mark.waltz Any film that has a conversation about how to make prettier pickles is classic in my book, and this ends up being probably the best of the Bowery Boys films,an Abbott and Costello style horror film. There's a Lurch like Butler (Grisom, whom they keep referring to as Gruesome) who gets the predictable reaction when he orders Sach and Slip to "walk this way", a series of wacky relatives and an exotic Theda Bara like vamp, all gathered together in a spooky mansion where it's best to expect the unexpected. Some great character comics (among them Ellen Corby and Lloyd Corrigan) have a ball emoting dramatically for laughs. Corby has a tree monster who happens to like cats (as a snack, I'm sure), and Gruesome, err Grisom, takes a potion that makes him Mr. Hyde's long lost twin. A funny looking robot and a gorilla round out the ensemble of wacky creations/creatures.There's more laughs in this single entry than all of the series up to that time. The script is filled with funny gags and dialog ("The living of today are the skeletons of tomorrow"), and it's an interesting set design as well. Corby, looking like granny without the Tweety Bird, will delight her fans from "The Waltons", looking the same but no match for her no- nonsense matriarch as she regrets the lack of living flesh for her funny looking tree. Minimal screen time of the gang for all but Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall doesn't matter, as the wacky characters of this madhouse are entertainment enough.

Scarecrow-88 Bowery boys, Slip and Sach (Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall) want to find a property so the kids can have a sandlot for their baseball, but the location for which they desire is owned by the dreaded oddball family, the Gravesends. Slapstick, plays on the English language (Gorcey's specialty is using words that have no business belonging in the sentences they find themselves), kooky characters, energetic cast (even if the humor might be dated, the cast give it their all), and busy plot (towards the end, all hell breaks loose as the Bowery Boys run around trying to keep from being killed as the family tries to either take their head or feed them to a hungry tree (don't ask)) keep this film moving like a locomotive. It doesn't stay still long enough to really contemplate just how preposterous it gets (and wants to get). As far as the monsters: there's a giant robot that obeys the commands fed from a microphone, a gorilla (yep, the gorilla once again!), tree kept in a hall that is fed by Ellen Corby (yes, Grandma Walton!), a vampire (the sultry Laura Mason), mad scientists John Dehner and Lloyd Corrigan, and the tall, deep-voiced butler (Paul Wexler). Steering through all the hi-jinks are the Gorceys (eventually, Bernard and David, along with Benny Bartlett, come looking for their boys, encountering the crazed Gravesends themselves) and Hall, looking to survive and, still on mission, get permission for the sandlot. Dehner wants Hall's brain as a replacement for his gorilla while Corrigan wants to put Hall's head on his robot! That duel for Hall often leads to him nearly knocking at death's door (Wexler even has a hatchet, ready to cleaver the poor guy in two!), but fate always rescues him in the nick of time. The tree even eats Slip's sandwiches and drinks his milk after a nighttime visit to the kitchen! The robot is a star of the movie, often losing its head when walking erratic without proper command…reason why Corrigan wants to get him Hall's head! Dehner even has Hall on the operating table, interrupted by visits of the other Bowery boys right before surgery!You get plenty of Leo and Huntz playing off each other (it is the Laurel and Hardy, Three Stooges comedy team dynamic), through insults and ribbing. Plenty of physical humor is at the fore, too, besides the nincompoop goof antics of Leo and Huntz. Everyone's in on the fun, with little subtlety in sight. Just try and figure out what Leo means by some of the words he uses incorrectly in his sentence vocabulary! Included in the cache of mocked horror clichés is the Jekyll/Hyde monster, transformed from an experimental fluid meant to give the drinker attractiveness, instead causing a manic, hairy-faced, toothy beast, for which both Wexler and Huntz become far too aware. Was it fun? I thought so, but it is all so chaotic and harried, the cast doesn't take a breath, so this kind of comedy is an acquired taste.

classicsoncall Maybe if the Bowery Boys had crossed paths with Universal Pictures along the way, they might have put together a meaningful monster flick a la Abbott and Costello. The word 'Monster' in the title is a bit of a misnomer, as all you get here is a man in an ape suit and a tin man robot that's not all that scary. My two year old granddaughter was watching the flick with me and she couldn't take her eyes off Gorog, and she was smiling the whole time.But as far as Bowery Boys flicks go, this is as entertaining as most, near the end of their run and down to only four members for this story, along with patron Louie (Bernard Gorcey). The story nominally involves the gang looking to pick up a ball field for the neighborhood kids, and wind up confounding the members of a pre-Addams Family assortment of mad scientists. In turn, Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) become the target of Dr. Gravesend (John Dehner) and his brother Anton (Lyoyd Corrigan), who both need human brains for their respective scientific pursuits. I was a bit surprised to see Paul Wexler doing the 'Lurch' gimmick a full decade before Ted Cassidy gave it a whirl in the TV series a decade later.For once, Slip's malapropisms are given their proper due by Dr. Gravesend, who figures that Slip is no mental giant the way he fractures the English language. For his part, Slip doesn't disappoint with any number of his stereo-optical delusions.The entire escapade falls into a slap dash finale, not as well choreographed as say, the Marx Brothers, but still zany nonetheless. If you keep a sharp eye, you'll note it wasn't Sach under the goofy monster mask when he put the Gravesend's into those body slams and airplane spins. The stunt double they used was obviously broader in the chest and shoulders, even under the suit. In contrast, Sach did all of his own wrestling moves in the 1952 Bowery Boys film, "No Holds Barred".

Teenie-1 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.