The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters

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.

In order to appreciate the slapstick comedy of the Bowery Boys, one must first be able to wholeheartedly laugh at the Three Stooges. Many of the comedy team films of the 40s and 50s centered around the same theme - haunted house, mad scientist, gorilla, brain transplant, etc. This one is like the rest. The most hilarious part of this film is how the Chief (Leo Gorcey) manages to mangle the English language, many times stumping Dr. Gravesend into trying to figure out what he's actually saying. Unlike The Three Stooges, the Bowery Boys are not really physical comedians. Huntz Hall's facial expressions are really not as funny as Curly's, Larry's or Moe's. Leo Gorcey tries to play it for laughs as best as he can by being bug-eyed, but it just doesn't come off. Perhaps his age was showing by this time and he just couldn't quite cut it anymore like in his earlier films. Still, the premise of the film is familiar, there are some good laughs from the entire cast, and it is worth a look, even if just for nostalgia's sake. Although I think the group's earlier films were much funnier, this is about the best one out of the series that were made in the 50s. Worth a peek.

Growing up in new jersey i remember them showing the Bowery boys movies every Sunday,and being a monster fan this was my favorite Bowery boys movie,huntz hall and Leo gorcey want to turn a vacant lot into a baseball field for the Bowery kids so they will have a safer place to play baseball,actually called stick-ball in new jersey and new york. they find it is owned by some kooky Addams family types.there's a gorilla in a cage,a man eating plant,and a big clunky robot.its all slapstick hijinks when the Bowery boys show up,some people called this the poor mans Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.though not as good its funny,especially Leo gorceys vocabulary.as a Bowery boys movie i would say its the best one.made by allied artists(earlier known as monogram pictures)the Bowery boys went through many name changes, the Clancy street boys,dead end kids,eastside kids,and later the Bowery boys.i give this vintage gem 7 out of 10.

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.

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.