TOM GRAEFF PROJECTS

In 1956, Los Angeles area filmmaker Tom Graeff set about making his second independent feature film, Killers from Outer Space. Several years and title changes later, the film was released by Warner Brothers as Teenagers from Outer Space and a cult B-movie science fiction classic was born.

But Tom Graeff’s strange story didn’t begin or end with Teenagers from Outer Space. Living in those turbulent times when the repressive 1950s morphed into the swinging 60s, Graeff’s life mirrored that heady transformation. He threw himself into the social, religious, and sexual revolutions around him.

Low-budget auteur, bisexual pioneer, eccentric rabble rouser, and religious fanatic sent to save the world—Tom Graeff was all of these. Unknown in his own lifetime and largely forgotten today, Graeff’s fascinating, doomed journey is the ultimate Hollywood story—filled with ambition, delusion, sex, scandal, hope, and failure.

Jim Tushinski has been researching Graeff's live for over a decade and working on multiple projects including documentary and fictional narratives, film preservation and restoration, and The Tom Graeff Biography Project web site.