Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)

"I will find you. I will find you. I will find you. I will find you. Aaaargh!"

Yes, it is as bad as it sounds. Bad films have their uses, mind, but they have to be used properly. This isn't so much a film to sit down and watch, as a conversation piece. Alcohol is advised. I didn't actually take any notes for this one, although it wouldn't have made much difference, but I'm reviewing it anyway. I think of it as a challenge to write enough words for a blog post, because there isn't much to mention beyond the hilarity of the dialogue and the acting.

Admittedly the title is interesting. The 1950s were the birth of youth culture and the birth of the concept of "the teenager" and, of course, to many of the older generation they must have seemed so alien that they might as well have been from outer space. So there's a sort of vague social conservatism there. And there's a sort of passive, "apolitical" conservatism throughout, with all the authority figures shown to be upstanding and decent, and 1950's America shown to be a paradise full of kind, hospitable people. Oh, and the flirty lady in the swimming pool gets killed early on, naturally. We can't have any of that kind of behaviour. But… that's as far as we can go with the subtext angle. There isn't even any obvious reference to communism.

Still, the society he finds on Earth makes a great impression on the protagonist, a serious and decent teenager from outer space going by the other-worldly name of, er, Derek. Yes, Derek. And Derek gets into a romantic entanglement with an Earth girl called Betty, played by Dawn Bender who, in stark contrast with e very other member of the cast, can sort of act a bit. It's the 1950's though, so it's all very chaste. Derek dies at the end, because otherwise things might lead to kissing, inappropriate touching and all sorts of beastliness, and we certainly can't have that.

If you're unconvinced by the bad acting, the hilarious dialogue and the fact the main alien is called Derek, then the special effects might lure you in to the, er, delights of this film. The aliens plan to let loose a load of huge, terrible Gargon monsters, which are portrayed by, er, lobsters or, rather, the shadows of lobsters, as lobsters tend to have this unfortunate tendency to be a little smaller than the script requires. The aliens also regularly kill people with ray guns, reducing them to bones, or rather to the same, rather obvious, plastic skeleton.

It gets worse. The final scene features Derek's alien father, sporting the most obvious false beard in the history of cinema. But personally I find myself inspired. Surely, somewhere in the world, there must be a worse B movie than this? The quest begins…