I Was a Teenage Werewolf | |
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Directed by | Gene Fowler Jr. |
Produced by | Herman Cohen |
Written by | Herman Cohen Aben Kandel |
Starring |
Michael Landon Whit Bissell Yvonne Lime |
Music by | Paul Dunlap |
Distributed by | American International Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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76 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $82,000 or $123,000 |
Box office | $2,000,000 |
I Was a Teenage Werewolf is a 1957 horror film starring Michael Landon as a troubled teenager, Yvonne Lime and Whit Bissell. It was co-written and produced by cult film producer Herman Cohen---and was one of the most successful films released by American International Pictures (AIP).
It was originally released as a double feature with Invasion of the Saucer Men. They included the tagline, "We DARE You To See The Most Amazing Pictures Of Our Time!"
Tony Rivers (Michael Landon), a troubled teenager at Rockdale High, is known for losing his temper and overreacting. A campus fight between Tony and classmate Jimmy (Tony Marshall) gets the attention of the local police, Det. Donovan (Barney Phillips) in particular. Donovan breaks up the fight and advises Tony to talk with a "psychologist" that works at the local aircraft plant, Dr. Alfred Brandon (Whit Bissell), a practitioner of hypnotherapy.
Tony declines, but his girlfriend Arlene (Yvonne Lime), as well as his widowed father (Malcolm Atterbury), show concern about his violent behavior. Later, at a Halloween party at the "haunted house", an old house at which several of the teenagers hang out, Tony attacks his friend Vic (Kenny Miller) after being surprised from behind. After seeing the shocked expressions on his friends's faces, he realizes he needs help and goes to see Dr. Brandon.
On Tony's first visit, however, Brandon makes it clear that he has his own agenda while the teenager lies on the psychiatrist's couch: Tony will be an excellent subject for his experiments with a scopolamine serum he's developed that regresses personalities to their primitive instincts. Brandon believes that the only future mankind has is to "hurl him back to his primitive state." Although Brandon's assistant, Dr. Hugo Wagner (Joseph Mell), protests that the experiment might kill Tony, Brandon continues and within two sessions suggests to Tony that he was once a wild animal.