809 - I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF

Genre:  Teen Horror / Hypnosis (1957, B&W)

Synopsis:  A hotheaded young teen named Tony (played by a young Michael Landon who later disowned this film) is constantly getting into fights and, worst of all, throwing milk all over the place!  Everyone tries to convince him to get some help but he won’t listen.  Then, after the obligatory teen singing scene in which a guy does a particularly bad job of lip-syncing, a teen party becomes a practical joke fest and Tony beats up the dweeb who played a joke on him.  So Tony finally agrees to go and see a doctor about his bad-temper and milk-throwing problems and the doctor decides to experiment on the teen.  The doctor gives him a shot of some special serum and then hypnotizes him to go back to a past life, which transforms him into a werewolf (What?  Yet another hypnosis-based horror film???).  Now Werewolf-Tony goes out stalking, and he kills someone in the park.  The next day at school, Tony is watching a gymnast practice when the school bell goes off and causes him to transform into a werewolf.  After he kills the gymnast, he is chased into the woods.  Eventually, he goes back to see the doctor and, as the werewolf, gets revenge for the experimenting before the cops gun him down.

Don’s Review:  This was a half-way decent ’50s teen film.  Although the werewolf makeup were about as convincing as the ape makeup in Time of the Apes, this movie was reasonably watchable.  The riffing on this varied a bit early on, but then got pretty funny as the movie went on (Bill Corbett was particularly funny as he is getting better and better as Crow).  The host segments were somewhat weak, with a so-so Alien spoof featured in the SOL segments and a camping theme featured in the Mad segments.  Still an enjoyable episode due to the famous film featured.

Don’s Rating: