1959’s Teenage Zombies tells the story of a quartet of “teenagers.”

Reg (Don Sullivan), Skip (Paul Pepper), Julie (Mitzie Albertson), and Pam (Brianne Murphy) don’t really look like teenagers.  Julie could probably pass for her early 20s.  Reg looks like he’s getting close to 40.  Pam appears to be about 30.  Skip is maybe in his mid-20s.  One could chalk that up to bad casting on the part of director Jerry Warren but I like to think that the film is actually commenting on the education system.  While most of their contemporaries are out getting jobs and starting careers, these four people have failed their classes so often that they are stuck in permanent teenager mode.  They still hang out at the local malt shop and the owner lets them because money is money.

Our four aging teenagers decide to spend the day waterskiing.  Woo hoo!  What fun!  (I don’t water ski because of my morbid fear of drowning but I do like hanging out at the lake and watching other people risk their lives.)  During their water skiing adventures, the teens come across a mysterious island.  They decide to explore because why not?  They’re 30-something teenagers!  Life is about taking risks.

The Island turns out to be home to Dr. Myra (Katherine Victor).  Dr. Myra, who is apparently working for the Godless communists, has developed a mind-control gas that can turn people into her slaves.  Living on the island with Dr. Myra is a hunched over zombie named Ivan the Zombie (Chuck Niles) and a gorilla (Mitch Evans).  Gorillas really aren’t native to the United States and, even if they were, I doubt you would find one living on an unchartered island in the middle of a lake but then again, you also don’t find many mad scientists at the lake either.  Most mad scientists understand that mountain laboratories are easier to defend than their island equivalent.

With the teens missing, two of their friends go to the local sheriff (Mike Concannon) for help.  Unfortunately, it turns out that the sheriff is actually working with Dr. Myra and has been providing her with prisoners to experiment on!  All of the teenagers realize that they have to stop Dr. Myra before she perfects her mind control gas and uses it to conquer the world!  Unfortunately, the teens themselves are pretty stupid.  Their plan for getting Dr. Myra to tell them how to reverse is the process is to put her in the zombie gas chamber herself.  What they don’t seem to have considered is that the zombies don’t talk so turning Dr. Myra into a zombie isn’t going to be that helpful.

Teenage Zombies is definitely a film of its time, a low-budget mix of teen hijinks and zombie “horror.”  It’s the type of film where the “wild” teens come across as being as wild as a church youth group.  My favorite thing about the film is that the climax depends on a random gorilla attack.  My second favorite thing is that the teens are told that, if they save America, they might even get a chance to meet the President!  Well, I should hope so!

That said, Dwight Eisenhower was pretty cool.  If Eisenhower couldn’t inspire those teens to save America, then nobody could.