The Gargons are crustacean alien predators, one of which was the secondary antagonist of the 1959 Tom Graeff film Teenagers from Outer Space. They are used as a food source by a species of supremacist humanoid aliens, who intended to relocated the Gargons to Earth. Externally, they strongly resemble Earth lobsters, although in Earth's atmosphere, which has a higher nitrogen level than their homeworld, they would grow to massive size, further bolstered by eating organic substances, and are able to quickly kill and consume humans.
The Gargon was portrayed by a lobster.
History[]
Gargons arose on the homeworld of a humanoid alien race, which used the Gargons as food source. However, the Gargons were still dangerous, and thus, the alien leader sought to relocate them to another world. A small Gargon was taken with a spaceship crew designated as Expedition Zeal-6, who went from planet to planet trying to find a world that it could survive on. However, every planet they landed on proved inhospitable, until they eventually found Earth. On Earth, one of the crewmen, the teenage Derek, deserted the crew upon realizing that Earth had intelligent life, which the Gargon would surely eradicate, especially because proof that the world was hospitable to the Gargons would prompt a full relocation of Gargon herds to Earth. The captain and crewman Thor managed to restrain Derek and bring the Gargon out, seeing that it appeared to thrive in the atmosphere. However, the Gargon suddenly went limp, with the crew believing it had died due to the higher nitrogen levels.
After Derek managed to escape from the other aliens, the Gargon awoke again, and the crew concluded that the higher nitrogen merely shocked it, and that now it would surely grow to a much larger size, with the captain saying that the Gargons would be harvested from the air due to the greater growth. Crewmen Sol and Morro were then sent to bind the Gargon in a nearby cave until the rest of the fleet arrived, where it began growing at a greatly accelerated rate.
Some time later, a series of events involving Thor chasing Derek across a nearby human town led to a human reporter and police officer investigating the Gargon cave. Within, the now-enlarged Gargon quickly ripped apart the police officer and consumed the remains, allowing it to grow even larger and break its restraints, leaving the cave as the reporter escaped. After Thor was arrested by human authorities, losing his disintegrator gun in a car chase, Derek searched the hillside of the chase for the weapon, alongside a human girl named Betty Morgan. While the two bonded, the large Gargon tried to attack them, but Derek managed to fend it off with a rock, also finding the non-functional disintegrator and escaping with Betty. The Gargon continued to grow, reaching titanic sizes after eating a group of humans who were searching for it following the reporter's account, and then smelled more humans in the town. Derek, knowing the Gargon would destroy the town, managed to repower the disintegrator using the city's power grid, killing the Gargon with a single blast as it neared the hillside on the outskirts of town.
Just after the Gargon was killed, the alien fleet approached Earth, carrying more Gargons. Derek met the flagship, which was piloted by the Zeal-6 captain and the alien leader himself, who was actually Derek's father. Derek managed to trick the leader into letting him guide the ships in for a landing, only to make all the ships ram into the ground at full speed, killing himself, the leader, the captain, and Thor, who had been retrieved from the hospital he was held at. After the death of the leader, and the presumed collapse of the alien regime, what became of Gargons left on the alien homeworld is unknown, although they are presumably still used as food sources.