I was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)
Well, at some point, weren’t we all?
Well, at some point, weren’t we all?
1957 was a pretty interesting year. It gave us the first Frisbee and the first electric watch. It gave us The Cat in the Hat and Ginsberg’s Howl. Jack Kerouac went On the Road and we left it to Beaver. Atlas Shrugged while a Jail House Rocked. We ushered in babies Richie Ramon, Spike Lee, Sid Vicious, and Melanie Griffith and we ushered out Humphrey Bogart. We whistled on a Bridge over the River Kwai and we Went Around the World in 80 days.
In Japan, Kurosawa gave us Throne of Blood while in America we got I was a Teenage Frankenstein! It hardly seems fair.
The New York Times review of this movie cautioned that it might spread juvenile delinquency. It was the follow up to the box office hit I was a Teenage Werewolf (which probably didn’t spread anything). The Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein is a complex exploration of man’s hubristic act of attempting to obtain the creational powers of a God. It’s a classic of literature and horror. The synopsis to I was a Teenage Frankenstein on www.imdb.com (Internet Movie data Base) begins: Professor Frankenstein a university lecturer with an alligator pit under his house… I don’t even know where to begin! Hehehe
My goal is to teach something about analyzing film the way one would analyze literature, but here I’m stumped. It’s not because it’s a bad movie. It’s not. In its day, it was probably even scary, but from our cultural moment, there’s not much here except camp. But underneath the campiness lies a cautionary tale, perhaps, about what our parents do to us as we grow into teenagers. Let the metaphor begin.
My goal is to teach something about analyzing film the way one would analyze literature, but here I’m stumped. It’s not because it’s a bad movie. It’s not. In its day, it was probably even scary, but from our cultural moment, there’s not much here except camp. But underneath the campiness lies a cautionary tale, perhaps, about what our parents do to us as we grow into teenagers. Let the metaphor begin.
Children are literally the creations of their parents. Professor Frankenstein (I guess he couldn’t take time to get his PhD for this movie) assembles a teenager from various parts of tragically lost youths, one in the most outrageous strains on our willing suspension of disbelief I’ve ever EVER seen in a movie. Professor and his buddy are talking about where to get a young man’s body when outside at that very minute we hear a loud car crash, and you guessed it…dead teenage boy thrown from a burning car.
Frankenstein says he wants young people because they will be easier to control. Obviously this man has never parented a teenager. He manages to put together a pretty hunky lad, but gives him a hideous face in an attempt to control him. Obviously teens with acne deal with this situation all the time. Fear of rejection battling teenage desire to be with peers (never mind his whole body is an amalgamation of peers!). Frankenstein teaches him to speak and then requires him to remain silent. Completely mixed messages to a young man struggling to just be around other people. Why do we as parents spend so much effort teaching our children to talk and then tell them to shut up all the time? All Frankenstein wants is obedience, like any father. What he gets is rebellion…hmm, imagine that.
Frankenstein says he wants young people because they will be easier to control. Obviously this man has never parented a teenager. He manages to put together a pretty hunky lad, but gives him a hideous face in an attempt to control him. Obviously teens with acne deal with this situation all the time. Fear of rejection battling teenage desire to be with peers (never mind his whole body is an amalgamation of peers!). Frankenstein teaches him to speak and then requires him to remain silent. Completely mixed messages to a young man struggling to just be around other people. Why do we as parents spend so much effort teaching our children to talk and then tell them to shut up all the time? All Frankenstein wants is obedience, like any father. What he gets is rebellion…hmm, imagine that.
The teenager’s first outing leads him to the window of a young girl primping in a mirror. Teenager=peeping Tom. Of course she sees him and screams. He rushes in and silences her by killing her (doesn’t know his own strength, I guess. Kind of like Lenny in Of Mice and Men). But he runs home to Daddy who scolds him and threatens to dismember him (like we all do) and never give him a handsome face. I should take a moment here to point out that Professor Frankenstein is pretty much a big dick in this movie. He’s abusive, completely egomaniacal, oh and a psychopathic killer. That’s right, once his fiancé finds out what he’s up to, the same fiancé he’s already slapped and verbally abused earlier in the film, he plots to kill her by having teenage bo-hunk boy…can you guess? Can you guess???? That’s right, he kills her and feeds her to the alligator living under the pit under his house. Thank you imdb!
Sorry, I couldn't resist. That’s what I can link to literature…the alligator pit is Chekov’s Gun! Russian writer Anton Chekov once said there’s a dramatic principle where if a writer shows a gun in the opening chapter, the gun has to go off in the next few chapters. It’s his way of saying a writer should not put anything superfluous in his story. So the alligator pit shown in the beginning, sits there collecting dramatic irony points until it’s used by the monster. Coincidentally enough…Professor Frankenstein ends up alligator brunch as well. Oh, the humanity. But let’s face it, if more bad parents were fed to alligators we’d live in a much more pleasant and safer world.
And the monster? In a fit of remorse or fear or clumsiness (I can’t tell) he throws himself into…well…a metal wall with lights on it and in what has to be the world’s worst static electricity fatality, he dies in vivid red color added for shocking effect (the rest of the film is in Black & White). This poor lad was literally Beauty AND the Beast rolled into one. It’s not Oedipus Rex, but it’s not Sanford & Son either. It’s exactly what it needed to be in 1957. And the monster who, up till then has been staring at his new “handsome” face in a mirror and who has also been described as “sensitive” (code word for gay) has to die because let’s face it, there’s no place for a sensitive male-beauty-admiring muscle boy in the 1950s! It wasn’t the scariest thing we were given in 1957 if you consider that’s the year Osama Bin Laden was also born! We just didn’t know it at the time.
Final pet peeve…the Professor’s name was Frankenstein…not the Monster. It’s the same in the original. Frankenstein was he scientist…not the Monster. So why is this flick called I was a Teenage Frankenstein? Ugh. I guess it would be too much a mouthful to name it I was a Teenage Monster of a Dick Called Professor Frankenstein. J
Yeah, that's the metal wall that ultimately kills him.
Just in case you wonder whatever happen to our teenage Frankenstein… His name is Gary Conway. He continued acting, had his own sci-fi TV show “Land of the Lost”, wrote three screenplays, learned to play the violin (gave a concert at the Hollywood Bowl), and oh, yeah.. posed for Playgirl magazine. I guess that’s what that leads to when you grow up hunky and sensitive in the 50s.
You can watch the whole movie for free right here. Enjoy!
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