A maverick alien from a fascist planet seeks refuge with an Earth girl in Tom Graeff’s one-man production from 1959. While exceedingly silly and completely lacking in production values, this no-budget cult classic is impossible to hate because of its wholesome, childish charm. 3/10

Teenagers from Outer Space. 1959, USA. Written & directed by Tom Graeff. Starring: David Love, Dawn Bender, Bryan Grant, Harvey B. Dunn, Tom Graeff, King Moody. Produced by Tom Graeff for Tom Graeff Productions. IMDb: 3.9/10. Letterboxd: 2.5/10. Rotten Tomatoes: N/A. Metacritic: N/A:

Aliens land outside a small American town and conclude that Earth is suitable as grazing ground for their livestock, giant lobsters called “gargons”, which will devour all life on the planet, growing to enormous size. However, after his colleague has desintegrated a dog down to its bare bones, young Derek (David Love) discovers a dog tag among the remains, and takes it as a sign of intelligent life. According to the laws of his ruthless but efficient civilisation, any planet containing intelligent life is off limits. His concerns are waved off by his superiors, so he escapes to warn humanity about their impending doom as gargon fodder. The captain of the spaceship (King Moody) orders one of the gargons to be chained inside a cave, whilst the rest of the crew return to the mothership and order the rest of the fleet to arrive with the gargon herd. However, the cold-blooded dog killer Thor is left behind, ordered to catch and if necessary kill Derek.

So begins the 1959 clunker Teenagers from Outer Space, a no-budget cult classic produced, written, directed and edited by the, by all accounts, eccentric Tom Graeff. This $14,000 dollar picture could easily have been forgotten to the mists of time, but as luck would have it, it was picked up by Warner Bros. as the bottom bill to the studio’s re-edit of Godzilla Raids Again (1955, review), released as Gigantis the Fire Monster. Since then its earnest charm has made it a bit of a B-movie favourite.

Going off the address on the dog tag, Derek the alien finds a nice little house in the nearby small town inhabited by the sweet Betty Morgan (Dawn Bender) and her equally sweet gramps (Harvey B. Dunn), who just so happen to have a room for rent. However, Thor is on his tail, ray gun blazing, leaving a trail of skeletons in his wake. So begins a leisurly chase from the Morgan residence to Betty’s rich pool-dwelling friend Alice (Sonia Torgeson), back to the bones of Betty’s dog, onwards to the local professor (James Conklin), and to the town hall. By this time authorities are investigating a string of murders where the bodies have been stripped to the bones, and when Thor shows up on the steps of the town hall a gunfight ensues. Thor is wounded, but kidnaps Derek and Betty, and forces them to drive him to the local doctor to get patched up.

Thor passes out on the operating table, and the doctor escapes with Derek and Betty, but an unwitting nurse shows up and patches up Thor, who then kidnaps her and drive to the cave where the gargon is chained up, where he stumbles upon journalist Tom (Tom Graeff himself). A care chase ensues and Thor drives off the road.

Now the gargon breaks loose and starts making its way toward town. Derek realises the only thing that can kill the gargon is Thor’s ray gun, so he and Betty drive back out to the site of the accident, where they find the ray gun, and then drive back home, where Derek realises that the gun has been damaged in the crash. However, he figures he can make it work by hooking it up to the power lines lining the roads, so it’s back out to the countryside with Betty, where they confront and kill the gargon. But now there’s a new threat. The aliens are returning to Earth with the gargon herd. Derek takes Thor prisoner and heads out to meet the aliens’ leader, sporting a fantastic fake beard (Gene Sterling), and learns that he is the ruler’s son, set up to take over the ruthless, loveless civilisation of his home planet, while feeding on the gargons that will kill all life on Earth. His crimes forgiven, he is welcomed back into the fold. But Derek is different. He has read a book which explains that life can be different – and his experiences on Earth has taught him more about freedom, family and most importantly about love. Will he return to his home planet, or will he make a selfless sacrifice, saving humanity at the cost of his own life?

