I Was a Teenage Werewolf *** (1957, Michael Landon, Whit Bissell, Yvonne Lime) – Classic Movie Review 3698

The cult 1957 horror movie I Was a Teenage Werewolf is infamous as the film that started the Fifties teen horror cycle. Michael Landon plays a crazy, mixed-up teenager called Tony Rivers, who goes to an even crazier psychiatrist (Whit Bissell), who uses him for shocking regression experiments.

Director Gene Fowler Jnr’s cult 1957 horror movie I Was a Teenage Werewolf is renowned, or perhaps infamous, as the film that started the Fifties teen horror cycle.

Once upon a time, long long ago, Michael Landon (1936–1991) is a troubled, crazy, mixed-up teenager called Tony Rivers, who goes to an even crazier psychiatrist by the name of Dr Alfred Brandon (Whit Bissell) for help through hypnotherapy. But the evil doctor uses him for shocking regression experiments.

The troubled teen is hypnotised, injected with a serum and changed into a hairy monster of a lycanthrope, a rampaging werewolf. It’s not really a very effective cure, but here it makes for some splendidly offbeat, ultra-cheap entertainment, made on a budget of only $82,000.

Perhaps because of the low budget, Landon’s werewolf make-up is rotten. He just looks as though he forgot to shave. But on the acting front he is the film’s main asset, along with Bissell, both of them doing well, especially in the circumstances.

Also in the cast are Yvonne Lime as Arlene Logan, Vladimir Sokoloff as Pepe the Janitor, Guy Williams as Officer Chris Stanley, Malcolm Atterbury as Charles Rivers, Robert Griffin as Police Chief P.F. Baker, Tony Marshall, Dawn Richard, Barney Phillips as Detective Donovan, Ken Miller, Eddie Marr and Dorothy Crehan.

‘Explosive! Amazing! Terrifying! You won’t believe your eyes,’ the daft ads of the day screamed. But they must have worked, because it grossed $2 million at US box offices alone.

I Was a Teenage Werewolf was remade the same year by the same producer, Herman Cohen, as director Herbert L Strock’s Blood of Dracula, with a female slant.

Bissell returned as a different character – university lecturer Professor Frankenstein – in director Herbert L Strock’s pretty dreadful 1958 follow-up I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3698

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Whit Bissell plays Dr Alfred Brandon.