Teenagers From Outer Space

DeepGeek

Abstract: Today we continue our series of science-fiction movies that are so bad, they’re funny. Beware spoilers, you can download this movie at archive.org, link is in the show notes.

1 Introduction

What is under the age of twenty, carries ray guns, and wants to use your planet to raise giant lobsters? That’s right, today’s movie is non other than “Teenagers From Outer Space.”

2 Cast of characters

So this movie begins, with like astronomers looking in a huge telescope and speculating about the thing the first guy just saw. Then, the second astronomer stands up from his desk and turns to face the camera. This is the first clue you have that you are in for quality entertainment. His beard is jet black and his hair is not!

Then this flying saucer drills itself into the ground, and a cute little puppy dog runs up to it and barks at it. Space guy jumps out, blasts the dog with a ray gun and, GASP! you just see sparky’s skeleton fall to the ground!

Yeah, like these death scenes are like, skeletons falling to the ground. But, you know, you just kinda look at the movie, and you can see, that the skeletons are all made of plastic. Yes, the skeletons just look like those things you buy in the party shop before Halloween. It must have sounded scary in the script for the movie, but you just see it not working on the screen.

Then starts the sci-fi cliches. You ever see an old episode of Star Trek or something where they are trying to sound like they’re talking technological. These guys do that, they’re like “the recension factor in the atmosphere is reading point five,” and they’re twiddling a knob on what looks like it should be part of a surplus mortar from the survivalist army-navy store.

Well, that’s the beginning of the story, but you can’t start a review of a bad sci-fi movie without first looking at the futuristic space wear the advanced race uses. Just about the only cliche this movie does not use, is the space faring guy with a shirt with the old “star fleet logo thing” over the heart. If I never see that again it will be a good thing. No, here, we do a little better. It’s time for the jump suit routine.

You know this, it’s not the first time. Jump suits, with a big “V” shape over the chest. Yes, the fashionable space astronaut this year is sporting a red jump suit with a big “V” over the chest that was put there using white, thick tape. The commander’s “V” consists of two white stripes. Kinda like being in the army, seeing a lieutenant, and saying to yourself, “this guy has two ’be good to me’ bars for his rank, doesn’t he think he’s special.”

Accessories anybody? White gloves and tennis shoes. Oh, but to get that form-fitting look, the socks are taped over the jumpsuit leg, and they have this rubber neck collar thing. It kinda looks like the top of a coffee carafe in a dinner.

Back to the plot....

Yes, they talk about the atmosphere, and the commander says “bring out the gorgon,” and this other guy comes out with a little cage. And in the cage, there is a lobster. Yes, they want to turn planet earth into a lobster farm. You would think these guys would just go to Maine, but then you find out that these “gorgons,” are like these weird space lobsters that grow to be gigantic, and need to be harvested from the air on a planet that is a safe distance from their home planet.

And then there is a rebellion in the ranks and one space guy, Derek, runs off. The commander sends Thor to track him down, and flies off to get more ships to bring in more space lobsters. This is what we like to a “set up,” because this starts a rampage of ray gun shooting and falling plastic skeletons all over small town, California.

And what, I ask you dear listener, could be better than monsters and cliched science fiction? Did you forget already, these are teenagers from outer space! That’s right, lets add hormone induced puppy love into the equation for just more fun.

Yes, teen love. And yet, there are only two eligible young ladies in the town, Betty, the starlet, and Alice. Betty is actually so special, she gets to have a second outfit to wear, a one-piece swimsuit (it was the fifties, you can’t have racy bikinis on teenage girls yet I guess.)

So, Derek goes into town, and this grandfather-daughter team just takes him in because the brother just got hitched and moved out.

So, Betty takes Derek to Alice’s place for a pool party, but it is only Alice in the pool. You gotta get a load of Alice, she spends her whole role in the movie in this freaking swimming pool. And whenever she looks out of the pool, there is a guy from space looking down at her, and she’s like all smiles and winks, and no matter what she says, you just hear in your head, in a May West voice, “Hello, sailor!”

This movie is going on like this. It is so bad, but your laughing at it too, and your like dying in anticipation because you waiting to see a giant lobster. You know, they’re building it up, talking about this monster. And Derek is out looking for a dropped ray gun at dusk, which gives him a chance for a little kissy-kissy scene with Betty. And finally, just when your ready to bust, just begging to see a giant lobster crawl over a town made up of model houses and matchbox scenes, you realize your going to be deprived of a good monster scene, because all you get is a shadow of a lobster covering a third of the screen. Yes, a shadow, and some guy going “yearrrrr” in the background.

There’s a second scene in the fight against giant lobsters that is even more unbelievable. It turns out this ray gun is busted because of the power source. But wait! Derek gets this great idea, of hooking the ray gun up to the high-tension power lines to power the ray gun and defeat the monster.

Yes, the big finale to the lobster from deep space has Young Derek getting all MacGuyver with the power grid, and he begins climbing a pole, and Betty gets a guy in a power plant to be like turning the electric off and on for her. And Derek is climbing this pole, and all of a sudden, he is working with these little dinky telephone cables!

I knew you wouldn’t believe this freaking plot, so listen to this....

Now do you believe me?

So, if you want a good laugh, have a few beers or whatever and try to watch this very funny and very camp old movie. Watch out for these few odds and ends.

1) Betty’s totally retro hair doo.

2) A cop trying to sound like he is out of a Ray Chandler novel, saying “I saw her bones at the bottom of the swimming pool.” Funny because when Alice gets vaporized, her plastic skeleton is floating like an apple or a cork in that pool. At least they dropped some dry ice in that pool for a “foggy” look, geesh.

3) Thor staggering around a doctors office in pain, with all the melodrama of William Shattner over doing it.

4) “Dad” from outer space, with a full beard that is a different color than his hair.

5) “Grampa” from earth saying “oooh, those crazy kids, what are they doing now.”

Enjoy!

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Teenagers From Outer Space

DeepGeek

1 Introduction

2 Cast of characters

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