User reviews

Are they going water skiing or are they going horseback riding? Are they going to be zombies or aren't they? I love these movies. The acting is so stiff. The characters deliver lines and then wait a second or two. The dialog is so pointless that it really doesn't matter. There's this huge island in a lake with a hugre research facility on it. But the people in the town don't seem to know it's there. Still a couple of kids can take a little rowboat with a ten horse and make it to the island. The research that is being done concerns a kind of nerve gas that will turn all Americans into blathering idiots (it's probably too late for that anyway). There's a gorilla running around, a couple of boring spies, and a kind of dragon lady scientist who locks the kids up for future research. The kids have the usual silly nicknames. The sheriff is on the take, so he won't help. My favorite scene is the last minute. I won't spoil it, but it's priceless.

i just saw this movie yesterday, and to tell you the truth, I can't stop thinking about it. Every aspect of it was god-awful... the writing was painfully dull, the acting was nonexistent, and the plot was so thin and contrived it was hard to believe it wasn't an hour-long inside joke that I was regretfully unaware of. But strangely enough, it was so bad it was almost good. the man in the cheap gorilla suit? classic! the pseudo-sexual brawl between the voluptuous young teens and the evil scientists and politicians? Strangely arousing. While the corn level was high and the horror level as low as I've ever seen in a wannabe creature feature, there is something oddly appealing, and most definitely unforgettable, about this 1959 piece of crap

If I were a millionaire, I would pay the staff of MST3K to reunite JUST to rank on this movie. It is perfect! It has everything!

Zombies 1950's teenagers A Gorilla Communist Spies Bad Rock and Roll Corny dialogue

This movie is so BAD it's GOOD. If you like "Plan 9" or "They Saved Hitler's Brain", you'll love this one!

With this, his third foray into the much maligned horror genre, Jerry Warren solidified his reputation as *the* avaunt-guarde director of the 1950s. Here Warren straddles the line between "auteur" and "metteur", masterfully reconceptualizing the themes of Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (released the previous year) through a pair of interlocking mise-en-scenes.

As usual, Warren's startlingly surrealist imagery leaves many questions unanswered. What are we to make of the cop in the picture frame? What are we to make of the struggle between the post-feminist Dr. Myra and the pre-feminist Pam? Is the role of the kids a metaphorical subversion of the prevalent Cold War attitudes of the time? Well, no.

This is just another ultra-cheapo Jerry Warren special. Bad acting, bad direction, bad cinematography, bad dialogue - in other words, the usual. For bad movie fans and manic depressives only.

Six all American Eisenhower era kids decide to go water-skiing or at least four of the six do. When the four fail to show up, the other two go looking for their friends.

The two who are searching come across this island in the middle of their lake inhabited by a strange scientist woman, her Igor like companion and a bunch of mindless men walking around in a trance. It's those zombies that no doubt they've seen in several horror flicks when they've gone to drive-ins. And could their friends be becoming Teenage Zombies?

It's a lot worse than that because our lady scientist who's a poor woman's Gale Sondergaard is a Russian agent. She's experimenting with nerve gas and a way to deliver it in quantity so that they can turn New York, Boston, or Chicago, etc. into a city of zombies, though some might argue that's already happened. In fact she's begging her superiors for more time because the Russians are getting ready with an H-Bomb attack, but her method would be so much neater and would leave all those nice cities intact with a population of slaves.

Teenage Zombies has a no name cast most of whom I won't mention because you've never heard of them. I've seen better acting in junior high school productions, especially from the young folks. The sound quality is horrible and the film looks like it was shot from my father's old Bell&Howell.

But Katherine Victor who played the lady Russian scientist was a real hoot. This was her second film, she was in another science fiction travesty, Mesa of Lost Women first. If anything Teenage Zombies was an improvement.

It says here that the film was released in 1959, but when I saw the film the credits clearly said 1957. The fact that it took two years before the producers inflicted it on the movie-going public should say volumes.

Jerry Warren strikes again, here is a plot so stupid (an island 30 miles from the mainland that everybody has forgotten!) acting is non existent, not as if the actors(?) are requested to act anyway. But stick it through just to see the climatic fist fight in the mad scientist's lab.

Outrageous teen/horror movie about a bunch of young people kidnapped by this gang of spies led by a Dr. Myra and her obedient zombie slave Ivan on an island off the US coast.

Dr. Myra is working on this serum together with her two hoods Wrof & Brandt to put into the US water system and make everyone in America become a mindless zombie. This will make it possible for the country that she's working for an unnamed Eastern European power, the Soviet Union?, to take over the USA without firing a shot.These four teenagers who end up on the island Reg Skip Pam & Julie and are quickly captured by Ivan and put in a cage to be experimented on by Dr. Myra.

