The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters

Neighborhood kids playing baseball in the street in front of Louie's sweetshop keep hitting baseballs through his storefront window. Sach suggests they get permission for the kids to use a big, vacant lot nearby. Slip telephones the lot owners, the Gravesend family-- Slip wants permission to use the lot because he is a "bene-fracturer" of humanity. They are invited to drive over, since mad scientists Dr. Derek Gravesend and Anton Gravesend want brains-- to put into their gorilla and robot! Derek needs a tiny brain; Anton notes: "A creature with a brain that small wouldn't have sense enough to come in out of the rain." Quick cut to Sach, standing in the rain. At the spooky house, Slip and Sach meet Grissom, the butler, whom they call "Gruesome" (kind of a prototype Lurch, 10 years before "The Addams Family"). The Boys also meet a sexy female vampire Francine Gravesend (a prototype Morticia); she wants them for their blood. Amelia Gravesend wants to feed the Boys to her Agopanthus Carnivorous, her man-eating tree (sort of like in "The Wizard of Oz"). There are old jokes, such as the butler saying: "Walk this way" (this joke would be 20 years older in "Young Frankenstein"). Some jokes are pure Bowery Boys-- the butler says, "This old manor house goes back to colonial times; take this chair for instance: 1775." To which Slip retorts, "17.75? Anybody that paid over 3 bucks for it got rooked!" Some skits are recycled: Slip and Sach are locked in a closet; they use a saw to cut a hole in the far wall, and crawl through-- it leads to a cage with a gorilla in it. If this scene looks familiar, it's because it had been used before with the Three Stooges short "Dizzy Detectives" (1943). There's lots more fun and scary thrills. Just watch this movie and enjoy!

Paul Wexler would appear in other horror movies, like "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake." Laura Mason would appear in other films, as a Harem Girl, and then a Venus Girl in "Queen of Outer Space." Lloyd Corrigan had been in a previous Bowery Boys movie "Ghost Chasers" (1951). John Dehner would play occult characters in "The Twilight Zone" in the episodes: "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" & "The Jungle." Steve Calvert (Cosmos the gorilla) had played an ape in "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla"; his last movie was playing a gorilla in the Ed Wood 'classic': "The Bride and the Beast." Trivia: this is the only Bowery Boys movie with "Bowery Boys" in the title.

After a baseball breaks the window of "Louie's Sweet Shop", problem-solving leader Leo Gorcey (as Terrence "Slip" Mahoney) decides he his fellow "Bowery Boys" - accomplice Huntz Hall (as Horace "Sach" Jones), brother David "Condon" Gorcey (as Chuck), and Benny "Bennie" Bartlett (as Butch) - should get the kids playing in the Bowery off the streets and onto a safe vacant lot. Telephoning the lot-owning "Gravesend Family" at home, Mr. Gorcey wrangles an invitation to their mansion.

Mad scientist John Dehner (as Derek Gravesend) tells brother Lloyd Corrigan (as Anton) that Gorcey must be dim-witted, due to his mangling of the English language. The pair decide "Bowery Boys" would be perfect for head and brain transplanting experiments involving both a robot and a gorilla. Family matriarch Ellen Corby (as Amelia) would rather feed them to her man-eating tree. And, sexy vampire Laura Mason (as Francine) is looking forward to the arrival of new blood at the old house.

As a film series, "The Bowery Boys" looked like it was (generally) in an insurmountable rut, after a string of unsatisfactory films (see especially those from 1952). The quality was never all that dependable, but the movies did successfully entertain a targeted audience. While seeming to be finished, the series became sporadically good again, before the crashing in 1956.

"The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters" was one of the a high points; it was followed by the bad "Jungle Gents" (1954), then the good "Bowery to Bagdad" (1955). The title "The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters" suggests some inspiration from "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), but this situation is more clearly swiped from Charles Addams' witty "The Addams Family" (begun as a comic strip in 1938), which spawned the memorable 1960s television series and imitations like this film.

****** The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (6/6/54) Edward Bernds ~ Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bernard Gorcey, Paul Wexler

The title The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters is somewhat a misnomer since there are no real monsters in the film, just a weird family who'd like to make one. A 'temporary' one does appear, but you'll have to see the film to find out just exactly what I mean.

Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall ran into a few unworldly types in their various films. In this case what brings them to the house of the Gravesend family is they're representing the kids in the neighborhood who would like to use a vacant lot that the family owns for a baseball field.

What an interesting crew the Gravesends are, a kind of Vanderhof family from You Can't Take It With You on steroids. Three siblings, John Dehner, Ellen Corby, and Lloyd Corrigan all pursue their various scientific interests and their butler Grisson aka Gruesome played by Paul Wexler. Dehner and Corrigan have made tests on Huntz Hall and discover he's got the proper cranial capacity for a brain transplant. But they're fighting over whether it will be Dehner's gorilla or Corrigan's robot. Corby has a Venus Man-Trap plant that needs feeding and the black sheep of the family is Laura Mason who is a vampire who also needs feeding. With this family she gets leftovers.

The boys have their hands full with this crew and in one of their better films, the audience will have its laughs full.

I'm one of the few people around who can still recall seeing first release Bowery Boy movies. I was eleven years old when this one hit the silver screen. I can recall laughing until I cried when the monsters began appearing. Any hard core Bowery boy enthusiast recalls the wonderful job done by Leo Gorcy, who played "Slip" Mahoney and Huntz Hall who played "Satch". They played off each other perfectly and their on screen characterization of a pair of gang members from the mid century Bowery made the comedy that much sweeter. I can't recall seeing a Bowery Boys movie that I didn't like. Some were better than others, but my buddies and I would have walked to the next town to see any of their movies. Oddly enough, Leo Gorcy died quite young without much money. He passed away in 1969 at about 52 years of age. Huntz Hall on the other hand lived to be about 80 years old and passed away in 1999. He apparently was quite well off, having owned a 10% interest in the Bowery Boys and having made some very profitable oil and gas investments. I owe a lot of happy hours to these two fine actors from the early years of movie comedy.

A baseball smashes the front window at Louie's Sweet Shop. It's the neighborhood kids. The adults decide to call up the Gravesend residence for permission to let the kids play baseball in their lot. Slip and Sach travel up to the mansion but they don't realize that the family is disturbed and the house is full of monsters.

This is trying to be Abbott and Costello. I don't hate it but I prefer to have Abbott and Costello. Costello is a comedic genius. These guys are a step below. This is still good clean fun if not necessarily original.