“What I create I must control”
Mad scientist, Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell) is in America as a guest lecturer. Somehow he manages to talk Dr. Karlton (Robert Burton) into becoming an accomplice in his grizzly plan to jig saw puzzle together a person. He keeps him involved by blackmailing him. An accident in front of the house provides the perfect body to play god. A teenager is thrown from a two car wreck. Both cars are on fire so no one knows that Dr. Freakazoid has snatched the teenager’s body and absconded with it to his laboratory. He also enlists the help of a Margaret (Phyllis Coates) as his secretary and watch dog by promising to marry her. He has some spare parts in his home-made morgue, the rest he gets from grave robbing. Any body parts he can’t use or doesn’t need he feeds to his pet alligator.
Margaret finds out about the monster in the basement but keeps quiet until one night the monster leaves the laboratory. He peeps into a girl's apartment. When she sees him she freaks. To keep her quiet he kills her and flees. Margaret gets angry at the professor. She tells him that she knows about the monster and that it is responsible for the murder. The professor, thinking only of himself and his experiment has the monster kill her. He feeds her to his pet. Dr. Karlton is currently out of town and is not aware of the latest event.
Back in full swing the professor accompanies the monster to a lover's lane. He has the monster kill a teenage boy named Bob in order to obtain his face. He successfully grafts the new face onto the monster. Afraid people will recognize the new face as Bob, Professor Frankenstein decides he needs to show him off in England. To get his masterpiece to England he decides he needs to dismantle him and ship him in various boxes and then put him back together again when he gets to England. The new Bob monster has an issue with that. A big issue.
“I Was A Teenage Frankenstein” was released in November 1957. With the success of “I Was A Teenage Werewolf” issued in June, AIP was in a flutter to repeat the lightning strike. To that end AIP spewed out “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein”, “Blood of Dracula”, and “How to Make a Monster”. All variations of teenage monster movies. Whit Bissell plays Dr. Frankenstein. His character is supposed to be British but Bissell doesn’t have a British accent. The last minute and a half of the movie is in color. The rest is black and white. A gimmick that was done from time to time to enhance a particular part of a movie.
“I Was A Teenage Frankenstein” is a perfect example of camp. Not a great movie. Not even a good movie, but there is an appeal to it that makes it fun to watch. The monster make-up is pretty good. The acting and the dialogue are a little strange. The movie is full of wonderful quotes that are just a little off center. And the way Whit delivers them makes you cock your head and go… huh? The best, and most famous one being; “Speak, I know you have a civil tongue in your head because I sewed it back myself.” The movie is worth seeing just to hear all those wonderful lines.