“These must be the kids that cracked the ring the Army couldn’t even locate.”
Four teenagers, Regg (Don Sullivan), Skip (Paul Pepper), Julie (Mitzie Albertson) and Pam (Brianne Murphy) decide to go water skiing. They plan on having lunch on an island. The island is far enough out that most people don’t even know it’s there. While they explore the island they see a line of people shuffling along as if there is something wrong with them. They are spotted by a woman dressed in an evening gown. They run back to their boat intent on leaving. When they get back to the shore they find their boat is missing.
They find a large house on the island. The kids go to the house looking for who took their boat. The door is answered by the woman in the evening gown. She is Dr. Myra (Katherine Victor). She is a scientist that is working for a “foreign government”. She is working on a gas for them that turns people into zombies. Their aim is to take over the United States by making everyone an easily controlled zombie. So far she has only tested her formula on convicts and drunks. Dr. Myra plans on using the teenagers as final test subjects. She has already zombified a gorilla plus she has a servant Ivan (Chuck Niles) that seems to be the only successful zombie she’s managed to create.
“Teenage Zombies” was released in 1959 and was directed, produced and written by Jerry Warren. He’s the guy that brought you “The Incredible Petrified World”. There are low budget “B” movies and then there are bottom of the barrel lower budget “B” movies. Finally we have, scrape the sizes no budget doesn’t even qualify for a letter movies. Of which this is one.
The movie is a bit of a family affair. Brianne Murphy, who was Jerry Warren’s wife at the time, not only stars in the movie, as one of the teenagers (she was about 26 at the time), but was production supervisor and wardrobe supervisor. She later went on to be a famous cinematographer.
First of all there are no teenage zombies in “Teenage Zombies”. A couple of the girls are sort of zombified, but not for very long. The house used in the movie belonged to one of the actors. The music score is all stock music. The poster for the movie promises “Young Pawns thrust into pulsating cages of horror in a sadistic experiment!” I’ve never seen a ‘pulsating cage’ and I didn’t see one here either. As for the ‘horror in a sadistic experiment’, watching the movie would qualify so they got that right.
The writing is horrible, the acting atrocious, the special effects non-existent, the cinematography terrible. What it does have is Don Sullivan. You remember him from “The Giant Gila Monster.” But you probably won’t remember him from this. If you are a fan of zombies, or teenagers, or Don Sullivan, you won’t like this.