Get Ready to Unleash Your Inner Werebear

“It’s great that my film is receiving its World Premiere in paradise,” enthused writer/director Tim Sullivan. “The finale of the film, of course, takes place on the beach, so what better place than the Hawaiian Rainbow Film Festival as a kick off?”

A funny, subversive spoof of the Eisenhower/Kennedy-era beach movies, I Was A Teenage Werebear follows a day in the life of closeted new kid Ricky O’Reilly (played by Sean Paul Lockhart, aka adult film superstar Brent Corrigan), who falls for Malibu High’s mysterious bad boy Talon (Anton Troy). When aroused, the two transform into bestial leather daddies, the titular “Werebears.” The film features five rock ‘n roll musical numbers in a stylistic mash-up of genre icons Roger Corman and John Waters that spins the frothy boy/girl/beach format into a humorously bloody, albeit well-intentioned, call for acceptance and tolerance.

Describing his contribution to Chillerama’s quartet, I Was A Teenage Werebear writer/director Tim Sullivan explained, “Each one of us is doing homage to a different genre and style. I choose the surf musicals of the 60’s crossed with Lost Boys and Twilight. As a gay man, I’ve always been drawn to the queer subtext in films depicting teenage angst, whether it be James Dean’s relationship to Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause or Zac Efron’s emotional tug of war between sports and theater in High School Musical. With our fight for equality reaching a fever pitch, I felt it was time to fully embrace the gay undertones that peppered my previous films (2001 Maniacs, Field of Screams and Driftwood), and this time bring them front and center.”