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Weekend Discussion Thread: Least-Convincing Teenagers in a Movie or ShortAlert reader Robert suggests:
We definitely have to open this one up to shorts as well as movies, in which case I will have to nominate the unkempt, middle-aged college students in “Body Care and Grooming.” What”s your pick? 91 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Least-Convincing Teenagers in a Movie or Short”Commenting at Satellite News
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Nick from ‘What to do on a Date’ looked to be pushing 40.
I’m going with the 40+ year old Romulan roommate from “Is This Love”.
One of my favorite lines from any short
“I bet you think we’re a little old fashioned”
“No just…old”
Ring of Terror! No question. George Mather, who played Lewis Moffitt was actually in his early forties when that movie was made.
Honorable mention: Tony Marshall as the old-looking teenager that Michael Landon fights with at the start of I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Marshall was in fact only his early twenties, but looked at least 30.
Prize for non-MST-ied movies: Stockard Channing as Betty Rizzo in Grease.
Another vote for Ring of Terror.
Chase from “Giant Gila Monster.” Looked more like 25 than whatever he was supposed to be.
I Accuse My Parents, in which none of the teenagers look to be younger than 35.
The short “Is This Love”.
Earth Vs. The Spider is the first one that comes to mind.And,of course,Teenagers From Outer Space is another.
Agree with Ring of Terror and Teenagers from Outer Space.
And I’d include Mel Torme’s character from Girls Town – I don’t know if his character was supposed to be a teenager or just a young adult, but Torme himself was in his mid-30s, which puts a whole new disturbing twist on his mauling of Elinor Donohue’s character (also not the 16-yr-old she was supposed to be, but at least only in her 20s). And then there’s the icky elf guy from Girl in Gold Boots, who seemed like he was in his 30s at least, despite all the references to him as a “young man” and a “kid.” Loved the riffing on that fact.
Teenage Caveman, the perfectly quaffed(sp ?) Napolean Solo dude.
I’ll also go with Teenage Caveman. Robert Vaughn was the very first teenager with a receding hairline.
Pardon my previous post, I coifed down too many Bloody Marys this morn.
I pick Hank and the dubbed voice lady from “Horror of Party Beach”.
David “Shark” Fralick, Brad from Soultaker. Talk about your receding hairlines, I’m just not sure they were supposed to be teens though?
My first thought was of Teenagers from Outer Space but I read somewhere that the “Teenagers” title wasn’t the original one. If IMDb is correct, the same is definitely true of Teenage Cave Man: Corman titled it “Prehistoric World” but AIP changed the title much to Corman’s annoyance. So, while Robert Vaughn and David Love don’t look the least bit like teenagers, possibly they’re weren’t supposed to. Michael Landon in I Was A Teenage Werewolf doesn’t have that excuse to help him, though, since his character is explicitly a high school student.
I pick the kid who leads the electric fried egg gang in What About Juvenile Delinquency? He’s not as old-looking as some of the other “teenagers” mentioned above but he’s the least convincing at being a terror of the high-school halls. Even Paula Parkins could out-tough him.
In the “Are You Ready for Marriage?” short, the college girl’s roommate is old enough to be her mom!
I can’t remember if ages were stated in each movie, so I’ll give the movies and shorts where college age people a pass since they “could” be in their twenties and even be sophomores.
We also don’t know the rate of aging of humanoid extraterrestrials so I’ll also toss out Teenagers From Outer Space. For all we know looking 45 may well be how a teen looks on their planet.
As a result I give Teenage Caveman the nod. I will say I do have a cousin who started going bald at age 16, but clearly Vaughn was 25 or 26.
Billy from Laserblast, who was played by the 27-year-old Kim Milford.
The horrible gang of random “teenagers” from Hobgoblins. Specifically the 30-year-old military recruit and his Dee Snider look-alike girlfriend.
Criswell: I think you mean “Is This Love?” and I’m going to have to agree with you.
The “Teenagers(?) from Outer Space” were closer to Social Security than their first drivers’ licenses.
The pathologically lying high school student cum gangster Jimmy Wilson in “I Accuse My Parents” apparently lied about his age in order to stay in high school. He looked at least as old as the unexplained floozy who showed up at his house after the announcement that he won the essay contest, and he appears not much youngster than the world’s dumbest gangster kingpin this side of Leo McCabe. I was always puzzled by the night club singer falling for the high school kid. How old was she supposed to be, anyway?
Never mind Robert Vaughn’s receding hairline, I want to know where he got the post-apocalyptic Brylcreem!
I’ll second Fart Bargo’s vote for Brad from Soultaker. That guy’s receding hair looked bad no matter how he “quaffed” it.
I also have to vote for “Is This Love?” with an honerable mention to Lea in “Space Mutiny”. She might not have supposed to be a teenager, but she shure wasn’t as as young as she was supposed to be.
I’ll go with the kid from HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT. Maybe it was his hard family life that made him look older.
Though I’m not sure how teenage they were supposed to be, how about the “kids” from VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS?
Or how about the couple of delinquents from TEEN-AGE CRIME WAVE hold up in Ma & Pa Kettles farm house for the entire movie. That experiment was painful. :eek:
I know he wasn’t supposed to be a teenager but Buz from Girl in the Gold Boots looked to be about 40 and they kept calling him Kid. Then there was the Tige Andrews lookalike in Giant Gila Monster. The real Tige was the police lieutenant in the Mod Squad, for pete’s sake! Of course there’s the really old teenagers in Teenagers from Outer Space. Almost all of them looked to be well into their thirties. I’m going to go have a hamburger sandwich and some french fried potatoes now because I’m a teenager.
