An astronomer at the local observatory thinks he spies a drill shaped object flying through the night sky, but when he looks again it has gone and he dismisses it as an optical illusion. However, he was right, there was an unidentified flying object up there and it lands in the nearby countryside and the top dome opens like a hatch from where emerge uniformed men from another planet. Their plans are not friendly, of course, and they want to find a new breeding ground for the beasts providing their main source of food, the Gargons. They take out a young and small Gargon to test if it will survive in the atmosphere, but one of their number, Derek (David Love) is unhappy, not just with the way that a small dog was killed by the party, but also with the way his society is going in general. He makes his feelings plain and manages to escape, so disintegrator pistol-weilding Thor (Bryan Grant) is sent after him and the whole deadly affair begins...
Was there ever a more perfect title for a fifties science fiction B-movie than Teenagers from Outer Space? It combines twin obsessions of this pulp movie making era, although about twenty minutes into the film you may be wondering when the teenagers will be turning up, until you realise that Derek (what strange, otherworldy names these aliens have) and Thor are the titular characters. But this is not the tale of juvenile delinquents from Planet X running amok, it's the tale of one unfriendly young-ish alien running amok, rendering his victims skeletal thanks to his death ray, which looks suspiciously like a toy gun. Because that's what it is. Yes, this movie is not what in all truth could be called expensive, in fact it's barely one step up from an a amateur film that was lucky enough to be picked up by Warner Brothers.
This essentially low budget, low innovation level of moviemaking, almost a one man show for creator Tom Graeff, meant that Teenagers from Outer Space has been frequently mentioned in lists of the worst movies ever made - funny how they always pick on the little guys for these collections, isn't it? But if you're willing to forgive the stilted acting and poor special effects, the film moves along at a fair old zip and ends up being surprisingly entertaining. Derek (or perhaps "De-Rek"?) is filled with pity for the little dog that was killed at the start of the story, so as he flees he picks up its collar from the remains and sets off to find someone who understands the writing on it. He soon reaches town and asks a gas station attendant, who points him in the direction of a nearby house.
Here it is that we meet Betty (former child actress Dawn Bender under the name Dawn Anderson), who becomes Derek's love interest. She lives with her grandfather (Harvey B. Dunn, who you may recognise from a couple of Edward D. Wood Jr efforts) and it just so happens that they have a room for rent and think that the confused Derek is hoping to be the new tenant. Betty quickly makes friends with him, despite his gloomy demeanour and penchant for conversation stoppers like "I never knew my mother or father", but of course Thor is hot on his heels. There's a surprisingly high body count in this film, mostly down to the murderous antics of Thor, but also due to the monster. The man eating Gargon does indeed make an appearance fully sized, and looks suspiciously like a silhouette of a lobster superimposed on the screen. Perhaps you have to be a fan of the sort of this era's impoverished fantasy to really appreciate it, but then there are quite a few unintentional laughs to be had as well.
