Customer Reviews

Teenage Gang Debs / Teen-Age Strangler

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a real winner from Something Weird Video.

The first feature, "Teenage Gang Debs" amounts to a black and white handheld camera teen gang shockumentary.

A new chick comes to town, and is soon the top Deb by merit of catfights and pure evil. Switchblades, violent attacks, motorbikes, and bad teens run rampant. Curiously, the film's documentary styling makes it a classic curio worthy of study in film classes.

In the second feature, the town of Huntington, West Virginia (circa 1965), is in the grip of teen terror, as a stalking strangler preys on young teen girls! Eek!

"Teenage Strangler" is a real hoot, and even comes complete with a song and teen dance number, "Yipes, Stripes!". Color film only kind of helps. The hero teen's fey brother is just begging to get run over by a '59 Chevy.

While the killer is both obvious and a surprise, the real reason to watch is the vintage cars, malt shops, dances, clothes, and furniture. Since the film was shot live on location in 1965, there do not appear to be any fabricated sets to speak of. Ah, for the days when Buddy Holly glasses were cool.

Along with the Double Feature of delinquency, the disc is packed with extras. There are two short featurettes about teens gone bad; one is a city's public service film about how cops are trying to prevent delinquency, and the second is a laughable public service "scare" film about VD.

While watching material on the disc, one must ask, "MST3k, where are you?!"

There are also several Drive-in trailers, intermission adverts, and more. Overall, an awesome package for the price!

Wow! This Something Weird double bill is a winner! We'll get to the amazing second feature in a second, but first off is the 1966 juvenile deliquency epic TEENAGE GANG DEBS. It's a fun, gritty and raw tale of a young tough woman (...) from manhattan who shows up and starts maneuvering her way into the ranks of a gang. After manipulating the leader to be killed by another member, she gets the power to expel any other "deb" in the gang that gives her trouble. She even sets up one poor lassie for a (...) ..."Line up, boys" she squeals. Cat fights, rumbles, dancing and more....even if you're not a big JD movie fan, this one is definitely a wild trashy time.

THEN, if that wasn't enough comes the second feature called TEEN-AGE STRANGLER. Manohmanohmanohman! What a riot! This 1965 color teen-horror flick only runs 61 minutes, but it's jam-packed with hilarious moments, June Cleaver like characters, a very gay bespectacled younger brother named Mikey, drag racing, stocking-and-lipstick murders and more! There's a killer on the loose killing young women....could the killer be a member of the Fastbacks gang who wear jackets with a bulldog on the back???? Or could the killer be the only other character in the movie??? Hard to figure out. And the histrionics of some of the actors is absolutely hysterical. When Mikey first appeared on screen, I almost lost my cookies. Oh, I forgot to mention a chick gets up on the counter at the soda fountain and sings "Yipes Stripes" as the cool cats dance around below. This movie has it all! Amazing!

There's the usual extras (trailers/ads/drive-in shorts) plus two vintage juvenile delinquency public-service shorts, one about VD running rampant in a small town! If you like Something Weird DVD's in general, this one ranks amongst the best of the lot. You won't be disappointed!

Teenage Gang Debs is hard to describe... If you've seen other films that fall into the "roughy", juvenile delequent exploitation genre, especially from the early to mid-sixties, its somewhat predictable, but what makes it interesting is that its very well shot, cut and scored, though at times its hard to tell whether some of the "artistic" merits of this film were done intentionally or by accident. As an example, the gore, sex and violence is never exactly shown, but hinted at... and just when you think you're about to see something... the film never fails to cut to a scene with a bunch of teens doing what seems to be the watusi, twist or possibly the frug. - - Considering that the film was released in 1966, not a half a decade earlier as suggest by the beatnik bongos and Jazzy sound track, you wonder if the director was a bit behind the times... or if the film is trying to be modern and artsy in the tradition of other films of that era... but rather than tackling something deep like race relations or man's dilema in the modern world, it went back to the old juvenile beatsoploitation bag. - - Nevertheless, the score is good ! Whatever, if you're an exploitation movie film fanatic... the way the film is cut and put together makes it a very enjoyable late night TV juvenile deliquency stinker from the vaults or "art film" depending upon how you wish to look at it... either way, I'd recommend it...

(*note : I have the SWV VHS version, which doesn't include Teenage Strangler... so I can't comment on it at this time.)

I'm not going to go on and one with some boring review of the films but I will say that anyone who typically enjoys the type of films that Something Weird puts out will enjoy this double feature as well. I loved both films and I think I'd go with Teen Age Strangler as being the better of the two films but honestly, it's a close call. Great DVD!!

I liked it better than Scorcese's "Mean Streets". Music by Steve Karmen - the king of jingles. The bongo love theme was stunning!

A double feature of "Teenage Strangler" and "Teenage Gang Debs," c'mon whaddya thinking? It's a no brainer, just buy it!!!

but not in a good way. These films were outdated the day they were made, let alone today. Yes, they have an unintentional laughable side, but definitely not in the "so bad it's good" category. The acting gives new meaning to "wooden," and the plots are so thin you can read through them. The bad song in the diner in "Strangler" was a high point, as well as the manic (among other things) brother.