Teenagers Battle the Thing (1958) User Reviews

More like a home movie than something you'd actually pay to see.

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 4 August 2021]

A high school teacher does what most high school teachers would do....he takes a group of his students out to explore for ancient crap. And, while they do find a few broken pots and the like, they also find a mummified ancient man. Soon, the seemingly dead thing goes on a very brief rampage until it's very easily killed by the teens and their teacher.

The movie appears to have been made with a budget of about $58...at most. The actors cannot act, the monster looks ludicrous but the worst thing about this....it manages to also be incredibly dull. This is not a funny horror film like "Robot Monster" or "Bride of the Monster"...it's just a horrible film...period.

You will root for the Thing

[scsu1975 · 1/10 · 16 November 2022]

Boring crap (I started falling asleep during the opening credits) about five high school kids and two adults who go on some kind of half-baked archaeological expedition in the southwest and unearth a mummy who comes back to life as a hairy-looking freak. The fun begins when they discover a stone tablet on the ground. When one of the kids asks if the writing on it was made by Indians, one of the "experts" declares it was written by cavemen, "perhaps as ancient as Pithecanthropus Erectus." That's about as risqué as this film gets. Naturally, these clowns then dig up the tablet and find a cave underneath. This is probably where the director and screenwriter were hiding. In short order, they bring a mummy to the surface, although it looks more like a Plaster of Paris statue. Eventually the thing wakes up and kills one person who apparently just wandered onto the set. The police show up - one guy, that's all the producer could afford. He is completely useless, and is attacked by the creature. Unfortunately, he survives.

I wonder how long it took for someone to come up with the title.

Footage from this dud was used years later in "The Curse of Bigfoot," which I now have no desire to see.

Stupid and Not Mysterious

[arfdawg-1 · 1/10 · 29 July 2019]

One of the other two reviews on here says this movie has a mysterious background. There is nothing mysterious about it.

Basically the movie sucked, it barely got a release and then like 20 years later during a Bigfoot craze in the news, the owners tried to cash in by expanding the unreleased film. The two stars from the original movie appear as adults in the opening scene of the 1976 film. The rest of Curse of Bigfoot consists of the entire 1963 film seen as a flashback. Except this original film focused on the resurrection of a mummy and had nothing to do with Bigfoot.

Anyway you look at it, it sucks

The Original Version

[Michael_Elliott · 18 August 2015]

Teenagers Battle The Thing (1958)

** (out of 4)

A professor takes some of his students out into the woods where they discover an underground tomb. They locate some Indian items but the big discover is some sort of mummy. Soon the mummy comes back to life and it's a murdering ape-like creature.

TEENAGERS BATTLE THE THING has a bizarre story behind its production and one that I'm going to guess is a mystery since I wasn't able to turn anything up on it. This 58 minute movie was completed in 1958 but it never got released outside the filmmaker's hometown. The film remained unseen until 1976 when footage was added to it and it was released as CURSE OF BIGFOOT. The footage in that version is in color and I haven't seen it yet so my comments with be about the original version only.

As far as this film goes, I must admit that it's one of those movies that you can enjoy while watching it but then when it's over you get a little upset that there wasn't more. In other words, you stayed glued to the movie expecting something or anything to happen so that keeps you entertained. Then, the movie is suddenly over and you can't help but wonder what the heck you just watched and why there was so little of it. The ape man costume here looks extremely cheap and corny but in its own way it's a nice outfit and it certainly makes for a good villain. I'm a little confused on why they only feature the monster in a couple scenes.

It's pretty obvious why this never got released because they've got more talking than actual monster. I'd understand if they didn't have a monster costume at all but you've got one so why on Earth did they not have it in the movie more? I guess this question will never be answered. Technically speaking the film is your typical "C" grade horror picture with the type of performances that you'd expect from it. TEENAGERS BATTLE THE THING is certainly far from good but it's not as bad as some of the other monsters movies made in the 50s.

Hey! Let's grab the camera and head into the hills!

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 23 February 2019]

We've got sandwiches so we're all set!

Ultra dullsville science fiction/horror features a cast I won't bother even mentioning by name because, well to put it bluntly, who would care? It is an overly talkie, pretentiously written use of college science books in an attempt to create a script, combined with the popular drive-in trend of badly costumed monsters appearing in bits and pieces to occasionally cause menace to those who discover its existence. An overly dramatic use of symphonic music attempts to add a touch of tension to the film, but there really is absolutely no tension at all. Bad dialogue, such as when they come across a giant rock formation and say, "Hey, it looks like there is a ledge up there, let's go up and check it out!", like what else did they think there would be up there? The chisler from Mount Rushmore?

A pretentious narration of how certain creatures came to evolve from ancient times opens the film and is completely pointless, an absolute time-waster meant only to increase the length of this weak script. The college age kids, who look closer to 30, spend more time looking around then doing anything that constitutes any sort of plotline or action, and it becomes frustrating waiting for the monster outside a brief appearance at the beginning to reappear. The only chilling moment is the discovery of a closed off cave, found by the simple removal of a tablet like piece of concrete. Also, the "by the numbers" structure weakens the attempts for the intended use of real science in developing the story, which in reflection, ain't all that interesting.