The teenagers friends Morrie and Dotty go to the island looking for them but are told by Dr. Myra that there's no one there but later go to the local sheriff for help. The sheriff turns out to be working with Dr. Myra and her gang but when he and Morrie & Dotty arrive at the island he has a change of heart.

The sheriff supplied Dr. Myra with drunks and criminals from his jail house and felt that innocent teenagers being used in Dr. Myra's insane ventures are a little too much and refuses to work with her and her hoods thus getting a bullet in his chest from Wrof killing him. Meanwhile the two girls Pam & Julie are exposed to the serum/gas and lose their brain-power and become zombies.

Rag and Skip together with Morrie and Dotty break into Dr. Myra's lab and force her to gave the girls and antidote to give them back their minds after having Dr. Myra lose her with the same gas she used on the girls. It's then that a fight breaks out between the teenagers and Dr. Myra and her two hoods Worf & Brandt as well as Ivan with the monkey/gorilla, one of Dr. Myra's failed experiments, breaking out of the cage killing Brandt as everyone runs for their lives to the boat by the beach to escape.

Having it out on the boat the teenagers overpower Dr. Myra and Worf and take them prisoner to the police and US military authorities on shore thus saving the USA from a covert takeover by a hostile power; as for Ivan he completely disappeared right off the radar screen.

Soda shop teenagers Don Sullivan (as Reg), Jay Hawk (as Morrie), and Mitzie Albertson (as Julie) discuss waterskiing and horseback riding. Hay-brained Mr. Hawk decides to go riding with girlfriend Nan Green (as Dotty) while the others join Paul Pepper (as Skip) and Brianne Murphy (as Pam) for water sports. The four boaters wind up stranded on a mysterious island. There, the waterskiing couples lose their boat, and are held captive by glamour-gowned doctor Katherine Victor (as Myra) - she wants to turn the teenagers into zombies!

Jerry Warren's "Teenage Zombies" is a very poorly produced, sometimes fun film. The storyline is silly, but easy to understand. Communists want to turn the United States into a bunch of zombies. They might have considered letting nature take its course (but, then, there wouldn't be a movie). An ensemble cast, led by Sullivan, plays the material very well, considering the script's obvious idiocy. Hawk does a surprisingly good job as "Morrie". And, Ms. Victor is a hilariously hospitable hostess, offering soda pop to her potential zombies.

*** Teenage Zombies (1959) Jerry Warren ~ Don Sullivan, Katherine Victor, Jay Hawk

A fine film meant for conness sewers of island mad scientist atomic zombie stinko schmaltz. A very good looking cast of actual teens competing for good hair, bad acting moments. The one dark haired boy who looks youngest is probably the best of the lot. The gorilla suit probably cost as much as the script. Nothing. So you have some poison gas that isn't the kind of poison that kills you. A deputy who peeks out of a window. The sheriff has a hat. Nobody has a dog. There is no music on the jukebox. There's an island and some boats and a guy with glasses. I hope I'm not giving away too much. Oh wait. I almost forgot. There is a 1954 Ford. Really. An Army or Air Force guys says something to someone. He has a 1957 Ford. You are gonna love it. I don't know how Kevin Costner missed being cast in this one. The house has a kitchen with a big cooler and no bathroom. The working title was "Teen Agers with Bad Agents." Guns and stuff too. Rumor is it was directed by someone and released.

The film is the work of Jerry Warren a schlock king who churned out a bunch of low budget films over the years aimed at capitalizing on the hot horror market. Most of Warren's films are really bad, but they made money thanks to cheapness of cost, and clever titles (Teenage Zombies, Attack of the Mayan Mummy, Wild World of the Bat Woman) that often promised more than they delivered. Occasionally Warren would take an foreign feature, cut the heart of it out and replace it with long static scenes. Amazingly this is one of the few wholly original films that Warren unleashed and it it is almost unlike most of his other snoozers in that its actually watchable.

The plot has US agents searching for a gang of foreign agents are conducting mind control experiments on a small island. As the agents stumble around unable to find them, the bad guys end up battling a group of teens who stumble upon them and their lair.

Far from a great film this is a goofy little flick that was designed for the teenage drive in audiences. Its a low budget treat that has a sense of how ridiculous it all is. It doesn't take it self seriously, which helps a great deal. (Of course I could be wrong and be over praising it since its probably the one Warren film that doesn't stink completely.) Recommended if you're doing a multiple feature horror night at the movies of drive-in style fare.

