 404 - TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE
Genre: Ultra-low Budget ’50s Sci-Fi
(1959, B&W)
Synopsis: Aliens from another world, who look pretty old for teenagers, land in a ultra-compact flying saucer and decide to use the Earth to raise giant lobsters (called
“gargon” on their planet, but still served with drawn butter).
One of the aliens, named Derrick (nice alien name), thinks they should leave the Earth alone and instead find an uninhabited planet for the gargon herds.
This causes him to be branded a traitor and threatened with “TORCHA.”
So Derrick runs away and another alien, the trigger-happy Thor
– who has already zapped a dog with his Buck Rogers raygun – is sent after him while the rest of the aliens leave in the flying saucer to get the gargon herds.
Derrick goes to the address on the dead dog’s dog-tag and meets a
girl named Betty and her grandfather. Meanwhile Thor is zapping everyone in sight and looking for Derrick,
who’s discovering that Earth girls really are easy.
Eventually, Thor is captured by the police but a gargon left in a cave has grown to a gigantic size and Derrick is the only one who can stop it!
(But not with a huge pot of boiling water, as expected.)
 Don’s Review: This extremely low budget campy movie was a lot of fun to watch
– the effects are just too cheesy, like the giant gargon is simply someone holding up a lobster to create a shadow on the screen (kind of a hand-shadow-puppet-esque effect).
And every time the trigger-happy Thor zaps a person or animal, only the skeleton is left behind.
(I wonder if this part of the movie was the inspiration for the rayguns in
Mars Attacks! ??? Too bad that movie wasn’t as much campy fun as this one
is!) And, to its credit, for a low budget film, this movie really moves around
– everything doesn’t just happen on a single static set like most super-low-budget flicks.
The riffing on this is great, J&tBs constantly had me laughing out loud and the host segments are also pretty good (the
“Reel Life vs. Real Life” is a classic)
– this one is definitely a keeper.
Don’s Rating: 
Related Link:
(1) Mighty Jack’s MST3K Review (Episode Review)
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