“You dare call a scientific triumph a mistake?”
Tony Rivers (Michael Landon) has an attitude problem. He’ll lose his temper and start a fight over the smallest thing. The last fight was with a classmate at Rockdale High. The fight brings the cops. Detective Donovan (Barney Phillips) recommends that Tony talk with a psychologist, Dr. Alfred Brandon (Whit Bissell), who uses hypnotherapy. Tony refuses, even when his girlfriend Arlene (Yvonne Line) and father (Malcolm Atterbury) try to talk him into it. Later, at a Halloween party Tony attacks his friend, Vic (Kenny Miller), after being surprised from behind. After seeing the shocked expressions on his friends' faces, he finally relents and goes to see Dr. Brandon.
Dr. Brandon is way low on scruples. He wants to use Tony as a guinea pig in his experiments. When Tony begins going to Dr. Brandon he is given a scopolamine serum he has developed. He believes that with the serum, and hypnotherapy, he can return a person’s personality to their instinctive state. Brandon believes some caca-meme thing about, the future of mankind requiring him to regress to his primitive form, or some other double-talk. Dr. Brandon's assistant, Dr. Hugo Wagner (Joseph Mell), is worried that the experiment might kill Tony. Brandon goes ahead with his experiments anyway. After two sessions Brandon suggests to Tony that he was once a wild animal.
That night one of Tony’s friends is attacked and killed. Detective Donovan and Police Chief Baker (Robert Griffin) are looking at pictures of the victim while waiting for the autopsy. The police station’s janitor Pepi (Vladimir Sokoloff) asks Officer Chris Stanley (Guy Williams) to let him see the photos. Pepi is a native of the Carpathian Mountains; he recognizes the marks on Frank's body as coming from a werewolf. The next day a girl at school is killed. Witnesses ID Tony based on his clothes. An APB is put out for him.
In the morning, Tony awakens and sees he has reverted to his normal appearance and walks into the town. Tony heads to Brandon's office and begs for his help. Brandon injects him with more serum. He wants to see him transform with his own eyes.
“I Was A Teenage Werewolf” was released in 1957 and was directed by Gene Fowler Jr. (Who also directed the equally wacky named “I married a Monster From Outer Space”.) Although not horrifying, it was actually a decent movie. Especially for a low budget “B” movie. The budget was approximately $82,000 and it grossed in the US $2,000,000 and was one of AIP’s most successful films. Add to that good acting, great make-up, a mad scientist, villagers with torches and an ultimately sympathetic monster and you have an interesting movie. As for our mad scientist Dr. Brandon. He’s more of a monster than Tony.
The song “Eeny Meenie Miney Moe”, by Jerry Blaine makes “I Was A Teenage Werewolf” the first horror movie to include a Rock n’ Roll song. Dawn Richard, who plays the gymnast and second victim, was actually 22 at the time and a playboy centerfold. She was Miss May 1957. The movie brought the “I Was A…” and the “I Was A Teenage…” phrases into the American pop culture.