Teenage Strangler

Teenage girls are being slaughtered by an unknown assailant. Police find the victims strangled with their own stockings, faces smeared with lipstick. Juvenile delinquent Jimmy Walton is immediately suspected of the murders. Jimmy must prove his innocence, while the real killer has targeted Jimmy's girlfriend as his next victim.

Also known as "Terror in the Night," Teen-Age Strangler was a hometown production filmed in Huntington, West Virginia. Financed by local businessmen, it is considered the first independent film produced in the Mountain State. Director Ben Parker (here using the alias of Bill Posner) had previously directed the exploitation feature A Modern Marriage (1950) as well as parts of The Invisible Avenger (1956), a pilot for a television series based on 'The Shadow' that received a theatrical release years after its production. Teen-Age Strangler itself sat on the shelf for three years, until it was featured on a double bill with Herschell Gordon Lewis' A Taste of Blood in 1967. Starring Bill Bloom, Jo Canterbury, John Humphries, John Ensign, Rick Harris and Stacy Smith. Directed by Bill Posner.

BONUS
What About Juvenile Delinquency? (1955): A juvenile delinquent faces a crisis of conscience when his father is savagely beaten by his fellow gang members. Directed by Herk Harvey, best remembered for his only feature film Carnival of Souls (1962).

• horror