Thursday, November 13, 2008

Teenagers From Outer Space


(1959)*1/2

*deep breath* A group of teenagers from outer space land on Earth in a pretty lame looking ship. Apparently they’ve been searching the galaxy high and low for a suitable environment to raise the primary food source of their home world, “gargons” (see picture of lobster above). Space jerk, Thor, emerges from the ship and quickly displays his contempt for Earth by vaporizing a yipping dog with his hairdryer.


I am too a "teen"!

This doesn’t sit well with fellow spaceman, Derek (?), who believes that they should be more respectful of other races. The other spacemen laugh at him. They are right to mock Derek. Meanwhile the gargon brought to Earth appears to be having some difficulty acclimating to Earth’s environment. While the spacemen deal with this annoyance Derek slips away determined to warn earthlings about their imminent slaughter. After reporting Derek’s mutinous behavior, the spacemen are given orders to track Derek down and kill him if necessary. The spacemen spread out and begin interrogating the locals.


Listen, old man, it's curtains for you and your stinkin' race, see!

Meanwhile Derek meets, Betty, the owner of the vaporized pooch. Initially not believing Derek’s extraordinary story Betty eventually comes around and vows to help him battle Thor and save humanity in the process. As if they don’t have enough to deal with Derek and Betty soon learn that the gorgon has grown huge and is rampaging through town. Will the duo be able to stop Thor, the other spacemen, and the gorgon from destroying humanity? Yes, but at great sacrifice.

Betty and Derek are attacked by the shadow of a lobster

Teenagers From Outer Space is stupid, silly, low budget crap that falls into the so-bad-it’s-good category. Despite bad acting (really bad) and numerous inconsistencies (e.g., the gorgon would be too big to fit in the aliens’ spaceship to bring home), I still found myself laughing out loud. I especially loved the lobster shadow being used as an attacking monster. It’s almost as if the director said, “Look, in shadow form the lobster will look like an alien creature, no one will know the difference!”

8 comments:

Catfreeek said...

Hilarious! I'm surprised Ed Wood didn't think of this first.

Octopunk said...

This is another flick that got the MST3K treatment, which for me personally means I could never watch it without the guys in the front.

Another aces review, JPX. Big claps for "vaporized pooch" and the "stinkin' race" caption.

JPX said...

"This is another flick that got the MST3K treatment, which for me personally means I could never watch it without the guys in the front."

This is exactly the reason I never watch MST3K!

Octopunk said...

Gah! What is it with you and your brother never watching that show? It's freakin' awesome!

DKC said...

I agree with Octo on the awesomeness of MST3K!

I also agree on the hilariousness (is that a word?) of this review!!

JPX said...

The problem for me is that I don't want someone else ruining an old movie I haven't seen before by altering my experience with snarky comments. You can only watch a movie for the first time once and I don't want my first viewing to experience to be adulterated by someone else's humorous observations. Although these old films are silly and terrible I still have a soft spot for them. Your comment that you can't watch a film that's been given the MST3K "treatment" is precisely my point.

DKC said...

What about after you've seen the movie? Having now seen Teenagers From Outer Space, would you consider watching the MST3K version?

AC said...

good point dcd. plus there are plenty of mst3k entries that aren't horror.

some weekend i'd love to do a mst3kthon.

Malevolent

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