This week’s B-Movie Enema is a bit of a treat – and the man who made it is fascinating.  I’m going to take a look at Teenagers from Outer Space.

This film, made almost single-handily on a production level by Tom Graeff, is not exactly all that well-known.  It didn’t receive particularly good reviews.  It isn’t exactly remembered in any spectacular way.  In fact, the most famous it probably ever got was appearing on a 1992 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The Giant Claw.

I think it was only a matter of time before it came to this.  This is one of those staples of bad movies.  While maybe not be a Plan 9 or The Room, this was a movie that seemed to step up to the proverbial plate and swing hard for the fences only to pop the ball up right in front of the plate.

It’s like you should hear a sad trombone play every time you mention the title.  It’s not without a couple of really great pieces – a great performance by Jeff Morrow (who was in This Island Earth), and a neat idea springing forth from actual scientific discovery through particle physics.  However, you see that fuckin’ bird with those goofball eyes and doofy expression and everything just goes right into the crapper.  This movie is universally hailed as one of the worst attempts ever at a sci-fi monster movie.