404-Teenagers from Outer Space

Film Year:  1959
Genre:  Science Fiction
Director:  Tom Graeff
Starring:  David Love, Dawn Bender, Bryan Grant, Harvey B. Dunn, Tom Graff, King Moody
MST Season:  4

The Movie

This quintessential crap classic features aliens landing on Earth where they intend on breeding their food source, creatures called the Gargons.  Seeing that his shipmates kill a dog without remorse, youthful Derek begins to fear for the living creatures on this planet and flees.  Eventually he finds the dog’s owner, Betty, and desperately tries to warn her of his people’s plans.

If the title and special effects didn’t already tip you off, this film will clue you in on how goofy it is in the first five minutes, which crams pretty much all the exposition it needs in an awkward conversation between the alien visitors.  This is all the “important” (and I use the term loosely) dialogue the film gives us, and the rest is a rather silly and casual hide and seek movie featuring Derek telling Betty things we already know and “fearsome” (I also use this term loosely) aliens searching for him.  Not only that, study the acting in the opening scene.  Or specifically the laughable attempt at it.  Yes indeed, everything we need to know about this movie is spelled out in the opening, and the decision of whether to stay and watch or not is on you.

If you do stay you’ll find a delightfully goofy cheapie, with plastic Halloween skeletons thrown around to create the illusion of HORRIFIC DEATH and forced perspective lobster shadows and a big and bad giant monster.  You’ll never be able to suspend your disbelief at Teenagers from Outer Space because it desires maybe too much of your imagination in order to make it work.  A lot of its “special effects” happen off screen with implications or, at its worst, old-time-radio-esque descriptions of what exactly it isn’t able to show you.  And what it can afford to show you looks ridiculous, so if the film had stuck to cutting away it might actually have been more effective.

Or funnier.

Or maybe just as funny as it is now.  It’s hard to tell what would make this movie less laughable without overhauling it entirely.

The film is somewhat endearing in its limited nature and resulting ineptitude.  I personally can’t help but be fascinated by its silliness.  Not to mention director Tim Burton was obviously a fan, taking the concept of laser guns leaving skeletons behind and employing it in his sci-fi spoof Mars Attacks!  For a movie that could have easily been forgotten, any legacy is a good one.

The Episode

Teenagers from Outer Space and Mystery Science Theater are a match made in heaven.  The film itself has Plan 9 from Outer Space levels of charm and Joel and the bots are quite taken with it.  Every aspect of the production is funny in one form or another and our crew just adds another dimension to it, latching on to what any particular scene is doing wrong and elevating it.  This episode is a wild ride, due to a great movie choice and a very confident riffing performance.

The host segments feature a strong “Reel Life to Real Life” comparison and a behavior modification eliminating the “ABC Mystery Movie” riffs (which would have been funny as a run-on gag in the episode, but alas), though the rest run a little dry.  The anti-littering segment is cute but not really funny, while the “cool space ship” segment flops.  Invention exchange doesn’t impress with the silly Scratch-and-Sniff Report Card and the bland but amusing finish Resusci-Annie.

But while the host segments mostly don’t live up to the theater work, Teenagers from Outer Space is a blast and a terrific specimen of how funny the show could be.  This one deserves full marks, baby.

Classic

The DVD

Teenagers from Outer Space was released via Rhino’s Volume 6 set, with quality audio and video presentation.  There were no bonus features.  Shout Factory also re-released this volume, also without bonus features.