I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

A mad female scientist who lives on an isolated island carries out insane experiments sponsored by the Russians on unfortunate human guinea pigs, turning them into pliant zombie-like creatures. A bunch of pesky teenagers pitch up and thwart their plans.This is one of several films from the time that not only was specifically made for the large teenage cinema-going demographic but which also went so far as to add the word 'teenagers' in the title. Like most of them the title hardly makes sense. Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) did not feature any teenagers from outer space in a similar way to how Teenage Zombies isn't really about, well, teenage zombies. But the idea of the title was to make it abundantly clear that these were films for teenagers. Now obviously nowadays if you gave an average teen a copy of this film for their birthday, they would be less than impressed. These off-their-time curiosities are now the sort of things that cult film and retro genre fans seek out.In all honesty, this is a bad film although it does have its moments. The plot-line is ludicrous of course and the idea that the evil Russians are blamed for these zombie-making, gorilla-baiting antics is typical for the time it was made – the communists were seemingly to blame for everything in most American films of the 50's. There's also an amusing and unexpected plot strand where the town sheriff is sending prisoners and drunks over to the island to be experimented on. There's also a shuffling, lumbering henchmen and that old chestnut, a man in a monkey-suit. So it has some entertainment value but is overall pretty poor stuff.

1st watched 9/1/2014 -- 3 out of 10(Dir-Jerry Warren):70 minute version Boring and lame teenage zombie movie with some really wacky performances from some of the teens and very stoic performances from the adults. The movie starts as some kids from a local malt shop set out to do some water-skiing, and have a picnic at a nearby small island. As they investigate the area -- they come upon a strange group of men appearing "doped or dead" according to one of the kids. Their boat is stolen so they go to a lone house on the island to question the inhabitants about the disappearance and come across a stoic woman, played by Katherine Victor, who denied knowing about this, and then all the kids get captured to be used as experiments for her zombie-inducing gas that eventually will be used on all Americans. The pacing of this movie is what makes it boring with a soundtrack that doesn't match the movie's pace. The sound effects are very canned especially when the boat is searching for the kids(same sound no matter what the boat is doing---very funny stuff). This movie was obviously trying to capture on a trend(monsters with teens), but fails miserably, and there really is only one real monster, if you can call him one, Ivan -- the helper zombie and possibly a late appearance by a man in a gorilla suit. There is a sub-theme of foreigners(who don't sound foreign) trying to "control" all Americans with this gas(which was probably shocking at the time), but it's done so badly that it doesn't get noticed much. Pretty much this is a movie to avoid -- so do so.

Despite the advent of Elvis Presley and the birth of rock and roll, the mid-1950s still proved to be a tough time for the American teenager...at least, on the big screen. From the juvenile delinquents in 1955's "The Blackboard Jungle" and the angst-ridden James Dean in the same year's "Rebel Without a Cause," to the punks in Roger Corman's "Teenage Doll" (1957) and the dopers in 1958's "High School Confidential!," theater goers in the middle of that decade were treated to a variety of troublesome predicaments befalling the nation's youth. But all those cinematic problems pall when compared to the even more horrible happenings that teens were subjected to in the horror films of the day. In 1957, audiences were treated to a teenage werewolf ("I Was a Teenage Werewolf") and a teenage Frankenstein ("I Was a Teenage Frankenstein"); the following year, they saw a teenage monster ("Teenage Monster") and even, in 1959, troubled teenagers from outer space (you guessed it..."Teenagers From Outer Space"). Perhaps casting about for some new and horrible ordeal to subject a gaggle of American youths to, producer/director Jerry Warren hit upon the idea of teenage zombies, for his truly stupefying shlockfest, uh, "Teenage Zombies." This film, though shot in '57, would have to wait another two years for its big-screen release, and has been leaving viewers slack jawed and giggly ever since.In the film, two teen couples, Reg (Don Sullivan, who some may recall from 1959's "The Giant Gila Monster") & Julie and Skip & Pam, decide to go water-skiing on a large lake (the locale of the picture is never hinted at) and fetch up on the supposedly deserted Mullet Island. Oh...as a certain Wiki site has astutely pointed out, we never see the teens actually skiing, and come to think of it, we never even see skis; the teens are certainly NOT dressed for water sports. Once on the island, our quartet runs afoul of middle-aged harridan Dr. Myra (Katherine Victor), who is attempting to fabricate 5,000 capsules of a gas (for an unnamed "Eastern power") that will--when put into the nation's water supply--turn our good citizens into mindless automatons! With the aid of the already zombified Ivan--a lumbering, hunchbacked, bearded doofus who is actually more brain wiped than a classic zombie--Myra imprisons the four kids for later use as human guinea pigs. Fortunately for them, their two intrepid pals, Morrie & Dotty, have come looking for them in their own boat, along with the local sheriff....I'm going to try hard to say something nice about this film, as I always endeavor to do. First, the viewer does not have to wait very long for the film to get going. After just two minutes of getting to know our six teens in the village malt shop, we are setting foot on Myra's island, and observing a group of brain-dead servants in the field. With a running time of just 73 minutes, the film is certainly compact, and does move along at a decent clip. Also...well, I suppose that's about it, for the positives. On the negative side, "Teenage Zombies" features acting, directing and sets that are all rock-bottom deplorable. The film looks as if it cost around $300 to make (but probably cost twice as much!), and the kids are, sadly, a rather undifferentiated bunch. Jerry Warren, who also wrote the screenplay for this epic, besides producing and directing, reveals himself to be a genuine "triple threat" here...a threat to your sanity, that is; he had previously flabbergasted audiences with such outings as "Man Beast" (1955) and "The Incredible Petrified World" (1957). The film also dishes out what might be the phoniest-looking shooting in film history, as the sheriff gets his; the most hilarious fisticuffs melee ever shown, as our teens scuffle around on the floor with Myra and two of her conspirators; AND the unusual concept of a female mad scientist (offhand, I can think of no other film except for 1966's "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" to feature a distaff crackpot of this order). So yes, despite the general inanity of the proceedings and the ineptitude of the filmmakers, an entertaining time CAN be had here, for those in a silly mood (and for those bolstered with something a little more potent than malted milkshakes!). Still, I am certainly in no rush to seek out Warren's semiremake of this film, 1981's "Frankenstein Island" (also starring Katherine Victor!), which, as word on the street would have it, is even more of a labor to get through than the original!A final comment as to the DVD that "Teenage Zombies" currently appears on: It is yet another DVD from those perpetual underachievers at Alpha Video. This outfit has a catalog of hundreds of oddball films that have lapsed into the public domain, all of which the company makes available at very reasonable prices but with zero attempt at restoration or pretenses of quality. Thus, this disc features a battered-looking print with lousy sound, but at least a crisp-enough-looking B&W image; I've certainly seen a lot worse from this outfit. And really, if you want to see a zombified gorilla tussle with an Eastern spy, where ELSE are you gonna go?!?!

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.