Background & Analysis

Teenagers from Outer Space was the brainchild of Tom Graeff, a recent graduate from UCLA’s films school, who had made his feature debut in 1955 with the self-produced no-budget soft sci-fi movie The Noble Experiment, in which a scientist invents a get-along pill for his mother-in-law. In 1956 he was hired as an assistant on Roger Corman’s space vampire movie Not of This Earth (review), and then decided to make a sci-fi film of his own. He wrote a script and secured funding from two minor actors, Gene Sterling and British Bryan Grant who would both play parts in the movie: Sterling played the alien ruler and Grant the villain Thor. The total budget of the movie was $14,000, a measly amount even for the day, when super-low-budget movies were generally shot for around $100,000.

Teenagers from Outer Space was filmed on location in Los Angeles between 1956 and 1957, in large parts in Griffith Park and Bronson Canyon, as well as in and around several houses and schools. No part of the film was shot in a studio.

Scarlet Magazine in 1993 managed to track down Bryan Grant, whose real name was Bryan Pearson, and his then-wife Ursula Pearson, credited in the film as Ursula Hansen. The Pearsons say they put up $5,000 of the film’s budget, and had to go through the court to get any of the money back after the film was picked up by Warner as the second bill to Gigantis the Fire Monster. Ursula remembers Graeff as “a very good con man”. Bryan does have good thinks to say, both about the film and about its writer/director Graeff. Especially, Pearson remembers the ingenious(?) way in which Graeff cut costs on location shooting. Normally one would first shoot outdoor scenes, and then call the actors back to re-dub their lines in post-production, a process that can take up a considerable amount of time and studio rent. Graeff did the exaxct oppisite: he had his actors record their lines in pre-production, and then played their dialogue during filming, and had them lip-sync their lines on set. This doesn’t always render the best dramatic effect, and easily looks a bit stitled and at times out of sync, but as a cost-cutting trick it’s quite smart. (Note: exactly how much of the movie’s dialogue was pre-recorded has been a matter of some debate – some sources claim that some of the dialogue was indeed looped in post.)

The film wrapped in 1957, but Graeff had problems getting it picked up for distribution, including getting bait-and-switched by Allied Artists. However, in 1959 Warner did pick it up as the co-feature to Gigantis the Fire Monster – a heavily re-edited version of Godzilla Raids Again (1955) – for $28,000.

The lead actor in Teenagers from Outer Space was an amateur actor about whom little is known, other than the fact that he was Tom Graeff’s boyfriend for a few years in the mid-to-late 50s. Billed as David Love, his real name was Charles Robert Kaltenthaler, which he shortened to Chuck Roberts. With no other film experience, Kaltenthaler was recruited by Graeff to star in two of his short films, and Graeff clearly hoped that Teenages from Outer Space would make him a star, giving him billing above the movie’s title. It didn’t. Love has little acting talent, but he does possess an childlike earnestness that works in the film’s favour. Graeff and Kaltenthaler broke up soon after the release of the movie, and nothing is known about Kaltenthaler’s life since.

More than anything, Teenagers from Outer Space resembles a kiddie TV show from the 50s, both in its impoverished production values and its acting, as in its direction and writing. Tom Graeff should be given credit for making the premise of the story a bit more original than usual. The aliens are not coming to Earth because of our advances in nuclear technology or rocketry, but simply because they need more grazing ground for their cattle. Humans don’t interest them in the slightest. The only one taking any interest in the living beings on the planet is Derek, because of the book that’s being passed around in dissident circles on his home planet, that describes another way of life than the technocratic and soulless existence of their civilisation.

