Cast:
Sandra Harrison (Nancy Perkins), Louise Lewis (Miss Branding), Gail Ganley (Myra), Jerry Blaine (Tab), Heather Ames (Nola), Mary Adams (Mrs. Thorndyke), Edna Holland (Miss Rivers), Thomas B. Henry (Mr. Paul Perkins), Jeanne Dean (Mrs. Doris Perkins), Don Devlin (Eddie), Malcolm Atterbury (Lt. Dunlap), and Richard Devon (Det. Sgt. Stewart) Directed by Herbert L. Strock.
Review:
It did not take long for American International Pictures to come up with another teenager film involving monsters. I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) was released in June before two further films involving teenage-infused monsters came as a double-feature in November: this film and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. The films were spearheaded by Herman Cohen when it came to production. The Detroit native had worked his way up from a janitor at a movie theater when he was 12 to running it by the time he was 18 in Detroit. He became an indie producer in the 1950s with a share of mainstream stuff coming with Crime of Passion (1957). The failure of the film, combined with the invitation of James H. Nicholson from AIP, saw him work there as producer. This went hand in hand with Cohen's new-found theory that over 70% of the audience was around the ages of 12-26, which obviously meant that a cast of teenage characters or monsters would maximize the potential for box office dollars. Not surprisingly, Cohen co-wrote the film with Aben Kandel, as was the case with Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. I'm not particularly sure how the title of the film seemed that much better than calling it "Teenage Vampire", because, well, the film isn't about Dracula or talking about blood, but in the United Kingdom it was called "Blood is My Heritage". Scientist-headed films involving the lightest of relations to the usual vampire myth were familiar to those who saw The Vampire earlier in 1957.
I'm sure you can see the similarities to the Werewolf film: a teenager with angst is used by an eccentric scientist that wants to change the world with their experiment (in this case, her idea of finding the evil in us) that ends up being used as a tool to become a monster, for which the ending sees the monster rebel against the scientist to see them both perish. Oh, and both films feature someone talking about the "Carpathians" (here it is a cop who knew an exchange student there) and feature an ending line about "messing with God". At least one thing can be sure of a film that has women for the lead character and villain, one can make a crappy film of any gender, particularly one that thinks a sequence dedicated to the song "Puppy Love" is anything short than ill-advised. It snoozes through the opportunities that could have come with making a film about someone who must confront themselves a growing youth when it comes to uncertainty about who they really are. Instead, it is just a mild and all-together bland experience that only gets good once it actually gets to the nitty gritty of silly effects with a monster. This is the only film appearance for Harrison, who appeared in a handful of one-episode appearances on TV until the 1960s. Probably the only noteworthy thing to say about her performance is that I cannot imagine that the time spent being under the makeup of fangs (and what have you) was any more fun than the paycheck. At least Lewis and her funky motivation to bring about the end of the atomic experimentation (no, seriously, she thinks writing a thesis of the beast in man being shown will do it) seems about on edge for loony confidence, even if her only "power" is being really good at hypnotism (or maybe she is so alluring in manipulation that it worked on the teacher's pet who told her about the new kid in the first place). At least the dialogue is a bit amusing at first with the new kid being grouchy at the people around her, until she becomes inhabited by the joys of monsterhood where she isn't really there, yadda yadda you get the idea. Somehow, I doubt killing teenagers in the school you work in is going to be looked upon favorably for a thesis, but whatever. In conclusion, the fact that the cops don't even realize just who is going around picking students off at the school is probably the most amusing quality of the film, unless characters getting killed by a random piece of furniture isn't up your alley. That alone says all that is needed to say about a film best sat through for those who need the horror fix that looks old enough to run for the season with vague name value that ultimately will prove incredibly average to those who sift through this, or I Was a Teenage Frankenstein...
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
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