The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters

This movie holds a special place for me in my movie going experience. It was the absolutely worst movie I ever saw in my hometown theater. After more than 35 years, I can still remember walking home from the theater and thinking that this was the worst movie I had ever seen. And, yes, this was the same theater where I had seen Edward D. Wood Jr.'s "Plan Nine From Outer Space" (1959) years earlier. This movie was shown as a special event with people dressed up as monsters invading the theater during a point in the film. If there was anything good to say about this film, it would be about Cash Flagg's impersonation of Huntz Hall (I was a Bowery Boys fan). For rather obvious reasons, no other Steckler film ever played in my hometown. I have since seen worse films, but I would have to go to other cities for that torture.

Born in 1965, I can't say much about this movie. I remember, as a little kid being scared silly, since there were 'live' monsters in the audience at the theater during the movie. This was the most scared I ever was at a movie.....ok, so I was probably 5 years old. E-mail me if you saw this show in the theater back then.

Positively the most memorable movie-going experience of my life. Procter's Theater in Troy, NY...probably around 1968 or 1969. My sister took me to see this movie on a Saturday...billed as including a special guest appearance by real live monsters.

I don't recall much about the first two shorts. But the last...when the Lemon Grove Kids and Cash Flagg enter into a cornfield or dense weeds...they are met by lightning crashes and a MUMMY!

At that moment...a spotlight hits the side of the Procter's stage and a guy in a Mummy suit staggers out. His arms are raised up and he heads for the aisles.

The audience flipped. I remember everybody leaping out of their seats and running down the aisles terrified. I ran too...but sister nabbed me before I could get too far. Things settled down. The mummy disappeared. And we sat back to watch the rest of the show. I have no memory of what came after.

But that memory of the mummy on the stage was indelible. I was around five or six when I saw it.

Years later in Washington, DC I came across an old video of the movie from the late great Georgetown Video Vault (this was around 1992) and I laughed it up with my wife over Lemon Grove Kids and Ray Dennis Steckler. Oh...if we only had that kind of movie experience again!

This was (probably) meant for TV. There were three separate shows on the video I saw.

Slide whistles, boops on heads, keystone kops style violence, and goofy outfits.

It looked like a Mack Sennet comedy with sound.

Steckler filmed this in and around his home using his friends and family mostly as cast. The anarchic wildness made this a trip from start to finish.

Steckler had a habit of making things up as he went along. And he was BRILLIANT at it.

My son liked this film enough to ask me to find the DVD so we don't have to deal with our worn out tape anymore.

This is a great film for the kids.

Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters (1965)

** (out of 4)

If you like the weird and bizarre then this film will be just for you, although I think most people are really going to hate every second of it unless they're familiar with The Bowery Boys. Director Ray Dennis Steckler made three shorts and edited them together (although each still has its own credits) for this feature that's a homage to The Bowery Boys. In this film, the Lemon Grove Kids end up doing battles against burglars, vampires, an insect monster and there's even a mummy that shows up at one point. For the life of me I can't see how this film didn't come under some sort of legal dispute especially when you consider that Leo Gorcey went over The Beatles for his likeness being on their Sgt. Peppers album. It's really hard to judge a film like this and you could spend days talking about all its faults but I'm really not going to do that. This here was clearly a project of love because it's just Steckler and his friends having some fun by impersonating a group of characters that I'm sure they all loved. Steckler plays the Huntz Hall look-a-like and for the most part I thought he was fine in the role. In fact, I'd say the majority of the cast were good enough for what this film was calling for even though none of them came close to the real people but that's to be expected. I thought the final short, the one in Hollywood, was the weakest but the first two were mildly entertaining as long as you went into them not expecting too much. The insect monster was obviously very cheap but it was fun in a kid's movie type of way. This film is mainly going to appeal to fans of The Bowery Boys and monster movie die-hards who will also enjoy seeing director Coleman Francis (THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS) in a small role.