The story takes some of its inspiration fromThe Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, review), with its benevolent alien arriving to Earth to learn about humans. However, it isn’t derivative as such, and Graeff puts his own slant on the whole affair by making Derek an alien fugitive from a repressive civilisation. While authoritarian alien societies had indeed been depicted repeatedly during the 50s, as far as I can tell, Teenagers from Outer Space is the first movie in which humanity is aided in the fight against the tyrannical overlords by an alien dissident on Earth. Usually this kind of story took place on Mars or Venus, in the Cat-Women of the Moon (1953, review) mold. It’s also difficult not to see a Christian parable here, what with the significance of the Book that Derek keeps carrying around, and the fact that he sacrifices himself for the sins of his people in the end. The makers of The Day the Earth Stood Still managed to get the same religious symbolism past the 1951 censors in making Klaatu a stand-in for Jesus – and Derek, the son of the Almighty ruler is sent to Earth where he saves humanity in Teenagers from Outer Space.

It is a silly script, seemingly written with a juvenile audience in mind, rather than the teenage crowd that mainly frequented the drive-in theatres in which the movie was mainly shown. Bill Warren in his book Keep Watching the Skies! (2016) remembers that the picture was met with laughter and ridicule when it was shown at a drive-in screening he attended in 1959. Graeff clearly has problems moving the story along without physically moving the characters from one place to another. Much of the film consists of people driving back and forth without the locations they visit having much bearing on the plot. The constant moving from one place to another feels less motivated by the story than by the fact that Graeff needs to keep either Derek and Betty one step ahead of Thor, or Thor one step ahead of Derek and Betty. Then there are narrative detours like Thor first kidnapping Derek and Betty in order to get to a doctor, and then the nurse, for no apparent reason at all. The dialogue is universally bad, with characters constantly speaking in exposition or breaking out in purple soliloquys at the drop of a hat. Nevertheless, the film has the same kind of childlike naivete that makes Ed Wood’s movies so endearing. Both Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958, review) and Teenagers from Outer Space have the feel of films written by 10-year-olds trapped in adult bodies. Both are also made with an apparent passion that’s impossible to resist.

As for themes, the picture falls roughly into the format of the cold war parable movie, what with invaders from an authoritarian planet set out to destroy the American way of life – or in this case life, period. However, the script doesn’t really contain any specific jabs at communism. Derek’s home planet is, despite its apparently technocratic nature, a monarchy in which power passes from one all powerful ruler to his offspring, in stark contrast to the Soviet model’s system of electing the Communist party’s chairman as ruler of the union. Despite the ruthlessness of Thor and the UFO captain, the planet does not seem to be indiscriminate in its choices or worlds to conquer. It is stated in the opening dialogue that the aliens have rules against conquering worlds that are inhabited by intelligent creatures (that these rules are ignored even by the supreme ruler at the end of the movie feels more like plot convenience and careless writing than a deliberate choice). The main grievance Graeff seems to have with the alien world is its lack of empathy and emotion. We are told children are separated from their parents at birth and know nothing of their mothers, fathers or siblings, or about love or friendship in general. While Hollywood screenwriters did often like to paint the people of the Soviet Union in this kind of light, Graeff rather seems to base his world building on the works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, writers who griped with technocracy and autocracy in general, rather than with socialism. Given the naivety of the screenplay, it is questionable if very much thought was put into any political or social messages. More than anything, the movie is a call for compassion and empathy in general, of what someone might have labelled as “Christian values” – which would have been close to the heart of someone like Tom Graeff, who later tried to change his name to “Jesus Christ II”.

The movie had a number of working titles, but Warner finally settled on the Teenager title, following a handful of successful teen-oriented science fiction and monster movies in the late 50s. All of the actors involved look too old to be teens – Dawn Bender was the youngest of the bunch at 21 when shooting began, and David Love was 22. All teens, however, were under 30, as opposed to the cast of many similar films. Despite the teen angle promised by the title, there’s nothing theme-wise that touches on teen issues, as opposed to films like I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957, review), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957, review) or The Blob (1958, review). Other perhaps than that the movie is a sort of coming-of-age picture, there’s no generational divide, nor does the film touch on any of the cultural or social issues surrounding the teen debate in the 50s. I suspect that Graeff didn’t set out to make a teen movie, but that the title was more of an aftertought from Warner, hoping to cash in on the teen market – even though the film might have been better marketed toward a younger crowd.

