I Was a Teenage Frankenstein

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (aka Teenage Frankenstein) is a film starring Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates and Gary Conway released by American International Pictures (AIP) in November 1957 as a double feature with Blood of Dracula. It is the follow-up to AIP's box-office hit I Was a Teenage Werewolf released less than five months earlier. Both films later received a sequel in the fictional crossover How to Make a Monster, released in July 1958. The film stars Whit Bissel, Phyllis Coates, Robert Burton, Gary Conway and George Lynn.

Plot

Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell), a guest lecturer from England, talks Dr. Karlton (Robert Burton) into becoming an unwilling accomplice in his secret plan to actually assemble a human being from the parts of different cadavers. After recovering of a body from a catastrophic automobile wreck, Professor Frankenstein takes the body to his laboratory-morgue, where in various drawers he keeps spare parts of human beings. The Professor also enlists the aid of Margaret (Phyllis Coates), as his secretary to keep all callers away from the laboratory.

Margaret, becoming suspicious of what is going on, decides to investigate and goes down to the morgue. She is panic-stricken by the monster (Gary Conway) who has been activated by electricity following the grafting of a new leg and arm. She dares not tell the Professor about her feelings, and keeps silent for the present. On a couple of occasions, the professor takes discarded human body parts and feeds them to an alligator concealed in a hidden chamber.

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, has the monster kill her and feeds her remains to the alligator. Dr. Karlton, sent out of town, knows none of this.

The Professor accompanies the monster to a Lover's Lane, where he kills a teenage boy in order to obtain his face. The boy's face is successfully grafted onto the monster. Professor Frankenstein tells Dr. Karlton of his plans to dismember his creation and ship him in various boxes to England — there to put him together again. When they strap the monster down again, he becomes suspicious and tears loose to throw Dr. Frankenstein into the alligator pit, while Dr. Karlton runs for help.

When Dr. Karlton arrives with the police, the monster, who is maddened with fright, backs into the electrical dial board. Contact with the iron wrist bands 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, and the original mangled face of the victim who became the monster.

Cast

Production

I Was a Teenage Werewolf had been a big success for AIP and a Texas exhibitor requested two new horror movies from the studio if they 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.^[2]

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein was filmed in black and white, with the ending in color for a vivid effect. The film was shot at Ziv studios. Cohen says that the alligator they hired for the movie had been used to dispose of bodies by a serial killer from a small town outside Dallas.^[2]

Reception

Film critic Richard W. Nason in his review for The New York Times, said:

If you discount any immediate connection between the mass media and the temper of the culture, then the film warrants little attention ... the automaton, enacted by Gary Conway, is a teen-ager assemble[d] from the limbs of other teenagers. This is, in one sense, abhorrent. 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. Before one such act of surgical perversion, the mad doctor'[s] assistant says, "I have no stomach for it." That would be a plausible reaction for any adult who had read the day's headlines about teen-age crime."^[3]

Film historian and critic Leonard Maltin dismissed I Was a Teenage Frankenstein as, "... campy junk ... Doesn't live up to that title, worth catching only for Bissell's immortal line: 'Answer me! You have a civil tongue in your head! I know – I sewed it in there!"^[4]

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein was released on VHS/NTSC videocassette in 1991 by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video under the shortened title Teenage Frankenstein which was the original theatrical title also used when released in the UK by Anglo-Amalgamated.

See also

• List of films featuring Frankenstein's monster

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

• I Was a Teenage Frankenstein at TCMDB
• I Was a Teenage Frankenstein at the Internet Movie Database
• I Was a Teenage Frankenstein at AllMovie
• I Was a Teeange Frankenstein at Hermancohen.com