My friend William Watson recommended the “Just Watch” app not that long ago as a way to find out what is streaming where. Since I am trying to knock most of the movies off the Pop Chart Lab’s Fill-in Filmography, I figured something like that could come in handy. It’s actually pretty cool. Tell the app what streaming services you subscribe to, and it will tell you were you can watch whatever TV shows and movies you ask it about. Or, at least, that’s the theory. On a whim, I asked it about I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Nothing came up. Like, at all. The title was not in the app’s catalog or something. There were plenty of similarly titled works or part of the title, but not this somewhat well-known cult sort of horror movie with a goofy title remembered as an early role for TV star Michael Landon.
Then I checked YouTube on another whim and found out someone had uploaded the whole movie for “educational purposes”. It was only a little over an hour, so why not?
Tony Rivers (Landon) is a troubled young man. With something of a hair trigger, he keeps getting into fights at school over the slightest of provocations. His father (Malcolm Atterbury) seems like a caring man, but he also has to work long shifts, and as a widower, just plain can’t be there for his son. Tony does have a loving girlfriend in the form of Arlene (Yvonne Lime), but her parents disapprove of Tony. On a recommendation from a cop, Tony goes to see hypnotherapist Dr. Brandon (Whit Bissell), a man who secretly has a plan to use Tony as some sort of experimental subject. Brandon believes humanity was somehow superior in ages long since past when people were often able to transform into half-animal werewolves. Tony is the right subject to prove it. As such, Tony has no idea his sessions are there to force his transformation into a snarling beast. It’s only a matter of time before he kills someone.
That is basically this movie, and it is the most basic and formulaic of 50s horror films. Brandon is a scientist convinced he’s right to transform a man into a wolf for some reason because he and he alone feels that makes the transformed person a superior person. Why? Who knows? His spineless assistant Dr. Wagner (Joseph Mell) can only verbally say again and again that this is a bad idea, but he doesn’t actually do anything about it. Meanwhile, even as Tony’s life seems to be improving in small ways, he knows something is wrong, especially after the first victim turns up in the woods. It’s a werewolf movie, so it’s good odds Tony will be a tragic victim at the end of this as well. He doesn’t want to kill anyone. It’s just the beast inside of him has other ideas.
Really, this was a stock 50s horror movie. The acting was fine but nothing special. The monster make-up is somewhat cool and distinctive, but the werewolf doesn’t appear until the movie is more than half over. The body count is fairly small all things being equal. The biggest action sequence is probably werewolf Tony fighting an angry German shepherd. The first half features a at-the-time new rock song and a dance sequence to go with it. The movie does take its time to get to know Tony, and Landon actually does a good job with it, but outside of the title, I don’t think this is a particularly memorable movie.
Now, Landon is best known for more family-friendly TV work with roles in Bonanzo, Little House of the Prairie, and Highway to Heaven. It is nice to see an actor do something outside of his perceived wheelhouse, but this is more of a case where Landon started here and hadn’t established himself as much, so this is more of a case where he took whatever roles he could. He’s not bad, but I don’t think this is the sort of movie that anyone could watch and anticipate the lead actor would go on to greater stardom on the small screen. It’s nothing terrible, but it’s nothing all that great either.
Grade: C
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