The production values of Teenagers from Outer Space are not so much bad as they are non-existent. The aliens carry with them instruments with ordinary Arabic numbers and even markings in English. One of the instruments used for measuring the atmosphere on Earth is clearly labelled as a portable audio mixer. The aliens’ ray guns were actually over-the-counter toys, more specifically Hubley’s Atomic Disintegrator, a metal cap gun that was manufactured between 1953 and 1959. Tom Graeff bought a number of these toys for the cast, and they were modified by none other than low-budget effects master Paul Blaisdell. Blaisdell put small mirrors inside the barrels, so that when pointed at the sun or a studio light, the guns would reflect the light at the camera, making it appear as if the gun was actually firing. Again, a low-tech but rather ingenious solution to a problem that circumvented the need for post-production fiddling. Today the guns are highly sought-after collectibles that regularly sell for several hundred dollars. According to Blaisdell’s assistant and memorabilia collector Bob Burns, Blaisdell also made the aliens’ belt buckles from Swanson’s frozen chicken pot pie pans. When you know it, they do look like aluminium pie pans that have been embossed and folded over the actors’ belts. The aliens wear plain jumpsuits, and the V-shaped insignia over their chests, that make them look “spacey” were simply made with white tape.

The human skeleton that keeps popping up in the film comes complete with a sawed skull, metal hinges and wired ribcages, meaning it was probably borrowed from a science classroom. The landing, cork screw-shaped UFO is a pretty neat little effect, but when the UFO armada arrives at the climax of the movie, we get a lot of shots of the actors looking up at them, but we never actually see them. Of all the effects in the film, the one that is most memorable is the gargon. When we see it in its infancy in the beginning of the film it is simply an ordinary lobster in a container. Later, when it has grown and escaped from the cave it is still an ordinary lobster, only now it is extremely badly matted into the frame as a black silhouette. It is no wonder the effect produced roars of laughter at the drive-in. Reportedly Graeff had wanted Blaisdell to create a monster for the movie, but Blaisdell was unable to do it within the budget limitations (some sourceds claim Blaisdell also didn’t have the time, as he was working on another project).

The acting is not much to write home about, but the actors can be partly forgiven – first and foremost because of the awkwardly written script, and secondly because of the way in which the cast had to lip-sync their dialogue on set, which inevitably must have led to stiffness in the acting department. The actors playing the aliens aren’t helped by the fact that Graeff has used the popular trope of having aliens speak in a formal and stilted manner – which for some reason was the manner in which popular culture imagined people from another planet invariably spoke. As stated, David Love/Chuck Roberts/Charles Kaltenthaler wins no acting awards for his mild-mannered Derek the alien, but his pouting earnestness is enough to carry the movie. Dawn Bender was an actual actress, and she inhabits the role of the chirpy born-pretty-yesterday girl next door superbly. She struggles horribly to give any sort of credibility to her lines, often written as if they were supposed to be spoken by a 4-year old rather than a 18-year old, which I suppose is somewere along the age Betty is supposed to be. Bender has a strong natural charisma of her own, an interesting face and a wonderful haircut.

Bryan Grant/Pearson as Thor does his best comic book villain according to the needs of the script, as do his shipmates and his ruler, Gene Sterling, sporting one of the most unconvincing fake beards in cinema history (fake beards pop up with surprising regularity in Teenagers from Outer Space, mostly without any real necessity). The only actors that may be familiar to audiences are Harvey B. Dunn, who plays Betty’s grandfather, and King Moody as the spaceship captain. Dunn, a radio and stage actor, as well as children’s entertainer, has been immortalised due to his collaborations with Ed Wood, most memorably as the eccentric police captain in Bride of the Monster (1955, review). Moody is perhaps best known as the longest serving Ronald McDonald, and for his role as KAOS agent Shtarky in Get Smart.

