#robert burton

The Anatomy of Love

The Big Heat (1953) Fritz Lang

Although not a good film by any measure, Herbert L. Strock’s I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (1957, Plex, YouTube and look for the one labeled “Camp Horror Classic,” as it’s the only version in black and white and with the color finale), has a certain camp value while also carrying a surprisingly gay subtext. Produced by Herman Cohen in four weeks to capitalize on the success of I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957), the film has all the earmarks of a quickie production: cardboard sets and acting, muddy cinematography and a canned score. Yet it has a certain charm, nonetheless.

Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissel) — who’s not, I hasten to point out, a teenager — wants to improve on his ancestor’s experiments by using young body parts, which he believes will be both more resilient and more docile Has he ever met a teenager? He enlists his best friend (Robert Burton) to help him, and just as they agree, there’s a screech and two hot rods filled with teens crash outside his door. That and a plane crash with high school athletes on board give him the parts he needs to assemble his own personal hot stud (physique model Gary Conway). But though he can be manipulated, the creature also develops a mind of his own.

The film starts with the suggestion that Bissel and Burton have been more than friends. Bissel secures his cooperation by threatening to reveal his involvement in another experiment. The nature of that experiment is never explained, and I have a dirty mind. Once the creature is built (like a brick outhouse), Bissel is awfully handsy with him. There’s also a leading lady (Phyllis Coates, TV’s first Lois Lane), a nurse Bissel proposes to seemingly so she can keep away visitors, He treats her like crap and even slugs her, so when he’s suddenly kind to her, you know there’s trouble brewing. Meanwhile, Collins rebels against his kept specimen status by sneaking out one night and going after a pneumatic blonde (didn’t every ‘50s genre film have one?). He ends up killing when she starts screaming at his scarred face — the kind of courtship ritual developed decades later by incels. When Bissel grafts a handsome face on the creature’s head (Conway in a double role, which at that point was two times not much), his creation spends all his spare time staring at himself in the mirror, suggesting the film’s title should have been MY FAIR NARCISSUS.