Movie Nite: Teenagers From Outer Space

October Movie Nite

Teenagers From Outer Space

Really 50s. Ridiculous. An alien named Derek lands on Earth and wants to stay. It's complicated! - his dad's the supreme leader of his planet where they don't have families so they can't just fry him on the spot for desertion of his space duties He moves in with a teenage (I'm assuming) girl and her grandfather. The name was really funny, I don't know why. Because they're supposed to be named Mork? After he reached town, it was all Donna Reed or Father Knows Best - for a little bit.

But the killer alien - I don't remember his name - kills with such impunity and coldness and sterility, it feels very much like a comment on the fear and war and the new bomb technology. Maybe a fear of science as a result? It gets more points than a slasher movie for that bit.


This is one of the parts of substance:

Captain: Morrow! Go below and bring up the young gargon specimen. Now the decision depends on its reactions.Derek: Wait, Captain. I have found evidence of intelligent beings on this planet!
Thor: Of what concern of foreign beings?
Derek: Of none to you, Thor! Just as you were so unconcerned when you destroyed this small creature, so bravely!
Thor: It was no more than an insect.
Derek: But it had life. And that life you had to take to satisfy your endless hunger for killing.


The romance is as unimpressive and sexless as the 50s. She has two boyfriends and nothing really happens. Maybe we can excuse her because they're trying to stop Derek's alien friend from zapping everyone's meat off their skeletons.

It's interesting that the reporter boyfriend isn't jealous - maybe some progressive thought there? Or maybe just the real life relationship between the two guys snuck into the fiction.

 

The writer/producer was in the film as the reporter/boyfriend of the girl Derek was in love with and was actually the boyfriend of the man who played Derek. Fun background info.

This next exchange was kind of cheesy, but maybe tries to say in words what they should've shown - how love feels and that you can love those who seem different by your culture's standards because we're all the same - as in the Twilight Zone's People Are the Same All Over and Third From the Sun.

Derek: Betty, when you learn where I'm from, well... you will not understand but, I hope it will not make any difference between us because...Betty Morgan: I don't care where your from. I don't understand all this, but somehow I feel that I've always known you. That we've never been apart!

Another kind of irrelevant but fun fact:The grandfather, Harvey Dunn, had missing fingers and in real life made cards to explain. 

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.