Despite its many, many shortcomings, it’s difficult not to feel a certain fondness for Teenagers from Outer Space. One factor is that Tom Graeff actually shows some promise as a director, something that some contemporary critics also noted. The movie is overall competently directed and includes a number of well-executed shots. Like a Corman before him, Graeff shrewdly makes use of a number of tricks in order to make a film on a budget which really shouldn’t be possible. But despite this, the film is too long for its own good at 86 minutes, and would have benefited from having been cut down to a regular B-movie length of just over an hour. This is the definition of a feelgood movie, and it refuses to be offensive in any shape or form. Its naive message of good will and kindness to all living creatures, and its earnest, childish approach wins the viewer over in the end.

Reception & Legacy

Teenagers from Outer Space was finally released two years after shooting wrapped as the second feature to Warner’s re-editing of Toho’s Godzilla Raids again, re-titled Gigantis the Fire Monster, in June, 1959. As stated, Graeff sold the distribution rights to Warner for $28,000, but even at that measly sum the movie struggled to make a profit. It was also met by ridicule by critics and audiences alike. The film had premieres at least in Mexico and the UK in 1961. In the UK it was released under the title The Gargon Terror.

American trade press almost uniformly panned the movie. Trade magazines opined that the title of the movie was exploitable enough to pull in audiences, but that the picture had few other merits. Warren G. Harris in the Motion Picture Daily wrote: “While the story is no more far-fetched than the average science-fiction thriller, its execution is not strong especially in respect to the performances of an unknown cast”. Interestingly, Harris also feels it to be pertinent to mention that “the space visitors are closer to young adults than teenagers” and that the lobster monster isn’t particularly scary. (This may of may not be the same Warren G. Harris that has later penned a number of Hollywood biographies. Not to be confused with politician Warren G. Harris, I believe.)

Harrison’s Reports called the movie “decidedly mediocre and amateurish in all departments”, and “more laughable than terrifying”. The critic turned the knife in Graeff’s wound by adding: “Warner Brothers does not add to its prestige when it puts a picture as inferior as this one on its releasing schedule”. The Motion Picture Exhibitor was marginally more forgiving in its assessment, noting that viewers “may have fun” with this “modestly made” picture. The magazine said the actors were “fair in their renditions” and that direction and production were “passable”. Jack Moffitt at the Hollywood Reporter was no more lenient than the critic at Harrison’s Reports. After panning generally all aspects of the movie, Moffitt concluded: “Now that monkeys have been trained to successfully execute space flight, it is to be hoped that they can be induced to collaborate on an improved science fiction”.

One of the few critics who was inclined to look past the film’s flaws was Variety’s Ron Silverman. While he conceded that the film was “often […] inescapably inept”, quoting bad lighting, the poor monster and the “impudently grandiose” tone, he also found Teenagers from Outer Space “oddly appealing”. Silverman wrote: “But the film is also carefully thought out, concocted of exploitable elements, yet different from its many predecessors. While Graeff may not have made a good film, he has made an interesting one that every now and again smacks of brilliance. Several scenes […] are composed of an artistry that marks Graeff as a filmmaker to be heard from.” The critic at the Los Angeles Times reviewed the film along the same lines: “what a curious little film this is […] there are flashes of astonishing sensitivity half-buried in the mass of tritisms”. The critic wrote about Graeff: “when he stops spreading himself so incredibly thin, I think his work will bear watching”.

British reviews were on the whole negative. The Monthly Film Bulletin gave the film its lowest rating on its I-III scale, writing: “Though the skeleton-reducing ray gun is quite well contrived, the actual trick effects are variable, the lighting is poor, the script and acting pretty terrible, and the grown gargon itself a feeble piece of monstercraft”. Kinematograph Weekly was slightly more forgiving: “The plot […] has its flaws and the acting is uneven, but a pistol, projecting a ray that immediately reduces the receiver to a skeleton, sparks off shrewdly spaced thrills. Reliable secondary hall gimmick offering”.

In later reviews, Phil Hardy in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies (1984) called Teenagers from Outer Space a “silly piece of hokum”. In Keep Watching the Skies!, Bill Warren describes how he saw the movie as a kid in 1959 and thought it was the worst film ever made. On re-watching it decades later, Warren has re-evaluated it, and concedes that it is still bad, but “occasionally shows glimmerings of intelligence real enough that I’m still curious as to why Tom Graeff never made another movie”.

