Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

dougdoepke Talk about your 50's juvenile delinquents. This one makes Lon Chaney's Wolfman look well groomed. But it's not the kid's fault. Seems something unexplained fell from the sky and turned the boy into a teenage yeti with lockjaw. But Mom keeps him hidden away in her house, otherwise he has a habit of throttling people he meets. Just how she's managed that for years is one of the unexplained mysteries of teenage drive-in. But hey, I really like the twist with sweet little Ruthie. She's every guy's ideal prom date. But what a calculating little brain behind the charm. In fact, I'd say she's the real teenage monster. After all, our wolfman is more pathetic than evil. A good barber, a few skin grafts, plus a speech coach, might introduce him to semi-polite company. But I guess that's why the setting is back in the 1800's. Anyhow, Gwynne shows her acting chops as long-suffering Mom, while Gloria Castillo scores as Bad Ruthie. I just wish our grunting outcast got more screen credit, maybe the Drive-In Golden Comb for the biggest Elvis pompadour. Now don't laugh, but I take the movie more as a human-interest story than as a scare feature. Plus, it's a rather effective one, despite a plot with more holes than grandma's sieve and a budget of about a buck eighty including bus fare. It's also rather sneaky— that is, see if you think the moral scales properly balance at movie's end. After all, this is the straight-laced 1950's.

JoeKarlosi TEENAGE MONSTER was originally produced under the title MONSTER ON THE HILL, and was also known as METEOR MONSTER. Heading the cast is the former 1940s Universal star Anne Gwynne, trapped into a role she probably needed to meet some bills. The pretty 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 who himself was a former Wolf Man and Frankenstein monster double from the Universal classics of the 40s! For 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, leaving him looking like a cross between Glenn Strange in THE MAD MONSTER and John Bloom in THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT.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. But Anne Gwynne also seems to rise above the material herself, given that she thought the film was the worst thing she ever did and even caused her to stop making movies (this was her final film). Indeed, there are some unintentional laughs here, the best example being 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! ** out of ****

thefountainmenace Hey - it's a 50's horror movie, what can we expect, kids?This one is truly original in that it actually combines werewolves, meteors, and the Old West. However, the sci-fi aspect (meteors) is particularly tenuous - the 'meteor' appears to be a lit sparkler held close to the camera in soft focus. And the 'grown-up' Charles is just unbelievable, even if he is a werewolf - it's seven years later, but he looks at least 40. But if you can deal with 50'd Sci-Fi - you'll find this fun. Nice comment on manipulative women as well -actually a fairly coherent, if more than a bit far out - plot.

JHC3 In June of 1880, the Cannon family is mining for gold. A meteor explodes nearby, killing the father, Jim (McCullough), and injuring his young son, Charles (Parker). Now a widow, Ruth Cannon (Gwynne) vows to continue working the mine. Seven years later, Charles (now played by Gilbert Perkins) is nearly an adult, but has mutated into a terrifying wildman. Ruth controls him most of the time, but occasionally he leaves the mine to kill people and livestock. When they finally strike it rich, the secret becomes even harder to keep."Teenage Monster" is one of a number of films of the 1950s and 1960s that combined the classic western with the horror genre. Make-up artist Jack P. Pierce (better known for work for Universal on such films as "Frankenstein" (1931) and its sequels) provided the make-up for the grown-up Charles. Okay, so the budget was low and the cast wasn't particularly good. I try to make allowances for such factors and give a lot of leeway to films of this vintage. Unfortunately, this one has little to commend it. Viewers who survived films like "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" (1966) with their sanity intact might want to check this one out. Most others should not subject their VCRs to the taint.