Review of I Was a Teenage Werewolf

I recall watching (and enjoying) Herman Cohen's production of I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (1957) several years ago in the wee small hours on Italian TV and I thought of finally acquiring it and its follow-up/companion piece (the film under review) for this Halloween Challenge; not being familiar with the latter and coming at the tail-end of the month, I will only have time to get to the second entry. I am not sure but, on a preliminary viewing, I would say that WEREWOLF was less enjoyable than the campier FRANKENSTEIN. Whit Bissell returns in the role of the mad doctor who, over the meek protests of his long-suffering assistant injects brilliant juvenile delinquent(!) Michael Landon with a regressive serum that, unaccountably, turns him into a lycanthrope (when a simian creature would have been more conducive to his argument)! True to formula, Landon has an ineffectual widowed father, does not see eye-to-eye with his prospective authoritarian father-in-law and is also frequently picked up by the Police for brawling with his fellow students; like the same film-makers' equally lackluster BLOOD OF Dracula (1957) – that I caught up with earlier this month – the action here is virtually confined to the college campus. Landon's first transformation is not even shown so that when we first see the ludicrously hirsute creature (donning a hip track-suit, no less), the film is more than half over. However, they make up for this by keeping Landon almost exclusively 'in character' for the rest of the film (i.e. even during daylight hours). The climactic confrontation – where a foaming-at-the-mouth Landon metes out poetic justice upon Bissell and is cornered by the Police in the latter's lab – is quite effectively done and, for the record, as with the afore-mentioned and similarly teen-oriented Dracula flick, we are treated to the dubious pleasure of a rock'n'roll number by Jerry Blaine sporting the heady title of "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo". Apart from late, beloved TV star Landon (whose big-screen highlight, strangely enough, this remains), there are also two actors worth mentioning in the cast (albeit in subservient roles): Vladiimir Sokoloff (as the Transylvanian[!] janitor of the local Police precinct) and future TV Zorro, Guy Williams (as the junior cop who terminates Landon's mild 'reign of terror').