809 – I Was a Teenage
Werewolf
ééé
Things I liked in the movie:
How the school bell turned Tony into a werewolf. I always thought is was the full moon.
The middle-aged teens.
The 150-pound, not very flexible gymnast.
Impressions
This would have been two stars but for a pretty funny line of riffing about throwing dairy products. It had a build-up joke where Tony throws milk that makes this jokes twice as funny. Other than that, it’s pretty slow.
Synopsis
This movie is sort
of a hodgepodge of monster movie, musical, teenage angst drama, and domestic
abuse awareness public service announcement.
Tony (Michael Landon) is a high-strung easily angered “teen” who gets in
a lot of fights. When he’s not punching
people and throwing dairy products, he’s a bright and popular cool dude who
throws good parties and gets good grades.
Seriously, though, the eyebrows give him away.
After several
incidents where he got into fights, he pushes his girlfriend, Arlene, and
realizes he needs help. This would have
been the end of any regular movie, but when he goes to the town’s eminent
psychiatrist, we learn he’s been waiting for a subject to turn into a
werewolf. Tony goes to a regular
session where the psychiatrist drugs and hypnotizes him and gives him some
werewolf shots. Eventually, Tony kills
a few people, including the psychiatrist and is shot. This works well for the psychiatrist because all through the
movie he has required objective, empirical proof that Tony has turned into a
werewolf and being killed by Tony was the proof he needed.
There’s also a
horrific musical number in the middle that seems to be intended to lengthen the
movie by 5 minutes. Oh yeah, and the
janitor was right.
Host Segments
First: Tom has an important announcement. He is having Mike removed from command for
incompetence. No one will agree to take
over. Tom gives a long speech about his
own personal lack of qualifications. So
Mike is the only one left and retains command.
Pearl, Bobo, and Brain Guy are on some barren planet camping. Mike and crew are adrift in a strange
quadrant of space and are anxious about what they might encounter. Tom leaves the bridge to check on a sound. He comes back with an alien pod stuck to his
face. He wonders if it’s
noticeable. It makes him self-conscious.
Second: Mike and Tom are playing Mousetrap. Tom is comfortable with his face-invader,
now. It’s warm. Crow got a device that detects evil
aliens. He causes a panic by misreading
it. It turns out that the ship is not
filled with aliens, but rather humidity.
Third: Tom is rid of the face-hugging alien. He says, “I hunted it down and killed
it.” He accidentally discharges a
machine gun in the SOL for a while. He
sets off on a trek to find more aliens and kill them. Mike and Crow have a bet on how soon Tom will start crying. Crow wins.
Under 20 seconds.
Fourth: Mike and the ‘bots return to the bridge and
find giant eggs everywhere. They try to
eat them all before the alien comes back.
Mike makes a giant omelet. Crow
won’t stop reading the menu which consists of many egg dishes.
Final: An alien on the outside of the ship is
sucking the energy out of it. Mike
comes up with a great plan. What if we
reverse the polarity of the ship! That
doesn’t work. Mike changes into the most
repulsive person of all time—Adam Duritz of Counting Crows—and repels the
alien. Pearl tells a scary story at the
campfire. It was a story about a
naughty gorilla. The climax is
“something scary happened to the gorilla.”
The she tells a story about a little brain boy who died after eating his
own brain. Bobo and Brain Guy are
terrified and hide under their blankets.
Stinger: Police Detective yelling in the new hip lingo, “People bug me, too!”
Funny Riffs
Mike: Do his weremom and weredad know his whereabouts?
Earlier, when a police detective was listing Tony’s (Landon) offenses, he mentions that he threw a carton of milk at a grocery store checker. There are several jokes about him throwing dairy products for the next few minutes. Then, as Tony is in his own kitchen holding a bottle of milk:
Crow: Uh oh, milk.
Tom: Yup. He’s gonna do it! He checks the runner . . . spins and throws!
Tony throws the milk bottle at the wall.
Dad: Don’t eat it raw like you did that hamburger.
Mike: That’s all the foreshadowing we can afford for now.
Arlene is going to introduce Tony to her parents. She heads for the door to let him in.
Crow as Arlene: He may urinate submissively, I gotta warn you.
The scene fades out blurrily and then clears back up to speed up time.
Mike: Oops. The camera was having an eye exam.
A nerdy guy starts panicking and running through the forest.
Crow: The medical definition of this is “spaz attack.”
Police chief: Let’s keep a lid on any rumors.
Mike as police chief: Shoot anybody talking.
The janitor gives a long speech about what a werewolf is and how he is sure the victim was killed by a werewolf.
Mike as police detective: You say that on every case!
Police chief: This is a map of the area.
Tom: MY area.
The police are trying to figure out what wild animals live in the area that could have mauled the victim.
Police detective: There is a mink farm, but they only have baby mink. The first thing they do is cut their teeth out.
Tom as police chief: So he was gummed to death by baby minks.
Principal: Your conduct is very much improved.
Crow as principal: Except for the killing.
Werewolf Tony runs through the school pushing kids out of his way as he goes.
Crow: My, my, I was a very rude teenage werewolf.
The principal struggles to emote.
Crow: I’m having a generic emotion.
I Was a Teenage Werewolf IMDB Page