Modern critics, on the whole, seem to echo Warren’s sentiments. Dave Sindelar at Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings writes that “there is a lot here to inspire derision and laughter. Yet, somehow, I never quite find myself laughing, despite the frequent times this movie fumbles the ball. Maybe it’s because I feel it has a pretty solid story underneath. Also, there are moments where the direction feels unusually solid for a movie this cheap”. Kevin Lyons at EOFFTV Review says: “And yet the film is oddly lovable. The folksiness of Betty and Gramps is hopelessly out of place but never less than amusing, its naivete and ineptitude is endearing and charming rather than annoying and it’s certainly never dull.” DVD Savant Glenn Erickson concludes: “Teenagers from Outer Space works because its heart is in the right place. Derek is peace loving and gentle, Thor is a nasty baddie, and poor Betty loses both her dog and its romantic replacement from the stars. The primitive theatrics are actually quite touching — the show finds its own humble level of dramatic integrity.”

Teenagers from Outer Space has since been a staple on TV in the US. It entered the public domain in 1987, when Warner chose not to renew its copyright, which means that it has been released repeatedly on VHS and DVD, mostly in bargain bin editions. In 1992 it was featured on MST3K’s 4th season, bringing it to a larger audience and solidifying its status as a cult “bad movie”.

The film, as well as its creator Tom Graeff, seems to have sparked renewed interest around 2006. This was the year it was included in MST3K’s second collection DVD set – and it also saw a release on a low-budget “Teen” DVD set. The film’s DVD releases, combined with the proliferation of blog platforms and website tools saw two different websites dedicated to Tom Graeff. One, The Tom Graeff Biography Project, was edited by writer and documentary filmmaker Jim Tushinski, who was working on an ambitious book about the life and times of Tom Graeff, from his UCLA years to his breakdown and religious awakening in 1959, to his attempts to sell a screenplay for half a million dollars and his eventual suicide in 1970. The other website, The Boy Out of This World, was created by another writer and filmmaker, Elle Schneider, who was working on a likewise ambitious documentary about Graeff. For a year or so, forums like The Classic Horror Film Board was buzzing with news, rumours and detective work about Graeff in anticipation of the book and the film about his life – both promising to reveal THE TRUTH behind the slander, the rumours and the misconceptions of this neglected filmmaker and LGBT+ pioneer. However, almost as abruptly both projects fell silent and nothing has been heard from them since. The websites stubbornly remain, still promising the much-awaited exposés on this remarkable man, while both the biography and the film have just as stubbornly refused to materialise. One can probably assume that both projects have since been abandoned. Elle Schneider has moved on to become an award-winning director, producer and cinematographer in her own right, and queer writer and director Jim Tushinski seems to have left the spotlight around 2015, as I can’t find any writing or film credits for him after that.

As surprising as it may seem, several effects shots from Teenagers from Outer Space were used, alongside footage from Plan 9 from Outer Space, in the Columbia-distributed luchador movie Arañas infernales (1968), starring Blue Demon.

Cast & Crew

Much of what we know about one-man-band Tom Graeff stems from the work of the above mentioned Jim Tushinski and Elle Schneider, who have released a good deal of information on their respective websites. The websites are well worth a visit if you wish to take a deeper dive into the world of Graeff. Tom Lockyear Graeff was born in 1929 in Arizona and his parents moved to Los Angeles when he was a child. Here he studied filmmaking and theatre at UCLA, and released two short films. The second, The Orange Coast College Story (1954), was narrated by Vincent Price and starred Chuck Roberts, aka Charles Robert Kaltenthaler, Graeff’s boyfriend. In 1954 he also started work on his first feature film, the soft sci-fi The Noble Experiment (1955), which centered around a scientist creating a drug that would make everyone get along. A print of the film is held by UCLA, but it has only been screened once in latter years, and it has not been digitized for home viewing.

