes best with white whine, lemon, and melted butter assuming it doesn’t eat you first!

“LOOK OUT! THEY’RE COMING RIGHT AT US!”

You know of course this means war…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ7PfdKRSNQ

“Thrill-crazed space kids blasting the flesh off humans!”

Teenagers from Outer Space, not to be confused with the comedy tabletop RPG about teen culture obsessed aliens, is a 1959 sci-fi/horror film directed, produced, and written by Tom Graeff. Also, he did the cinematography, the editing, and the music, coordinated the special effects, and had a major role as reporter Joe Rogers. Oh, yeah, and the film was produced by Tom Graeff Productions. Known as The Gargon Terror and The Ray Gun Terror, the movie is 90 minutes of off-the-wall, low-budget, Z-grade cheese. Plot-wise, it’s a pretty standard ‘aliens come to earth to teach us how to be nice to each other’, Jesus allegory plus lasers and spaceships…thing. The hilarious part though is that the whole story could be told in less than 15 minutes if the central characters actually met up and talked, but instead they shuffle around “just missing” each other for nearly an hour. What’s better than germs at stopping incoming alien invaders? Hormones of course! But the next best thing to annoyingly innocent teenage love-interests is to simply keep all the important people from ever meeting up.

Teenagers from Outer Space stars David Love, Dawn Bender, and Bryan Grant (born Bryan Pearson), many of whom are actually aliases and all of whom were in their 20’s and 30’s at the time of filming. Producers Bryan and Ursula Pearson and Gene Sterling (who also play “Thor”, “Hilda”, and “The Leader”, respectively) provided the $14,000 budget, which, even by the standards of the time, was less than shoestring. Even so, according to Pearson the crew employed many guerrilla tactics in order to cut costs.

Tom Graeff, who seems to have done almost everything on the film, shot in and around Hollywood California mostly in the vicinity of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue. Though a number of tell-tale landmarks like Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park and Hollywood High School give away the locale, Graeff’s steady hand and keen eye for framing kept most of the real locations under wraps, creating a great low-budget illusion of a small town. Unable to afford time on a sound stage Graeff also secured the location for Betty Morgan’s house for free from an elderly woman by posing as a student at UCLA (which he had graduated from 5 years previous). The woman who owned the house even let the crew use her electricity to power the equipment during shoots.

Other cost-cutting techniques are more noticeable, however. The space costumes used were simply flight suits decorated with masking tape, dress shoes covered in socks, and surplus Air Force Helmet, and many of the special effects were actually mildly edited stock footage. The giant Gargon space monster seen on screen is actually modified footage of a normal-sized lobster. Props included a single-bolted-joint skeleton with conspicuous marking in permanent marker, which was re-used for every dead body in the film, a multichannel mixer that the producers made no attempt to camouflage (even clearly bearing the label “Multichannel Mixer MCM-2”) as a piece of alien equipment, and a now infamous dime-store Hubley’s “Atomic Disintegrator” with added flashbulb as the aliens’ deadly focusing disintegrator ray. In some scenes the words “Hubley’s” can clearly be seen embossed on the side of the gun. Now-a-days vintage Hubley’s Atomic Disintegrator toys can be bought on Ebay for upwards of $500.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

#gallery-0-4-slideshow .slideshow-slide img { max-height: 410px; /* Emulate max-height in IE 6 */ _height: expression(this.scrollHeight >= 410 ? '410px' : 'auto'); }

In an unusual practice at the time, Graeff also pre-recorded some of the film’s dialogue for several scenes and had the actors learn to synchronize their actions with the sound. The score itself even came from stock which incidentally has been recycled in countless B-movies such as The Killer Shrews and Night of the Living Dead.

Needless to say the film looks, sounds, and probably tastes like 24-carat crap, and this fact was not lost on producers Bryan and Ursula Pearson, who took Graeff to court in order to get back their $5,000 investment and a percentage of any profits. After a year of legal battling the couple got their $5,000 back but the judge ruled there was no profit to share. Tom and the Pearsons, who had been good friends during production, never spoke to each other again.

