Okay film fanatics and historians of 20th century gay life (and MST3K fans!), here's a challenge for you -- Tom Graeff, David Love and _Teenagers From Outer Space_

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So here's the story:

As part of the latest batch of MST3K DVDs, Rhino has released the Joel-era episode Teenagers From Outer Space, originally filmed and released in the late fifties and already possessed of a general B-movie cachet, not least for the title of course but also for the weird and wonderful mix of sheer ridiculousness and occasional flashes of creativity amid the mire. (Ridiculous = the huge lobster 'Gargan' monster and its yells; flash of creativity = the skeletonizing [no really].)

I've seen the episode a number of times but rewatching it this weekend made me think of the story I'd heard a few times about how Tom Graeff, the writer/producer/screenwriter/etc., had cast his offscreen lover David Love as the star, and that Graeff and Love had apparently filmed a couple of abortive projects here and there at the time. Scrounging turned up the source of said story, namely the magazine Scarlet Street and its editor/publisher Richard Valley, an extremely friendly sort who responded to an e-mail of mine today very quickly and politely, good on him!

Between various posts on the magazine's boards -- a good thread is this one, including a nicely argued defense for Graeff's abilities to work on a budget -- as well as a few observations elsewhere, the portrait painted of Graeff is a striking and ultimately sad one. According to the official MST3K entry on the film, here's a quick sketch of Graeff's career:

According to URSULA PEARSON, TOM GRAEFF charmed her and her husband out of the $5,000 production cost for the film. Supposedly, Warner Brothers later paid Graeff $25,000 for the distribution rights, but the Pearsons saw none of their original investment. The flying saucer was abandoned on property near the estate of Gloria Swanson, who used it for publicity. No one knows what happened to DAVID LOVE (Graeff's off-screen lover) after the film. (He's frequently and erroneously credited as being this movie's director in many film reference materials). Ursula Pearson said that he talked just like Derek in real life...slow and not-so-bright.

Born around 1930, director THOMAS LOCKYEAR GRAEFF graduated from UCLA with a film degree in 1952. Graeff never made another movie after this one. In 1962, he bought a huge ad in the L.A. Times, proclaiming himself the second Christ. In 1968, he bought another ad, this time in Variety, announcing the upcoming production of a film called Orf, to be directed by Carl Reiner, who after seeing the ad, immediately threatened a lawsuit against Graeff for printing such untrue information. Graeff died sometime after that, the year and circumstances unknown.

Apparently nobody knows what has happened to Love, or even if he's still alive. For this reason Valley asked this in a post three years ago which still applies:

By the way, anyone with information (or anyone willing to hunt for information) about Tom Graeff for the upcoming second installment of "The Tom Graeff Story" will be eternally in the debt of Ye Reditor. We can always use more biographical info, more info about Graeff's work in films, more everything. Most of all, we can use a solution to the mystery "Who was David Love and Where--If Anywhere--Is He Now?"

So please use this thread to talk about the film if you've seen it and to add anything to the Graeff/Love story if you know anything more about it, or know somebody who might!

Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 28 November 2004 19:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Wow. Fascinating -- I didn't know the back story. This is one of my favorite episodes. I always suspected Derek was gay.

Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 28 November 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Graeff plays Joe the newspaper reporter, FWIW. Intriguingly, the movie suggests that Joe and the female lead were an item before Derek came along and she transferred her affections.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 28 November 2004 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

What happened to Mister TORTCHA?

Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I already knew this story (having done a wee bit of editing on the MST3K movie FAQ) but got the principals all mixed up. Shoulda figured that Graeff was Joe, who was to my mind the cutest actor in the bunch.

Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Casuistry: that would be (Robert) King Moody -- the original Ronald McDonald! Now dead as of three years ago.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:58 (twenty-one years ago)

That's batshit crazy, that is.

Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:01 (twenty-one years ago)

"When you come to order your Big Mac, make sure you pay promptly or you will be sentenced to TORTCHA!"

Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know what MST3K is - I've never seen any. The name just reminds me of those excellent CBS radio plays - but I doubt there is a connection...

Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Whoa whoa whoa WHOA...look who Moody married for twenty years! Wow!

Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:13 (twenty-one years ago)

MST3K was a moderately successful cowtown puppet show.

Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay, NOW I'm utterly flabbergasted! So when they filmed Teenagers he had already been married to her for four years. Good grief.

Among other revelations about the film Mr. Valley discovered was that everything was filmed silently and then looped later. Compared to The Creeping Terror, they did a pretty good job with that.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:36 (twenty-one years ago)

It's not an incompetent film, just a goofy one.

Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Let me also direct you folks to http://www.rachelrosenthal.org. No, I'm not going to provide a link, lest she think we're mocking her.

Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Kevin: MST3K was a radical attempt at reinventing the way film theory is taught, folllowing the idea that you can learn more from watching bad movies than from watching good ones. The problem, of course, is that bad movies are difficult to watch. So the creators of the show added puppets.

Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:48 (twenty-one years ago)

(xpost) Oh. Damn.

Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 29 November 2004 00:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Hmm. I don't like puppets, so that might be a problem. I might download something and see if I like it though.

Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Monday, 29 November 2004 01:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Kevin -- try this thread:

Mystery Science Theater 3000: C/D, S/D.

...for recommendations and explanations and defenses.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 29 November 2004 01:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Cool, thanks. I've seen some torrents kicking about, so I'll probably give it a whirl - the puppet thing really puts me off though. Not that I'm against puppets in principle, just in practice - I've never seen anything puppet based that I liked.

Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Monday, 29 November 2004 01:36 (twenty-one years ago)

It's not just puppets, and Tom and Crow, the two chief puppets in question, exist in their own universe.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 29 November 2004 02:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, don't let any dislike of puppets put you off this -- their puppetness isn't really the point of it all, or all that noticeable.

Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 29 November 2004 04:12 (twenty-one years ago)

(And I always recommend starting with one of the strongest episodes -- "Manos: The Hands Of Fate", "Alien from L.A.", "Catalina Caper" -- Ned, Daddino, or I could give you plenty of suggestions. The one discussed in this thread would also be fine to start with as well.)

Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 29 November 2004 04:14 (twenty-one years ago)

fourteen years pass...

I love that there's actually a thread for this particular '50s POS sci-fi flick which I watched for the first time tonight. I wish there was a good general thread for the kind of '50s POS sci-fi flicks that have often wound up on MST3K (of which I still have yet to see an entire episode) but which I genuinely love. As evidenced by the above, they often wind up being cinematic outsider art.

Ned, if you're still looking for info fourteen years later, the wonderful Keep Watching the Skies! (an enormous tome which exhaustively covers '50s sci-fi cinema, for those who don't know) confirms the details you mention and adds quite a bit more besides. That and Joe Dante's Trailers from Hell overview confirm that Graeff's death, sadly, was a suicide.

A man of surgery, to remove the metal pellets from my flesh (Old Lunch), Sunday, 31 March 2019 05:12 (seven years ago)

A dog is reduced to a skeleton in the first five minutes.

There are no actual teenagers in this film.

The monster is a lobster which, in one shot, is badly superimposed over the action in such a way that that it's just sorta...hovering slightly above the ground.

I love this stuff so much.

A man of surgery, to remove the metal pellets from my flesh (Old Lunch), Sunday, 31 March 2019 05:18 (seven years ago)


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