In 1955 Graeff was hired as an assistant on Roger Corman’s alien vampire movie Not of This Earth (1955, review). After this experience, he decided to try his own hand at a science fiction picture. The process of making Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) is outlined above. This is the point where the details of Graeff’s life start blending fact with myth. Jim Tushinski and Elle Schneider have uncovered and published a lot of information on their respective websites, but Tushinski in particular has claimed that he still sits on a lot of previously unknown facts and materials about “Graeff’s fascinating, doomed journey”; “the ultimate Hollywood story—filled with ambition, delusion, sex, scandal, hope, and failure”. However, since neither Tushinski’s nor Schneider’s projects seem to ever come to fruition, it’s possible that we may never take part in these revelations.

What is known, however, is that after the release of Teenagers from Outer Space, Tom Graeff suffered some sort of mental breakdown. There’s been speculation that this stemmed from the bad press his movie got, and its failure at the box office, or from his break-up with Chuck Roberts, or both. The breakdown took religious shape, as Graeff seemingly became convinced he was the second coming of the Christ. He started preaching about town and tried to legally change his name to “Jesus Christ II”. He was twice arrested for causing public unrest and left Los Angeles in 1961. After causing commotion elsewhere, he was committed to a mental institution and subjected to shock treatment, and was returned to his parents in California in 1964.

Graeff returned briefly to filmmaking in 1965, as the editor of the low-budget schlocker The Wizard of Mars, starring John Carradine as a floating head. However, this did not lead to further engagements. In 1968 Graeff tried to break back into Hollywood by rather unusual means. He published an ad in Variety in which he announced that he was selling his latest screenplay for a film called “Orf” for the astronomical sum of $500,000. A writer for the Los Angeles Times took note and interviewed Graeff. The following piece claimed Robert Wise was attached as director and that Carl Reiner was going to star. Wise denied having ever heard of the project. Graeff wrote a reply apologising for mentioning Wise’s name and accusing the writer of misquotes and omissions. The writer retaliated by publishing another column in which she revealed that Tom Graeff was the infamous “Jesus Christ II” of yesteryear, which was the last nail in the coffin for Graeff’s hopes of returning to Hollywood filmmaking. In his last years Graeff still tried to get producers interested in his film. He also released a record with him speaking about homosexuality and free sex, which was available by mail-order. His stated intent with the record was to dispel misconceptions about homosexuality as a perversion. The real perversion, Graeff said, was homosexuals being forced to live heterosexual lives, sometimes resulting in suicide. Ironically and tragically, Tom Graeff committed suicide himself in 1970, only 41 years of age. Jim Tushinski hints at having answers as to why, but as stated, we may never know them.

As is evident, Tom Graeff has a small cult following, even if it isn’t quite as vigorous today as it was back around 2006-2007. His contribution to cinema was small and, if Teenagers from Outer Space is taken as evidence, rather insignificant. He is sometimes, not entirely unfairly, compared with Ed Wood. But as opposed to Graeff, Wood has close to a hundred movie credits to his name – be it that many of them are for porn films. Teenagers from Outer Space is not an overlooked classic, and I suspect neither is The Noble Experiment. However, what is clear from the film is that Tom Graeff was a director of some talent, and it is a shame that his mental health issues apparently put a stop to his career.

Little is known about Tom Graeff’s one-time boyfriend and star, David Love, aka Chuck Roberts, aka Charles Robert Kaltenthaler II. Kaltenthaler starred in two of Graeff’s short films and in Teenagers from Outer Space. After his break-up with Graeff, apparently after the release of Teenagers, he seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth. Both Tushinski and Schneider have made vigorous efforts to track him down, but to no avail. Apparently, he broke off all contact with his family in 1954 (when he met Graeff), and as far as Tushinski and Schneider were aware in 2006-2007, his family had not met him since then, and were as keen as the biographers to track him down.

