I Was a Teenage Werewolf Reviews

I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF successfully combines the troubled teenager film and the horror movie, two very popular genres in the 1950s. Young Landon is a troubled teenager who can't control his anger and is always involved in fights. Detective Phillips, with the help of Landon's girl friend, Lime, convinces the youth to see a psychiatrist, Bissell, who has been dabbling with hypnosis and regression (bringing a person back to his primal roots). Every time Landon is startled he is transformed--not into a werewolf, but into a prehistoric primate. This film touched on a subject that was explored further in ALTERED STATES (1980). The regression theme is put on the shelf in the last third of the film when Landon goes on the rampage, and this is when the movie becomes just another low-budget horror film. The sequence where Landon is transformed into the beast as he watches a girl practice on the parallel bars is a classic moment in horror film history. Director Fowler (in his first feature) aptly blended horror, science fiction, rock 'n' roll, and teen problems smoothly into an entertaining film.