I Was A Teenage Frankenstein

Of all the many monsters-and-teenagers movies American International Pictures cranked out in the late 1950’s, I think this one is my favorite. It’s fast-moving (by 50’s standards, anyway), cleverly written, and pleasingly lurid. It has an effective villain and fantastic monster makeup (again, by 50’s standards). And believe it or not, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (or just Teenage Frankenstein to you Brits) features by far the most faithful-to-the-novel screen characterization of the Frankenstein monster that had ever been attempted up to 1957. All that and what seems to be the first of the color endings that A.I.P. was so enamored of in those days, too! What more could you possibly ask for from a 50’s teen monster flick?


As is usually the case with these movies, we have here a distant descendant of the famous Baron Frankenstein, but in marked contrast to most of his fellows, this one has the balls to use his real last name! This Dr. Frankenstein (Whit Bissell) is a prominent medical researcher from England (note that Bissell doesn’t even bother trying to fake an accent) who has come to the United States to participate in a series of seminars on the hot new subject of limb and organ transplants. The scorn of his ideas by his fellow surgeons galvanizes him into action, making him determined to prove the veracity of his exotic theories, and to prove it now.


Blackmailing an old colleague into helping him, sheer luck allows Frankenstein to present Karlton with a fait accompli: on the way home from the hospital, the two doctors witness a horrific traffic accident, and the teenage driver of the more badly damaged vehicle dies by the time Frankenstein can get him to his home lab. (Presumably, it’s closer to the scene of the wreck than the hospital, and it’s certainly every bit as well equipped.) Now that he and Karlton are in possession of a seriously damaged but basically serviceable young body, why not use it as raw material for Frankenstein’s tissue-grafting experiments?

The body of the teenage driver is in pretty bad condition. His hands and legs are pretty well useless, and the dagger-like shards of the shattered windshield (no such thing as safety glass in 1957, you know) have deprived him of anything that might honestly be described as a face. Frankenstein and Karlton are clearly going to need to get replacement parts from somewhere. Frankenstein’s solution to the problem is to keep his eyes on the local newspapers, looking out for any stories about dead teenage boys, and after a week or two, he has a perfectly good set of extremities for his creature. (All the excess parts go to feed the alligator Frankenstein keeps in a tank under his basement lab.) It is now that the work begins in earnest, and before long, the dead teenager (Gary Conway) is not merely alive again, but able to move about and even speak, though he apparently has no memory of his former life.


This is a far cry from the Frankenstein monsters played by Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., and Glenn Strange. No grunting and stumbling here, folks. In accordance with Shelley’s original characterization, the monster here is thoughtful, introspective, and philosophically inclined, and there’s nothing in the world he wants so much as human companionship. But again and again, Frankenstein refuses his requests to be let out to “go among people.” The doctor has two very good reasons for this, as a matter of fact: one of them is concern for the secrecy of his morally shady project, and the other one is hidden under the bandages that swathe the creature’s head. And when the monster begins badgering Frankenstein with exceptional vigor one afternoon, the doctor decides the time has come to let his creation in on a little secret. Grabbing a pair of scissors from a nearby table, Frankenstein hands the creature a mirror and cuts away the bandages. Our boy monster is one ugly son of a bitch. The character design for the monster really makes me wonder whether this film or Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein hit the theaters first. In both films, the monster is big and muscular, with stringy black hair, a bulging, obviously blind right eye, and a face that looks like it was run over by a lawn tractor. A.I.P.’s version is naturally both cheaper and ickier than Hammer’s, but the basic idea is the same, and I’d love to know whether both studios’ makeup artists arrived at it independently, or whether one was ripping off the other.

I tell you, A.I.P. on a good day was a wonderful thing. Sure, they put out a lot of borderline-unwatchable crap, but every once in a while, they were able to pull it all together and create something fantastic. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein is an example of the studio at its best, combining tacky cheap thrills with a surprising amount of wit and intelligence to make a first-rate drive-in experience. Shelley’s theme of the cosmic injustice of the monster’s condition is presented here far more cogently than even in her own novel, and stands shoulder-to-shoulder in astonishing comfort with such longtime B-movie staples as man-eating alligators and disgusting peeping-tom monsters spying on hot chicks getting ready for bed. It’s an impressive accomplishment weaving those two strands together, and to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever done it better for so little money. (1000 Misspent Hours)