No argument with any of the above – great picks! How about the four friends in “The Home Economics Story?”
They must have been doing postdoctoral work in Home Econ at Iowa State College (“The high school after high school”).
:goat: Daddy-O was pushing it too.
How about a possible reverse case–the creepy kid from Overdrawn at The Memory Bank whom Tom Servo calls “the littlest sexual deviant”? “Is it…sexy?” It’s plausible from an oversexed teenager but it’s weird as hell coming from a boy who looks ten, maybe.
Fine nominations all, but it does bring up an interesting question – just why the hell were genuine teenage actors so scarce in these movies? Was it some sort of Actor’s Guild thing, or were teens just considered too hard to work with, or what?
I’m going with the cast of Girl in Gold Boots – unless maybe they weren’t old, just destroyed by awful, awful southwest. :-P
The cast of ‘Untamed Youth’ looked suspiciously un-youthful. Especially Mamie Van Doren. I’ve never seen a teenage girl with ‘assets’ as big as hers.
Personally, the worst example of a really old looking teenager in a film goes to Steve McQueen in the non-MST3K movie ‘The Blob’. He already looked like he was ready to star in ‘Papillon’.
It was a different world back then – kids actually aspired to looking older. The riff in “Young Man’s Fancy” – “There! Now I look like Mom.” – hit the nail on the head.
That said, it has to be the Romulan from “Is This Love?”
I hope this doesn’t make anyone sore but I’d
say Thor from “Teenagers from Outer Space”.
Btw, anyone disagreeing with this choice
may well face TORTURE! :reallypissed:
And, of course, the grandma roommate in
the short about marriage, although if
Lieutenant Worf watched old earth videos I’m
sure he’d find her quite attractive.
#31
Is that a slap at the Icky Elf Guy. Why, he
was just a child. And he could teleport! 8-)
#30, It was very common in the old days, and still may be, to use child actors who were several years older then the characters they played. All of the Brady Bunch kids were 3 or 4 years older then their character was supposed to be.
I think that they found small children were too much trouble to work with and there might have been child labor laws were a factor too. They would use kids 5, 6 years old to play toddlers and then just scaled up from there.
Exactly. With child actors, you’re only allowed a limited amount of time each day, they need to be schooled on set, and so on and so forth. Also, older actors don’t go through growth spurts and the like.
LOL @ all of the references to Robert Vaughn’s post-apocalypse/Neolithic greaser character in “Teenage Caveman.”
Village Elder: “One of the clan has come to manhood!”
Tom Servo: “At the tender age of thirty seven!”
The Ring of Terror “kids”. They definitely from the “old school”.
I think the overall prize has to go to Ring of Terror, for sheer quantity. Not only Lewis Moffit, but the other guys in the fraternity. The irritating “funny” guy and the guy who looked like he could be William Holden’s dad both looked 50.
There are, of course, other singular cases. The roommate in “Is This Love?” definitely deserves mention.
I’ll also add that I always thought the “Body Care and Grooming” kids seemed pretty plausibly college-aged. I was surprised to see that mentioned in the OP.
Agree with the poster who mentioned Hank from Horror of Party Beach…
Not so much Michael Landon, who was only 21 at the time, but all of the other so-called teenagers from “I Was A Teenage Werewolf.” The classmate he was fighting with at the beginning of the movie was balding.
I agree with #33 Mike in Portland. A lot of these shorts actually cast people who were the correct age. As a lot of these shorts were college products, the cast may have only been slightly older at worst. I totally believe the cast of Cheating, What To Do On a Date, and Are You Ready For Marriage.
That being said, the movies certainly did NOT cast correctly-aged people and I nominate the “kid” from “High School Big Shot” not only because he didn’t LOOK like a teen, but his character (criminal mastermind) was very un-teenlike.
coilythespringsprite #27 – I always thought the “high school after high school” was a dig at Iowa State, not a comment about how old everyone looked. (That being said, anyone else thing the main character from that short is good looking? Me too!)
Hmmmm, anyone else realize that a lot of these shorts were made in schools from the Big 12 (or the Big 8, as it was in the 50’s)? KU, K-state, Iowa State… Hmmmm. Anyway, go Cats!
Mamie Van Doren in “Girls Town”. THAT’S a high school senior? :-?
Tom Pittman was 26 when High School Big Shot was filmed. He died soon afterward.
GizmonicTemp#44:
Agree w/you about the intent of the “HS after HS” riff. Regarding the other Big 8/12 schools I still have
positive vibes toward KU for the Prof Bueller speech shorts. Still use his technique to ensure proper foot
position when speaking in public.
Regarding the HomeEconStory short; I wonder if the Home Economics sorority was among the elite residences at ISU?
I have to go with Earth Vs. The Spider. Those guys must have been going to high school on the GI Bill !
The Dr. Smith lookalike in Earth vs. The Spider was the most egregious example of middle-aged teens in the show’s history. They didn’t even try to make that guy look a little younger.
All great choices, but I have to go with Ring of Terror. Was anyone in the cast under 30? They didn’t look it. But also the Icky Elf from Girl In Gold Boots. It cracked me up when they called him a “kid”. It blew my pretty mind!