Movies - I Was a Teenage Werewolf

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	Movies - I Was a Teenage Werewolf

I Was a Teenage Werewolf is a 1957 horror film starring Michael Landon as a troubled teenager and Whit Bissell as the primary adult. It was written and produced by cult film producer Herman Cohen, and was one of the most successful films released by AIP (American International Pictures).

Landon's character, a disturbed, angry young man in the James Dean Rebel Without a Cause
tradition, seeks hypnotherapy for his problem. Unfortunately, the practitioner he seeks out, played by Bissell, is also a very disturbed man with definite mad scientist overtones, who successfully regresses his patient into a werewolf with tragic results.

The film was very profitable, as it was made on a very low budget but grossed as much as $2,000,000 per week in its early weeks of release, huge box office by 1957 standards. Released in June, it was followed five months later by I Was a Teenage Frankenstein
, and by the sequel How to Make a Monster in July of 1958.

In November of 1957, less than five months after the release of I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and coinciding with the release of I Was Teenage Frankenstein, AIP released Blood of Dracula, a film which bears more than a passing resemblance to their summer box office hit. More or less a remake, and with the hero and villain roles now both played by females, Blood of Dracula could have easily been titled "I Was a Teenage Vampire" (in fact, I Was a Teenage Werewolf's working title was "Blood of the Werewolf"). Blood of Dracula, with a story and screenplay credit by I Was a Teenage Werewolf writer Ralph Thornton (a pseudonym for AIP producer Herman Cohen), features many other similarities to I Was a Teenage Werewolf - for instance, both have (among other things): a teenager with social behavior problems, an adult 'mad scientist' who is searching for the perfect guinea pig under the guise of helping troubled youth, an observer who can tell the killings are the work of a monster, a disbelieving police chief afraid of the press, a song written by Jerry Blaine and Paul Dunlap accompanied by a choreographed "ad-lib" dance number, hypnosis as scientific medical treatment, drug injections, specific references to Carpathia, hairy transformation scenes, and even some of the same dialogue. In addition, two prominent actors from I Was a Teenage Werewolf are also featured in Blood of Dracula, Malcolm Atterbury and Louise Lewis, with Lewis's villain, 'Miss Branding' a practically perfect female version of Whit Bissel's 'Dr. Brandon.' However, few critics have drawn a connection between the two films, and while most reference works consider I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and How to Make a Monster as direct follow-ups to I Was a Teenage Werewolf, not even cinema guru Leonard Maltin speaks of Blood of Dracula as even being related to the trilogy.

Pop culture impact

I Was a Teenage Werewolf helped launch Landon's career, as Bonanza started only two years later. The idea of an adult human turning into a beast was nothing new, of course, but the idea of a teenager doing just that in a movie was considered avante garde and even shocking in 1957. Today, however, the film is largely regarded as a source of "camp" humor.

The film's Police Gazette-style title (which had already been utilized by Hollywood previously with pictures such as 1949's I Was a Male War Bride and 1951's I Was a Communist for the FBI) with the inclusion of the adjective "teenage," was constantly mocked in the late 1950s and early 1960s; many sitcom television series in particular had characters go to movies titled I Was a Teenage ... Dinosaur, Monster, etc., and it was often referenced in monologues by comedians and bits by disc jockeys. An outstanding example of this practice is the 1959 "Dobie Gillis" novel I Was a Teenage Dwarf by Max Shulman. The original working title for AIP's 1958 sci-fi film Attack of the Puppet People was "I Was a Teenage Doll."

I Was a Teenage Werewolf likely paved the way for Walt Disney to do his version of a Felix Salten shapeshifting novel, The Hound of Florence, (with Disney favorite Tommy Kirk as the hapless teenager and A-lister Fred MacMurray as the answer to B-lister Whit Bissell) released in 1959 under the title, The Shaggy Dog.

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Movies - I Was a Teenage Werewolf

Pop culture impact

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