I Was a Teenage Frankenstein ** (Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates, Robert Burton, Gary Conway) – Classic Movie Review 3697

Whit Bissell returns as a different character in director Herbert L Strock’s pretty dreadful 1958 follow-up to I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), with the acting, writing and direction all over the place. This American International Pictures release is just about watchable, but without Teenage Werewolf original star Michael Landon, it largely seems a waste of time.

This time Bissell plays the mad Professor Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Los Angeles-based Fifties descendant, a university lecturer with an alligator pit under his house!

The Professor steals body parts of dead athletes from a crashed plane and creates a horrible-looking monster from the bits of bodies in his basement, keeping it a secret from his fiancée Margaret (Phyllis Coates). He sends the monster out to look for an attractive new head, which it promptly finds is still being worn by teenager Bob (Gary Conway), who is then kidnapped and becomes the Teenage Monster. Unfortunately, it still has a hideously disfigured face, and, perhaps because of that, goes on a killing spree.

It is shot in black and white by Lothrop B Worth but a lively colour sequence for the climax in which the monster is electrocuted gives it a lift. Ironically Britain’s Hammer Studios were then making The Curse of Frankenstein, the film that revived the then flagging horror genre. The credited writer Kenneth Langtry is really Aben Kandel and producer Herman Cohen.

Also in the cast are Robert Burton, George Lynn, John Cliff, Marshall Bradford and Claudia Bryar.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3697

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