The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters

This is a very bad film, though as far as bad movies go, there are still worse--though not much worse! The Lemon Grove Kids film is definitely one of the most amateurish and dopey films I have ever seen and it looks like a home movie, though because it doesn't take itself too seriously, I couldn't completely hate it.

The Kids are a very bad knockoff of the Bowery Boys--though it begs you to wonder why anyone would want to do this in the first place?! One of the "actors" is Cash Flagg as a Huntz Hall-like idiot. According to Flagg's impersonation, all you need to do is wear a baseball cap, make stupid faces and walk around like an idiot. The film's knockoff of Leo Gorcy wasn't much better. Like some of the silliest Bowery Boys films, this one has monsters, a rival gang, etc. but is squarely placed in the 1960s with the music and fashions.

The bottom line is that with terrible music, rotten dubbing, horribly exaggerated action and slapstick sound effects, this film is a dud on every level and would probably appeal only to small children and bad movie fans. All others approach at your own risk.

FYI--Cash Flagg is the stage name for Ray Dennis Steckler. He also appeared in such great films as "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?" and was equally pitiful there. Also, there is a homage to the previous film RAT PFINK A BOO BOO--look for it after the gorilla appears.

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.

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!

Most of Ray Dennis Steckler's films are so energetic that even if they aren't very good (which is usually the case), they manage to entertain on that same odd level Edward D. Wood, Jr. established a few years before. That being said, "The Lemon Grove Kids" is a surprisingly entertaining anthology (three episodes) aimed at a young audience, but I must say I found a lot of it amusing myself (and I'm 22); Steckler has a real repoire with his actors, as they bumble about in traditional Scooby-Doo fashion, as they encounter space aliens, mummies, and kidnappers (they don't show any signs of humiliation at the sheer wackiness of the material). The first episode has the Lemon Grove Kids cleaning up an eccentric old man's ("Red Zone Cuba" auter Coleman Francis!) house, only to find it's been invaded by a grasshopper alien and a Vampira look-alike (played by Carolyn Brandt!); the second episode has the Kids cleaning the mansion (also used in "The Thrill Killers") of a washed-up Hollywood starlet (Brandt again), who is accosted by a dim-witted duo looking to score a ransom; and the third (and weakest) episode has two rival gangs competing in a cross-country (but more like cross-town) marathon. In general, this is moderately entertaining stuff for kids of any age (sure beats "Barney"), and makes me wonder why Mr. Steckler didn't do more of this type of thing.

5.5/10

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.