Editor’s note: Yesterday I’d pointed you to the wrong link for this film. Here is the correct link. And note that it’s in the public domain, and therefore free!
In the late 1950s, movie producers couldn’t seem to get enough of the hip “teenage” angle for drive-in movies. This led, inevitably, to I Was A Teenage Werewolf, released by American International Pictures in 1957. Improbably, it starred the late Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven). It also turned out to be one of the most successful movies AIP ever released.
So AIP couldn’t resist following it up early the next year with I Was A Teenage Frankenstein. Let’s be clear: This is not great cinema. It’s clearly shlock, low-budget, exploitation fare. And yet, it’s become a cult classic.
I was a Teenage Frankenstein is set in the (then-)current era of the late 1950s. It focuses on the exploits of the Dr. Frankenstein’s great, great (etc) grandson, who follows in his same footsteps. Sadly, it doesn’t really turn over any new ground. (Ha!) It just takes the same basic story, modernizes the scenery, and adds some gross-out footage.
The Plot: It seems that the Dr. Frankenstein’s line of descendants ends with an English doctor who is conducting pretty much the same God-mimicking experiments as the original old man. The only difference is that this new, modern Frankenstein has decided that creating the “perfect” man requires using young bodies…that is, the bodies of teenagers. And conveniently, just as the good doctor is explaining this to us, we hear a horrific car crash just outside his home. Dr. Frankenstein runs out and pilfers the fresh corpse of a teenager from the wreckage as the foundation for his experiment.
Of course, the doctor gets some additional corpses to supply parts that will replace the ones that were damaged in the car crash. And after some gratuitous scenes of limb-severing, he manages to create a creature. Naturally, things don’t go quite as he’d planned, and the police get involved.
As a subplot, the doctor becomes engaged to his pretty young assistant who looks a lot like Lois Lane. Oh, wait: it is Lois Lane. The actress, Phyllis Coats, had played Lois Lane on The Adventures of Superman in 1952. Anyway, you shouldn’t get too attached to her, because Doctor F decides she’s not worth the complication once she learns his secrets.
Much of the plot hinges on the fact that this monster, assembled from teenage bodies, wants to be able to party and play like a normal teenager. The only thing stopping him is his hideously deformed face, presumably as a result of the car crash. This makes for pathos and for some great shock scenes where his mug freaks out some young girl. Eventually Dr. F gives him a face transplant, and you’d think that would make everything great, but the creation is still angry at his creator (he’s a teenager, after all) and things don’t turn out well for either of them.
The Monster: Gary Conway played the monster. Aside from the hideous face he sports for much of the film, he makes for the most buff, studly Frankenstein’s monster you’ve ever seen. It’s a little unsettling, this youthful, vigorous fellow in a tight T-shirt and with the voice of a normal, self-conscious teenager, with a face that looks like it’s spent some time in a Cuisinart.
The Atmosphere: Almost all the scenes take place inside Dr. Frankenstein’s house. Aside from some low-budget “mad scientist laboratory” equipment (flashing lights, operating table), there’s nothing you’d associate with a typical Frankenstein environment. No graveyards, no castles, no angry villagers, no electrical storms.
Instead, the movies tries to scare its viewers with the cheapest of shock scenes involving bloody, severed limbs and even a severed head that resides (for some reason) in a birdcage. The movie also turns several times to stock footage of a crocodile, which supposedly is what Dr. F uses to get rid of excess body parts from his victims.
And then, in what the producers must have thought was a climactic breakthrough at the end of the movie, the film changes from black and white to color to capture the lurid denouement when the monster is electrocuted. (Oh, wait. Should that have been a spoiler alert?)
So, I’d say this movie doesn’t have “atmosphere” so much as it has a desperate, garish style.
Overall Comments: This movie manages to push the envelope (for its day) in gratuitous shock while simultaneously breaking no real new ground with the Frankenstein story. There’s really very little to recommend this film.
Tomorrow: Allied Artists put out a somewhat better Frankenstein film later in the year, and this time Karloff is back! It’s titled Frankenstein 1970. I can’t find it online, though; I got my copy on DVD from the library.
Chasing Phantoms 