Perky female lead Dawn Bender was a minor radio celebrity and former child actor who, at only 22, was actually winding down her acting career by the time she appeared in Teenagers from Outer Space. Bender appeared in over 500 radio shows as a child actor. She was particularly well known for playing little Margaret Herbert in the show One Man’s Family, a role she performed for 17 years between 1932 and 1959. She also appeared regularly on stage in Los Angeles. Bender appeared in uncredited bit-parts in a little more than half a dozen movies from 1935 to 1953. She got good notices for her first credited role, a supporting part in George Cukor’s The Actress (1953), but it did little to boost her film career. By 1955 she married fellow drama student Jerry Anderson. She “reluctantly” agreed to appear in Teenagers from Outer Space in 1956, on the strength that it would be her first chance to appear in a lead role – even if she was already winding down her acting career in favour of focusing on her family. Since the film was a non-union affair, she was billed by her married name, Dawn Anderson, in order to avoid trouble with SAG. Dawn Bender her made her last stage appearance in 1962, after which she trained to become a schoolteacher, a profession she worked in for 40 years.

The actor playing Betty’s grandpa, as mentioned, is familiar to friends of the output of Edward D. Wood Jr. Harvey B. Dunn was an interesting fellow who had apparently been working a lot of odd jobs in his career, including different kinds of stage work, as a singer, magician, vaudevillian and a clown with a pet parakeet. He is best known for his role as the police captain in Wood’s Bride of the Monster (1955, review), where his parakeet turns up, perched on Dunn’s shoulder or balancing on his glasses. Dunn had previously worked on one of Wood’s failed western pilots, and went on to appear in Night of the Ghouls (1959) and The Sinister Urge (1961), as well as in Tom Graeff’s no-budget movie Teenagers from Outer Space (1959). He appeared in bit-parts and minor roles in around 50 films or TV shows in the 50s and 60s. Dunn was known for missing his index finger on his left hand, and at one point became so fed-up with being asked how he lost it, that he had a card printed to hand to anyone who asked. It stated:

The story of my finger cut off July 18, 1908: ”Caught in a cogwheel of a printing press at the Press and Dakotan office, Yankton, S. D., while working around the press. Attending physician Dr. Moorehouse. I did not sue for damages. I can write just as well now, if not better, than before the accident. The stub of the finger has the tendency to melt in summer and freeze in winter. I swear this is a true statement to the best of my knowledge.” Sincerely yours, Harvey B. Dunn.

Robert “King” Moody, made his screen debut as the spaceship captain in Teenagers from Outer Space (1959), and is the only actor who got his start here and managed to make a proper career out of it. He appeared in around 50 movies or TV shows between 1959 and 1992, mostly in bit-parts or supporting roles. He was quickly recognised for his comedic abilities, which led to him being cast in a guest spot in the first season of Mel Brooks’ spy show Get Smart in 1966. In the second season he was brought back in the new role of the dim-witted KAOS agent Shtarker, a character that became a fan favourite, and by the fourth season practically a recurring character on the show. He reprised the role in the 1989 TV movie Get Smart, Again!. Outside of this role, King Moody is especially known in the US for being cast as the longest serving Ronald McDonald. He played the character in commercials between 1969 and his retirement in 1985.

About half the actors in Teenagers from Outer Space seem to have been friends of Tom Graeff’s who have no other acting credits, and most of the rest only have a smattering of bit-part credits here and there. Robert B. Williams was one of the few people in the film that was a proper career extra, appearing in over 300 films or TV shows. Jim McGeorge made a decent career as a voice actor. Apart from writing, producing and directing the film, Tom Graeff also worked as the cinematographer, edited, was responsible for the special effects and put together the soundtrack.

Janne Wass

Teenagers from Outer Space. 1959, USA. Written & directed by Tom Graeff. Starring: David Love, Dawn Bender, Bryan Grant, Harvey B. Dunn, Tom Graeff, King Moody, Helen Sage, Frederick Welch, Sonia Torgenson. Cinematography & editing: Tom Graeff. Special effects: Paul Blaisdell & Tom Graeff. Produced by Tom Graeff for Tom Graeff Productions.