Reactions and Other Folderol
Note: There may be spoilers
I was looking forward to this session, primarily for I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Though I'd never seen it, I'd heard about it many times. Not that I knew anything about the plot other than what can be gleaned from the title. Rather, I knew of its existence, and I knew that it starred Michael Landon, whose name I knew because of Little House on the Prairie and Bonanza.
I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting from the film—I suppose maybe I was expecting something campy or comedic, like Teen Wolf (a lightweight 1985 film starring Michael J. Fox as a teenaged werewolf in American suburbia. But I didn't get what I expect. I Was a Teenage Werewolf was much more straightforward. It was played much more seriously, and seemed very typical of 1950's sci-fi drive-in fare.
The followup (both in the class and in AIP's catalogue) was I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, a similarly low-budget sci-fi drive-in film. I thought it was a better film, though I thought the pathos of the titular monster talking in a very normal voice to Dr. Frankenstein (yes, the scientist was a Dr. Frankenstein, and the script described his connection to the European scientist who created the original monster). The existence of the alligator pond connected to the doctor's home didn't really make any sense, and the plot was helped along early by the most amazing coincidence. Still and all, it was a solid entertaining film. How to Make a Monster was too much of a gimmick to really be enjoyable, though I'll admit that it was a great way for the studio to recycle shit from the two I Was a Teenage... movies. It just felt cheap.
The odd man out for this session was the closer, Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory. While the other three films were connected to each other, WiaGD was an Italian production that just didn't manage to impress me. It was slow-moving and there was nothing to latch onto.
