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I Was a Teenage Werewolf

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I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) starring Michael Landon, Whit Bissell
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I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) starring Michael Landon, Whit Bissell

I Was A Teenage Werewolf. A troubled teenager is regressed by a hypnotherapist to his “primitive state” — a werewolf!

Review

I Was a Teenage Werewolf was the first in a series of I Was a Teenage … monster movies, and it was well done. Michael Landon deserves credit for his acting, as an angry young man, who is unwillingly used by a psychiatrist in his insane experiments. He does a good job, creating a sympathetic character.

He follows heavily in the footsteps of Lon Chaney Jr.‘s Wolf Man series. As a human being, the audience is sympathetic to him. As the monster, he’s cold-blooded and cruel. And frightening.

Michael Landon as the title character in "I Was a Teenage Werewolf"

Cast of characters

  • Michael Landon (Bonanza, Highway to Heaven) as Tony Rivers. A troubled youth, whose uncontrolled temper is getting him into more and more trouble. At the urging of his father and girlfriend, he goes to see a psychiatrist.
  • Yvonne Lime as Arlene Logan. Tony’s girlfriend, who wants the best for Tony. She’s quite serious about him, which makes her father understandably nervous.
  • Whit Bissell (Creature from the Black Lagoon, Lost Continent) as Dr. Alfred Brandon. The psychiatrist/hypnotherapist who’s supposedly helping Tony. But, he has an ulterior motive. He believes that with chemicals and hypnotherapy, he can physically revert Tony to an earlier stage of development. An animal stage …
  • Malcolm Atterbury as Charles Rivers. Tony’s father, a widower who works the night shift. He’s not there for Tony as much as he’d like to be. A loving, concerned parent, nonetheless. Well acted.
  • Barney Phillips as Detective Sgt. Donovan. The police officer, who tries to help Tony control his anger at the beginning of the movie. Later, he’s one of the police officers on the hunt for werewolf Tony.
  • Joseph Mell as Dr. Hugo Wagner. Spineless assistant to Dr. Brandon.
  • Louise Lewis as Principal Ferguson. Th school principal, who’s concerned about Tony. She wrongly believes Dr. Brandon’s report about Tony’s improvement. Later, she has to deal with the deaths of her students.
  • Guy Williams (Lost in Space, Zoro) as Officer Chris Stanley. One of the police looking for werewolf Tony. He lets Pepe see the photographs of one of Tony’s victims.
  • Vladimir Sokoloff as Pepe, the janitor. The janitor at the police station. He’s an immigrant from the Carpathian Mountains, where the legends of werewolves, etc. are still believed. He recognizes the marks on one of Tony’s victims as being those caused by a werewolf.

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