The film bombed at the box office, putting further stress on an already-burdened Graeff, and in the fall of 1959 Tom Graeff suffered a breakdown, proclaiming himself the second coming of Christ. After a number of public appearances followed by a subsequent arrest for disrupting a church service, Graeff disappeared from Hollywood until 1964 and committed suicide in 1970.

Yes, as with many of the best-worst films throughout history, Teenagers from Outer Space comes with a side of tragedy, but we can be sure that Tom Graeff (or Jesus II as he probably preferred to be called later in life) would have wanted us to enjoy his beautiful, awful, so-astonishingly-bad-that-it’s-actually-pretty-stupendous movie in his memory!

Teenagers from Outer Space has a 3.5 on IMDB, a modest 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, has been featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and it’s even in the public domain!

Grab a dollar-store ray gun and your fake UCLA student ID’s!

The Supercult show is proud to present Teenagers from Outer Space!

SPOLIER ALERT:

Teenagers from Outer Space Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz! I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Moebius” with a minor in “Movies Based on Magazinesl”) and I’ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!

[scifigeneration]

"TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE" (1959)

Written and Directed by Tom Graeff

AKA: The Boy from Out of This World, The Gargon Terror, Invasion of the Gargon, Killers from Outer Space

An alien spacecraft comes to Earth, while searching the galaxy for a planet suitable to raise "gargons," a lobster-like (but air-breathing) creature which is a delicacy on their homeworld. Thor (Bryan Grant), the lead alien, shows his contempt for Earth's creatures by vaporizing a dog named Sparky. Crewmember Derek (David Love), after discovering an inscription on Sparky's dog tag, fears that the gargon might destroy Earth's local inhabitants, making the other spacemen scoff. Being members of the "supreme race", they disdain "foreign beings," no matter how intelligent and pride themselves that families and friendships are forbidden on their world. Derek turns out to be a member of an underground which commemorates more humane periods of his world's history.

Their one gargon seems to be sick in Earth's atmosphere. While his crewmates are distracted, Derek flees. Eventually, the gargon seems to revive. When the Captain reports Derek's actions, he is connected to the Leader (Gene Sterling) himself. It turns out that Derek is the Leader's son, though Derek is unaware of this. Thor is sent to hunt Derek down, with orders to kill to protect the mission. They return to their base, leaving the gargon behind.

Meanwhile, Derek finds the home address found on the dog tag. 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 boyfriend, reporter Joe Rogers (Tom Graeff), can't make their afternoon plans, Derek tags along with Betty. He shows the tag to Betty, who recognizes it immediately. Derek takes her to the place where the ship landed, and shows her Sparky's remains. She doesn't believe him, so he describes Thor's weapon that that vaporizes flesh. Betty takes this surprisingly well and vows to help Derek stop the bad guys.

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, including in Alice's swimming pool. Eventually Thor is wounded and he kidnaps Betty and Derek for medical attention, he reveals Derek's true parentage. Two car chases and a gunfight ensue and Thor is finally captured by authorities after plummeting off a cliff in a stolen car.

But there are bigger problems: the gargon has grown immensely, killing a policeman investigating the landing site and attacking numerous people. Derek and Betty go to the car wreck to look for Thor's gun. They share a kiss, and Derek vows to stay on Earth. When the gargon ruins their romantic moment, Derek finds the gun just in time for them to escape. Unfortunately the gun is damaged and the monster is heading toward the town. They head out once again to confront it, using power lines to fuel the disintegrator. They kill the gargon, but it's too late as enemy ships suddenly appear overhead.

The whole gang, including Joe and Grandpa, hurries out to the landing site. Derek reunites with his father and makes the ultimate sacrifice by leading the fleet directly into the hillside, causing a massive explosion. Derek does not survive, but is remembered for declairing, "I shall make the Earth my home. And I shall never, never leave it."