Teenager (1974) User Reviews

Teenager

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 15 March 2023]

Director Billy Hazelrod (Joe Warfield) wants to make a biker movie in a small town where all of the interactions are real. He wants people to live and breathe their roles, but seeing as how the town already distrusts not just bikers but these Hollywood types, he's basically setting up a horrible tragedy. Or maybe that's what he intended all along. Why else would he set a sexual assault scene in a church, surrounded by real worshippers? And why is anyone surprised when they stop kneeling and start attacking the bikers - who they think are real - as the cameras keep rolling?

Sue Bernard (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) is the lead actress who starts taking her role too seriously. Andrea Cagan (The Hot Box) is the local girl who gets seduced by the dream factory that has taken over her small town. And John Holmes plays a cop!

The idea of this movie is way more interesting than the film itself. If I write and tell you that an accidental killing in this film becomes part of the movie that is being made within the movie and it's about art and life intersecting, it comes off that this film is able to turn that storyline into something meaningful. It gets close through it's very fly on the wall way of being shot. Yet it's so talky that it feels like it will take a long time to get there. If made by a better filmmaker, it may have.

Speaking of those filmmakers, this was directed and co-written (with Earl Jay) by Gerald Sindell, who also made H. O. T. S., a movie that was on cable seemingly non-stop in the middle of the masturbatory night in my teenage years.

False advertisement! This film really isn't about a teenager

[Serpent-5 · 3/10 · 17 October 2000]

jack H. Harris released a film that was so uncommercial he made it look like somekind of a runaway film. The film is basically about Charlie, a crazed filmmaker who tries to make a 50 grand no budget biker film in a small town. He wants the actor to act for real in the town, so he can get a real reaction from the small town folks. But the film turns into to be a snuff film because a incident. All the producer is worried about is can that pad the film with sex scene to make it longer! The film is a poor man's THE LAST MOVIE. The title character is a young girl who falls for Eddie, one of the actors who is on the run from the law because of the incident from the film. Joe Warfield (any relation to Chris? He looks like Roger Corman noted one reviewer) should get some kind of award for playing Charlie an obsessed filmmaker. He is funny, and gives a dead on performance as a Hollywood schlock filmmaker. Look for adult actor John Holmes in a three line part as a desk police officer. This is a good example of how films was made back in the 70's. Recommended.

A movie-within-a-movie about the ethics of moviemaking

[Eegah Guy · 9/10 · 7 August 2001]

Misleading title disguises a very good low-budget drama about the making of low-budget biker/exploitation movies and the dangers of letting too much reality intrude into the unreality of the movie world. The actor playing the obsessed director looks SO MUCH like Roger Corman that it had to be intentional. It's so sad that a film of this quality has to hide behind a salacious new title and be sold as a teen sex drama to be shown in theaters. See Dennis Hopper's THE LAST MOVIE for a similar story but made with more money and less focus.

Adult icon, John Holmes keeps his light under a bushel!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 8/10 · 13 February 2023]

Engrossing, and palpably groovy film-within-a-film about the cavalier, Grindhouse verite filmmaking of an especially exploitative exploitation director preparing and shooting his break-out, partially improvised Biker movie, wherein some of the boisterously improvised scenes with the increasingly reactionary townsfolk provides some dangerously realistic action! Director, Gerald Seth Sindell does a bang up job capturing the rising tensions within this desolated dust bowl town! Convincingly acted by a game cast, with one of the highlights being a gonzo sequence showing the revved up biker's trashing a sleepy town's convenience store yielding some unexpectedly dramatic results! Sindell's adventurous 'Teenager' concludes with a surprisingly contemplative climax, and the film's jaunty theme is a penetrating, eminently diggable ear-worm! More observant Grindhouse fans may have noticed that Adult film icon, John Holmes, makes two brief, uncharacteristically chaste appearances!