Variety went on to say that Landon delivers "a first-class characterization as the high school boy constantly in trouble." Harrison's Reports was fairly positive, writing, "This horror type program melodrama should give pretty good satisfaction in theatres where such films are acceptable. The story is, of course, fantastic, but it has been handled so expertly that it holds the spectator in tense suspense." The Monthly Film Bulletin in the UK was negative, declaring, "A piece of old-fashioned and second-rate horror, the transformations are very badly done, the scientific background is shaky in the extreme and the monster looks like anything but the usual idea of a werewolf. It all seems rather hard on poor Tony, who is quite a pleasant boy when he's himself." According to Tim Dirks, the film was one of a wave of "cheap teen movies" released for the drive-in market. They consisted of "exploitative, cheap fare created especially for them [teens] in a newly-established teen/drive-in genre." The film was very profitable, as it was made on a very low budget but grossed as much as US $2,000,000, compared to its $82,000 budget. Released in June 1957, it was followed five months later by I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and Blood of Dracula and by the sequel How to Make a Monster in July 1958. AIP's female "teenage vampire" companion piece Less than four months after the release of I Was a Teenage Werewolf and coinciding with the release of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, AIP released Blood of Dracula, a film which bears more than a passing resemblance to their summer box office hit. More or less a remake, and with the hero and villain roles now both played by females, Blood of Dracula, with a story and screenplay credit by I Was a Teenage Werewolf writer Ralph Thornton (a pseudonym for AIP producer Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel), features many other similarities to I Was a Teenage Werewolf: for instance, both have (among other things) a teenager with social behavior problems, an adult mad scientist who is searching for the perfect guinea pig under the guise of helping troubled youth, an observer who can tell the killings are the work of a monster, a disbelieving police chief afraid of the press, a song written by Jerry Blaine and Paul Dunlap accompanied by a choreographed "ad-lib" dance number, hypnosis as a scientific medical treatment, drug injections,