You know I usually tend to agree with the majority of other reviewers here on IMDb, but I really think people aren't giving this film enough credit. It does tend to drag on a bit, and of course the "Gargan" monster is literally the shadow of a lobster. It's quite obvious that the film had a low budget, but the acting isn't nearly as bad as I've seen in many other films of this era. The ending? Oh wow, I was trying my best not to cry, and I'm a 23 year old dude. It's, in my opinion, a pretty exceptional film if you take into account how well it worked for such a small amount of money. It will really warm your heart if you just give it a chance!

Oh dear. Where to begin? To say that the title is something of a red flag is a serious understatement. If the writers can't come up with something better than "Teenagers from Outer Space," then how good can the movie be? The answer is not very.The movie starts promisingly enough, with a shaggy dog running along and barking. Everyone likes dogs, right? Well, apparently not everyone, because when Fido starts barking at a fake looking saucer, the hatch opens and a masked alien shoots him with a ray gun, instantly turning him into a skeleton. The alien then removes his mask to reveal- a human. Yes, what better way is there to save money on costumes than to have the aliens look like regular people in weird clothes? It's soon revealed that these space teens have come to earth in hopes of using it as grazing land for their livestock, the grecken. A fight immediately breaks out. Derek, one of the aliens, believes it's wrong to unleash the grecken on a planet with intelligent life, and is willing to hold the others at gunpoint to prevent that from happening. Through some incredibly wooden dialog, we learn that on their home world, they have no families, and that the old and sick are killed off to preserve their "Supreme Race." Well Derek makes a run for it into town, and one of his shipmates pursues him, while the others head back into space, and the grecken is left in a nearby cave. Oh and I forgot to mention, Derek's father is the Supreme Leader, an important tidbit that didn't come up until Derek had fled. So Derek ends up boarding with a nice family through a series of highly unlikely misunderstandings, and his pursuer stays one step behind him, vaporizing anyone who seems to be getting in his way. There are poorly staged shootouts, dull car chases, and of course the hero finds a nice girl who repeatedly ignores his instructions to stay out of danger.And even when the trigger happy villain is thwarted, there's still the grecken. By this point, you're probably wandering to yourself "just what is a grecken?" It's a lobster. And not just any lobster. It looks normal at first, but after a day on earth, it's as big as an elephant… and hungry for human flesh. The scenes in which the hero battles it are among the most ridiculous ever to appear on screen, because even a five year old can tell that someone's just projecting the silhouette of a crayfish onto the screen. It doesn't even look like it's walking, it just kind of floats around, wiggling its legs.You've surely guessed by now that the acting is as abysmal as the effects. Every line is stilted. I'm not sure if the aliens ever use a contraction throughout the film. These guys have about as much personality as Microsoft Sam. And the townspeople… If you were approached by a man in a Starfleet uniform, ray gun at his side, who had never seen a car before, wouldn't you have a sneaking suspicion that something was up? But these folks don't seem to notice anything funny until the ray gun's pointed at them. I don't know, maybe they're relatives of whoever wrote this mess.

Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) ** (out of 4)Aliens land on Earth to find a new place to breed their deadly mutant creature but Derek (David Love) decides he doesn't want to hurt anyone. He heads off into town where he becomes friends with Betty (Dawn Bender) and soon the two are trying to fight off the evil Thor (Bryan Grant) who wants to kill Derek. TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE is certainly one of the dumbest movies ever made but I must admit that I get a laugh out of watching it ever so often. I think everything that can happen in a "so bad it's good" film in here including the bad acting, stupid story, awful special effects and of course the rather bland direction. However, some of these things are just so campy that I can't help but be entertained by some of them. This includes the rather bad performances with Love being way too laid back and boring to be able to carry the film. Bender isn't much better in her role but there's some laughs to be had and especially with her haircut, which I'm still trying to figure out what it is. The lovable Harvey B. Dunn plays Grandpa and you can't help but want to help him cross the road. The special effects are rather laughable with the silly ray guns but I must admit that I loved the skeletons that the victims turn into. Yes, they're obviously fake and they're quite silly but at the same time it's hard to think of another science fiction film from this era where the victims were so destroyed. This film could have been a lot more entertaining but sadly it runs way too long at 85-minutes with the final thirty really dragging. Another major problem is that the pacing is quite bad and there's way too much dialogue that just keeps the film going. Still, fans of bad cinema should find a few laughs to be had here

I've heard of some devilish and sinister schemes by aliens in various science fiction movies, but this one really takes the cake. It takes almost the whole film to see just what the Gargons are. But as it turns out they look like giant lobsters. And what the aliens want to do is use the whole planet as a giant lobster trap, to raise them because they are a delicacy on the home planet, but they get out of hand. So find a suitable home for them where they can be raised and then taken by the aliens for a tasty alien lobster thermidor.In Teenagers From Outer Space a scout ship is sent with a baby Gargon to see if it likes the earth climate. But a young crewman rebels because this appears to be a civilized planet and we shouldn't go around taking over civilized planets just to raise our favorite food. He leaves the ship and one of the other crew starts hunting him and killing a lot of earth people with a disintegrating ray gun that leaves only skeletons.It doesn't help that our hero also falls for an earth girl, a typical Eisenhower era teenager. I think you can see where this is all going.I've seen better acting in my grade school plays, the giant lobster creature is pretty funny and the film looks like it was shot with an old Bell&Howell home movie camera. Not to mention the kids are some of the oldest teens on record this side of Richard Jaeckel and Dick Jones.It's a real hoot.