I Was a Teenage Werewolf - Definition and Overview

I Was a Teenage Werewolf is a 1957 horror film starring Michael Landon.

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 is also a very disturbed man with definite mad scientist overtones, who sucessfully regresses his patient into a werewolf.

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. It really helped launch Landon's career, as Bonanza started only two years later. However, today it is largely regarded as a source of "camp" humor. The 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.

External Link

[1] (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050530/)IMDb entry for I Was a Teenage Werewolf