I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN Reviews and free on YouTube

  

‘Body of a boy! Mind of a monster! Soul of an unearthly thing!’
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein is a 1957 sci-fi horror film about a mad professor who creates a hulking hybrid from the body of an accident victim; his “creation” awakens and goes on a killing spree. Also released as Teenage Frankenstein (UK title).

Directed by Herbert L. Strock (The Crawling Hand; Blood of Dracula) from a screenplay credited to Kenneth Langtry [actually producer Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel].

The movie stars Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates, Gary Conway and Robert Burton.

The film is the follow-up to AIP’s box-office hit I Was a Teenage Werewolf released less than five months earlier by American International Pictures (AIP).

A Texas exhibitor asked if two new horror movies could be ready by Thanksgiving. AIP commissioned Herman Cohen to make I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and Blood of Dracula. Cohen says the two films were written and put in front of the cameras in only four weeks “so I had to really, really cut down” in terms of production values.

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein was filmed in black and white, with the ending in colour for shocking effect.

Plot [contains spoilers]:
Professor Frankenstein, a guest lecturer from England, talks Doctor Karlton into becoming an unwilling accomplice in his secret plan to assemble a human being from the parts of different human cadavers.

After recovering a body from a catastrophic automobile wreck, Professor Frankenstein takes the body to his laboratory/morgue, where he keeps spare parts of human beings in various drawers. The professor also enlists the aid of Margaret, as his secretary, to keep all callers away from the laboratory.

Becoming more suspicious, Margaret decides to investigate and goes down to the morgue. She is panic-stricken by the monster who has been activated by electricity following the grafting of a new leg and arm. She dares not to tell the Professor about her feelings and keeps silent for the present.

One night, the monster leaves the laboratory. He peers into a girl’s apartment. The girl becomes hysterical and starts screaming; in his attempt to silence her, he kills her in panic and flees. The next morning, the hunt for the murderer is on. Margaret, angry at the professor, tells him that she knows that the monster is responsible for the murder. The professor, taking no chances, commands the monster to kill her and then feed her remains to his pet alligator. Doctor Karlton, sent out of town, knows nothing about this.

The professor accompanies the monster to a lover’s lane, where he kills a teenage boy to obtain his face. The boy’s face is successfully grafted onto the monster. Professor Frankenstein tells Docor Karlton of his plans to dismember his creation and ship him in various boxes to England and then return there to put him together again. When they strap the monster down again, he becomes suspicious and tears loose. He throws Professor Frankenstein into the alligator pit while Doctor Karlton runs for help.

When Doctor Karlton arrives with the police, the monster, maddened with fright, backs into the electrical dial board. Contact with his iron wristbands electrocutes him and he falls to the ground, dead. Karlton tells the police that he will never forget the way the monster’s face looked after the accident.

Reviews:
“As in Teenage Werewolf, the monster comes to represent alienated adolescence and Whit Bissell is again cast as a calculating and manipulative scientist/authority figure. It is amusing to see that in this film Frankenstein is no longer traditionally a scientist with misguided intentions, he is utterly ruthless from the outset.” Moria

“When the monster twists off a handsome jock’s head so he can have it for his own, he carries it back to the lab in a birdcage! That’s sick, man!! Little moments like that make cinema such a viable art form. But despite this, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein is still a stupid movie, and despite its being a stupid movie, I loved every minute of it.” Movie Magazine International

“One of the mini series of teenage science fiction films that followed in the wake of I Was a Teenage Werewolf, it remains watchable because Kandel’s script, though sadly not Strock’s direction which is pedestrian, has an element of parody about it.” Phil Hardy (editor), The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror

“It forces one to acknowledge the impression that such films may aggravate the mass social sickness euphemistically termed ‘juvenile delinquency’ … In this particular film, there are graphic displays of human dismemberment.” The New York Times, January 30, 1958

” …intelligently and imaginatively done … there is enough of genuine frightfulness to satisfy and fan…” The Hollywood Reporter

“Immensely silly but enjoyable piece of hokum, with a classic title, a serious performance against the odds by Whit Bissell…” Alan Frank, The Horror Film Handbook

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