I Was a Teenage Werewolf
Directed by Gene Fowler Jr.
Written by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel
1957/USA
Sunset Productions
First viewing/YouTube
[box] Tony Rivers: People bug me. [/box]
The horror film is updated for the rock ‘n roll era.
Tony Rivers (Michael Landon) is a budding juvenile delinquent. The only people that see the good in him are his widower father and his girlfriend. He has a hair trigger temper and hates to be touched, even lightly. He gets into a violent fist fight and a kindly detective suggests that he go for treatment from psychiatrist Dr. Alfred Brandon. Tony resists seeing a head shrinker. Then we move to a Halloween party that Tony and his buddy have organized, complete with practical jokes and an R&R song performed by a bongo playing teenager.
Another altercation at the party gets Tony to agree to see Brandon, who uses hypnotism as part of his treatment. What he doesn’t know is that the evil doctor is doing research on returning man to his most primitive and Tony has been selected for his special proclivities. The title tells the rest of the story.
This was a fun way to ease back in to my movie watching schedule. It’s not great or anything but is entertaining enough and captures a certain spirit of the late 50’s quite well. It was Landon’s big screen debut. He would go on to be a fixture of prime time TV in such series as “Bonanza” and “Little House on the Prairie”.
Trailer
