TEENAGE
MONSTER (1957)Director: Jacques Marquette
Image Entertainment
TEENAGE
MONSTER (1957)The Wade Williams Collection continues to impress with the presentation of this fun-filled horror/western cheapie that warrants a fresh re-evaluation. Clocking in at a scant but pleasing 65 minutes, TEENAGE MONSTER delivers the goods. It was originally produced under the title MONSTER ON THE HILL, and was also known as METEOR MONSTER.
Heading the cast is the cute 1940s Universal star Anne Gwynne, trapped in a role she probably needed to play to meet her bills. Gwynne was known for such Karloff, Lugosi, and Chaney Jr. oldies like BLACK FRIDAY, WEIRD WOMAN, and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Here she starts out as a typical mother and housewife in the Old West whose life is thrown into turmoil when a cheap Fourth Of July sparkler in the sky (it's supposed to be a deadly meteor) crashes down and kills her husband. Worse still is the handicap it leaves upon her little boy Charles: he's now a scarred and brain damaged brute.
Zooming ahead several years later, we see the "teenaged" boy as he now exists since the tragedy: a six-foot-something hairy dimwit with bad teeth and shaggy hair. The boy was portrayed by stuntman Gil Perkins, well over age fifty and actually a former Wolf Man and Frankenstein monster double from the 40s! In TEENAGE MONSTER he was made up by the once great Jack Pierce, whose new 50s get-ups were starting to look kind of crappy and rushed in the eyes of this critic. Looking like a cross between Glenn Strange in THE MAD MONSTER and John Bloom in THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT, Perkins remembers the makeup legend as "a miserable old bastard."
Gwynne tries to keep her mutant son hidden from the townsfolk, but junior tends to get into mischief by killing someone or something every so often anyway. Mom has also become wealthy in the aftermath of her husband's demise, and once a young waitress gets wind of the shady goings-on, she blackmails Gwynne by threatening to expose Charles unless she receives a steady chunk of change on a regular basis. She gradually gains control over the mangy halfwit too, sending her pawn out to dispatch people she doesn't much care for in the bargain.
AIP actress Gloria Castillo (REFORM SCHOOL GIRL, INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN) gives the best performance of the show as the greedy waitress. She easily surpasses Anne Gwynne, who appears to be a tad uneasy about this whole charade.
Producer-Director Jacques Marquette handles the offbeat proceedings surprisingly well, turning the picture into an easy hour of fun...some deliberate, and some accidental. The best example of the latter has got to be through the dubbed voice of the teenage monster. It was initially felt that Charles sounded way too articulate for a mentally challenged moron, so the decision was made to have Gil Perkins loop in some hysterically stupid whimpers and whines that never match the filmed lip movements. Even funnier is the fact that Anne Gwynne and Gloria Castillo still appear to be able to make sense of every grunt he mumbles!
The transfer on this DVD is, as with most Wade Williams offerings, very good. Naturally the print has an unavoidable assortment of specks here and there, but the picture still manages to be quite sharp and pleasing, no problem. The mono sound is clear and satisfactory as well. In addition to a welcome theatrical trailer, we are treated again to a wealth of information inside the gatefold cover, which offers production stories as well as discussions with some of the cast and crew (courtesy of Tom Weaver).
TEENAGE MONSTER is perfect 50s drive-in fare, a film I can watch over and over again. How do I wrap up a review like this? Praise God for Wade Williams and Image! (Joe Lozowsky)