10 Fascinating Hollywood Stories You Didn't Know
3. Teenagers From Outer Space - A Film By Jesus Christ II
Having worked as an assistant to Roger Corman, Tom Graeff knew how to be thrifty, so while shooting his debut feature, 1959’s Teenagers From Outer Space, he blagged his way onto locations claiming to be shooting a student project, armed his ‘aliens’ with dime-store cap guns and had his actors lip-sync to pre-recorded dialogue, ensuring their lines were delivered correctly each time and thus saving film.
When a lawsuit from unhappy investors stripped him of his copyright claim, Graeff underwent a nervous breakdown, claiming in two Los Angeles Times ads that he’d changed his name to ‘Jesus Christ II’ and that God had personally tasked him with spreading love throughout the World. Expounding his message at various LA institutions, he campaigned for Death Row inmate Caryl Chessman’s release and petitioned Nikita Khrushchev for World Peace, earning himself jail time for disturbing the peace as well as a spell in a mental institution where he received electroshock treatment.
Struggling with depression, he was found dead at the wheel of his car one morning in December 1970, having killed himself with carbon monoxide poisoning. He was forty-one years old.