Director Jerry Warren chooses to tell his story "Teenage Zombies" via the master shot. There are about two close ups in the entire film. This allows Warren to fully exploit and reveal the mise- en-scene of every scene. This technique also allows the actors to roam the frame and use their body language to develop their multi-dimensional characters. In particular, Chuck Niles is able to portray a fully fleshed out Ivan because of Warren's deployment of the master shot. It's a brilliant performance that overshadows all the other actors in the movie. Mitch Evans also gives us a subtle and nuanced performance as the gorilla. My one complaint about the film is that we don't see any water skiing. I like films with water skiing in them and I suspect Warren could have cut together an intriguing water skiing montage if he had been so inclined.

Earlier today I accidentally viewed on the internet a man being decapitated via chainsaw. After viewing Teenage Zombies hours later I have come to the conclusion I would very much like to be that man in the video.

I figured to myself- "Well hey, here's a 1950's film entitled 'Teenage Zombies'. Perhaps it will subtly play on American angst towards youth and family values, maybe even a little nod towards gender issues in post war America, hell this film could be Rebel without a Cause but with Zombies!"... How wrong I was.

What we actually have in this film is acting filled with more wood than a pornstar's pants, a plot so obviously about American fears of the soviets it loses all effect and one zombie, who is called Ivan, a middle aged brainless slave, dumb but strong, perving on the American female who yes, they called Ivan, subtly done Jerry. DOWN WITH COMMUNISM!

All in all, I could say so much about this film, I actually find it a little sad that the kids in this movie probably considered it their big break, when in reality most of them never acted again. I'll close by saying this; if you're drunk, drugged off your tits, or maybe even if you hate yourself and can't find a razor blade, watch this film. If you're none of these things, please, just don't.

Uber cheap teen horror film makes a Samuel Z. Arkoff production look like something by Samuel Goldwyn. And oddly enough, there are no teenage zombies. The story is instead about a group of teenagers being captured after snooping around an evil scientist's private island, who are then experimented on by the scientists. Pretty bad Z-grade stuff.

Four youths take a boat trip to a remote island where they encounter terrorists developing a gas designed to turn the American population into mindless zombies (insert obvious gag here). The foursome are captured and held prisoner, but their plucky pals Morrie (Jay Hawk) and Dotty (Nan Green) realise that something is wrong and attempt to find their friends.

As the title suggests, this is one of those quickie B-movies from the '50s that was targeted at a teenage drive-in audience. It's a cheap and amateurish film, with a dumb plot, dismal direction and dreadful acting that makes American International's teen horror films (I Was A Teenage Werewolf, Blood of Dracula etc.) seem like great works of art by comparison.

Of course, a film this awful actually proves fairly entertaining as a result: Jay Hawk puts in an excruciatingly bad performance that has to be seen to be believed, there are some poorly executed scuffles between the kids and the baddies, and writer/director Jerry Warren even throws in that mainstay of old B-movie horror films, a wild ape on the rampage (played by a man in an unconvincing gorilla costume).

Honestly, I really shouldn't rate the film any higher than the 1/10 it deserves, but I enjoyed its complete and utter ineptitude enough to give it a couple of extra points.

This film is a waste of the plastic it was printed on. It is so bad that no one took the time to remaster it.

However, I must say if I am going to be a zombie for anyone it would be Dr. Myra played by Katherine Victor. Katherine Victor, of Mesa of Lost Women (1953) fame, after being in this dog of a movie went on to make 20 more notable movies as The Cape Canaveral Monsters (1960) The Cape Canaveral Monsters link], and The Wild World of Batwoman (1966).

Teenagers discover an uncharted island with a secret. Can you in your wildest imagination guess what that is?

Now the secret may be their demise. Unless of course they join in.

This film is a waste of the plastic it was printed on. It is so bad that no one took the time to remaster it.

However, I must say if I am going to be a zombie for anyone it would be Dr. Myra played by Katherine Victor. Katherine Victor, of Mesa of Lost Women (1953) fame, after being in this dog of a movie went on to make 20 more notable movies as The Cape Canaveral Monsters (1960) The Cape Canaveral Monsters link], and The Wild World of Batwoman (1966).

Teenagers discover an uncharted island with a secret. Can you in your wildest imagination guess what that is?

Now the secret may be their demise. Unless of course they join in.

Dum-De-Dum-Dum.

Producer-director Jerry Warren is notorious for cannibalising old foreign movies; this is all his own work so he takes all the blame.

What saves the film from total boredom is foxy Katherine Victor as the mad doctor Dr Zyra dabbling in nerve gas. A bunch of kinds arrive on her island declaring it "a crazy spot for beach parties", but encounter her imperiously presiding over her army of zombies, her raven hair thrown back, her arms folded across her chest.

Like every well-equipped mad doctor she owns her own pet gorilla along with the most gormless-looking hunchbacked assistant you've ever seen, bearing the suspiciously Russian-sounding name 'Ivan'.