The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters

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.

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.

If you don't enjoy this Bowery Boys flick, forget the others! THE BOWERY BOYS MEET THE MONSTERS is one of their best, and quite possibly THE best. Slip and Sach leave Manhattan for Long Island to ask the owners of a barren lot in their neighborhood if they might help turn it into a baseball field where Bowery kids can play. What the boys discover when they meet the eccentric owners at their eerie manor is that they're a couple of looney bird mad scientists, who quickly plan to use Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall as brain donors for their latest experiments.

This is not exactly ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, but it was doubtless influenced by that team's "meet the monsters" series of movies. The Bowery Boys wind up confronting a creepy butler who transforms into a Jekyll/Hyde monster, a quirky robot, a savage gorilla, a sexy vampiress and a creaky old lady with a man-eating plant for a pet. Fans of The Three Stooges may recognize actual sequences "borrowed" from some of their shorts, as this was scripted by Stooge writers Edward Bernds and Elwood Ullman (and Bernds directed). As a result, the pacing is quick and the jokes are quite good. Highly recommended as one of your first Bowery Boys experiences, or if you're a fan of monster movies of the period.

*** out of ****

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.

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