One of my all time favorites.

Amateur movie with Big budget

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

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 ****

Teenage Monster (1958) * 1/2 (out of 4) Weird and sometimes funny sci-fi has a young boy struck by a UFO crash, which turns him into the title character several years later. This film has the reputation as being one of the worst movies ever made and I can agree with that to a point but the film does offer quite a few laughs for those who enjoy bad "B" movies. The look of the monster is actually pretty good, although he comes off looking more like the wolf man than anything else. The love that the protective mother (Anne Gwynne) shows her monster son gets a few laughs, which are always needed. The film is also interesting because it takes place during the 1880s so you've got the old west feel added to the horror and sci-fi elements. Gloria Castillo plays a woman hired by the mother to talk with the monster.

"It could have happened..." is the catchphrase of this movie. According to "legend", back in June of 1880 (somewhere in the Old West) a sparkler, I mean meteor, crashed near the mine of the Cannon family. Because of the crash, Jim Cannon (father/husband) dies and his son Charles gets a severe case of dirty face.So apparently Charles, becomes a giant yeti-like creature (I guess due to the meteor) who goes around killing indiscriminately (due to the fact that he is a child in a monster's body - think of Viktor from the Bride except with a worse vocabulary, diction and his jaw locked shut). During this time his mother has Charles continue to mine for gold, as she hides him in the basement. When gold is discovered, everything unravels (is there a greed destroys us all theme hiding in there somewhere??). Everyone in this movie seems to use Charles in one way or another, for their own schemes (even mom). You end up empathizing with Charles, simply because everyone around him is conniving and he is after all still a small boy (on the inside).I'm not sure what the merits of this movie are, except to a hospital ward full of insomniacs. It is quite dull, extremely slow and quite predictable. Thankfully this made for TV movie is only 65 minutes long.-Celluloid Rehab

Surprise, surprise... "Teenage Monster" isn't all that bad a sci-fi movie. Sure, the teenage monster is laughable: he doesn't look scary at all (just hairy) and you're left wondering if Gil Perkins decided to play a monster with a speech impediment or if he's trying to speak normally and the make-up is making him mumble. Anyway, the result is pretty hilarious. (I meant to say "scary", but the only word I could think of was "hilarious".)But "Teenage Monster" is pretty educational: did you know what happens when a meteor strikes a father and his son? Well, I didn't! Apparently such a meteor strike kills a grown man, but not a child. However, the child will grow up with an exceptional amount of facial hair. Okay, so the plot seems to be ludicrous to non-existing at first, but give it a few minutes (not too many, the movie is only just over 60 minutes long) and see how scriptwriter Ray Buffum (also the man who penned "Teen-Age Crime Wave", "Brain from Planet Arous" and "Island of Lost Women") adds a few interesting touches to the script: see how the monster's mother tries to hide her son from the villagers (it doesn't help that the sheriff is in love with her) and how the monster is abused by another character. This may not sound too spectacular (and indeed it isn't), but do remember that most 50s sci-fi films offered you a cheesy monster and a dull story: "Teenage Monster", directed by Jacques R. Marquette (famous for directing "Teenage Monster" and ... oh, that's it?), at least tries to offer the viewer a compelling story. Compelling it isn't, but at least it keeps you from being bored and waiting for the next scene with the unconvincing monster.