I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)

1950s

Oct 23

Physique model Gary Conway becomes the monstrous object of fixation for the queer-coded Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell) in Herbert L. Strock’s 1957 horror film I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN.

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I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN

1957. USA.

Director: Herbert L. Strock

Screenplay: Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel

Starring: Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates, Robert Burton, Gary Conway & George Lynn

In this campy reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic tale Dr. Frankenstein and his “assistant” build a muscular “teenage marvel” from athletic male cadavers. The doctor takes on a fiancée to be his secretary so he won’t be disturbed. He avoids her at all costs and when she discovers his “secret” he feeds her to his pet alligator. Once she is out of the way, Dr. Frankenstein and his muscular creation head to “Lover’s Lane” to check out cute men – in order to choose a new face for the monster.

“You saw that young man’s face?” The doctor asks the monster. “Rather handsome, I thought, even drugged by passion it has brightness, intelligence…”

Once fully assembled, all are captivated by the monster’s beauty. Frankenstein then plans to run away to England to avoid his creation being recognized. But, of course, things don’t go as planned.

With I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN being released in the 1950s it’s not surprising that the film’s thinly veiled queer male characters are depicted as predatory monsters. This was a trend that rose with the implementation of Hollywood’s Hays Code. Queer characters were banned, but slowly allowed back on screen through the decades so long as they were the villains, or full of self-loathing.

The film was released in 1957 as a double feature with BLOOD OF DRACULA, which featured a queer-coded female vampire, and received a meta sequel in 1958 set on the American International Pictures (AIP) studio lot titled HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. It too features a queer-coded villain.

If you’d like to watch these campy queer horror classics and check out the subtext for yourself – they’re all streaming on YouTube. Also, below I’ve attached a few photos of actor/model Gary Conway in the gay “Physique Pictorial” magazines of the 1960s.