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.

Related Topics:
1957 - Horror film - Michael Landon - Whit Bissell - Herman Cohen

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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.

Related Topics:
James Dean - Rebel Without a Cause - Hypnotherapy - Mad scientist - Werewolf

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein - How to Make a Monster

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I Was a Teenage Werewolf really 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 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 film most 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 an answer to B-lister Whit Bissell) released in 1959 under the title, The Shaggy Dog.

Related Topics:
Bonanza - 1950s - 1960s - Sitcom - Television series - Comedian - Disc jockey - 1959 - "Dobie Gillis" - Novel - Max Shulman - Walt Disney - Felix Salten - Tommy Kirk - Fred MacMurray - The Shaggy Dog

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In April 1997, the movie was mocked directly when it was featured as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

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