Search - Teenage Zombies on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Movie Release: 1958 DVD Release: 11/14/2000 Format: DVD SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 13 mins Studio: Beverly Wilshire Members Wishing: 0 Genres: Horror See Also: Teenage Zombies, Teenage Zombies, Teenage Zombies [with T-shirt]

A deranged female scientist conducting weird experiments on a remote island kidnaps teens and injects them with a formula that transforms them into zombies. ~ All Movie Guide

The classiest thing about Teenage Zombies was its title music and parts of its score, and those were lifted wholesale from Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter's score for Kurt Neumann's Kronos. That really didn't make much difference, however. Like The Blob, Earth vs. the Spider, and other teenagers-meet-monsters pictures of the period, the real value of Teenage Zombies is its depiction of teenage life circa the late '50s. In spirit, this movie is probably closest to Ray Kellogg's The Giant Gila Monster (which also starred Don Sullivan), except that it isn't as well written, directed, or produced as that minor classic. It is fun though, which is really what counts, and it moves fast -- 12 minutes into the movie, the four teenagers are captured by the mad scientist. Much of the dialogue is post-synced (badly), and the sets look incredibly cheap, but the movie has become something of a minor cult item among bad-movie enthusiasts, mostly thanks to the presence of Katherine Victor as the mad scientist behind the plot to drop spell-inducing pellets into America's water supply. Victor, a tall woman with a remote, commanding presence, was reminiscent of Maila Nurmi, aka Vampira. The DVD edition is mastered from an old 16 mm TV print that is passable during the main body of the movie but unacceptably dark (and filled with frame-jitter) during the opening credits. There is dropout in some sections of the audio track, but that's to be expected in a print this old, along with the tiny visual defects in the top of the image. The contrast is low and there's not a lot of sharpness either. These would normally be major defects, but in dealing with a movie like this, it's a different matter -- one gets the sense that the movie looks exactly the way it was intended. It's just a dumb, funny movie mixing teenagers, monsters, and saboteurs, and can be enjoyed on that basis; indeed, in view of its absence from television for decades, this DVD release may be the only way to enjoy it. The packaging is fairly nondescript and the menu automatically places the viewer in the "Play Movie" position. The chapters are functional, if not inspired. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide