Customer Reviews

The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters - Trilogy

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you even know this film exists then you're a B movie/Steckler fan. Like his movies or not, you can always count on Steckler to utterly confuse you with the projects he undertook. This film is his homage to the Bowery Boys. It's actually 3 short films. The first is the most Bowery of the three. Plenty of fast motion slapshtick. This is the most well made of the three. Altough the plot falls apart at the end and Gopher(played by Steckler) gets chased by an ape and a mummy. The next film involves an alien known as green grasshopper. Most of the characters from the previous movie have disappeared so this one is less charming. One of his adawable daughters plays the hero by stealing the grasshopper's magic flower which transports these witch-like people who appeared out of nowhere to the grasshopper's home planet. The grasshopper and the vampire lady(yeah a vampire lady rode on the spaceship with the green grasshopper) are so terrified that they hop back into their spaceship and disappear, presumably for their home planet. Folks I can't beleive I just typed that, I never actually tried to take the plot seriously before. This one looks like a rejected episode of HR Puffenstuff.

The final film in the Trilogy is "go to Hollywood." I think this one was shot in 35mm. Its basically the lemon grove kids, but without the lemon grove kids. Steckler resumes his role of Gopher(sans baseball cap) and drug his wife and pwecious daughters into this one. Its like a scripted home movie. There is also a boy who may have been related. I'm not sure as the credits often change the names. Anyway if you are up for miore STeckler hijinks you can't go wrong with this one.

I can understand that something like this may be hard to swallow for the average genre fan - let alone the mainstream movie consumer.
But this IS what film making is all about!

Steckler has never been one of the guys who tried hard to produce "cult cinema" nor is he one of the craftsman cinematographers who aimed for the drive-in market to make a fast buck.
To me he is among the truest and most enthusiastic lovers of his trade who ever lived.
I don't even want to think about his films in a cinematic way. Like most of his films, I feel like I'm watching a gang of friends doing what they love. That is true for INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES, and even more for his LEMON GROVE films.

Caroline Brand is simply gorgeous and seeing Herb Robbins in yet one more of his weird cameos really makes my day.
I am not too familiar with the EAST END KIDS movies these films are an hommage to, but seeing today's vain attempts at creating mass-compatible comedy in different ways makes me appreciate these crazy antics nontheless.
This is innocence in its purest form!

Listening to Steckler's audio commentaries is always exciting and enlightening - and the fate of some of his acting friends brings more than one tear to my eyes.

If you are looking for a more accessible and artistic way into the world of Steckler, check out THRILL KILLERS for a start.
If you want to feel more familiar with his parodistic elements, watch RAT PFINK A BOO BOO.
But then return here to witness LEMON GROVE KIDS!

The world would be a better place with more people in the movie business sharing this man's enthusiasm and child-like activism!

When all I could find was nothing but favorable reviews citing this as a tribute to the Bowery Boys especially of the movie with the similar title "Meet The Monsters", I stupidly caved in and bought this dvd sight unseen. I thought this was going to be some sort of affectionate satire like the way Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder payed homage to Universal's first five Frankenstein movies. Well let me tell you, this simply is not the case for this "thing" that I in good conscience can not call a "movie". This is a collection of three short films. Excuse me, three short TERRIBLE films, that look like they were filmed on 8mm in a foreign country then badly dubbed in english, especially the first one. The second short, something about a vampire woman and space grasshoppers had one saving grace, a little redheaded toddler girl who was simply a delight to watch. The third and final short doesn't involve a monster at all. Go ahead take your chances! Don't say I didn't warn you! WOULD SOMEONE IN GOD'S NAME, PLEASE RELEASE "'THE BOWERY BOYS' MEET THE MONSTERS" ON DVD! I would hate to think that people who have never seen The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters would get the wrong impression because of this, this.. this... THING!

Ray Dennis Steckler is one of your cinematic enigmas, a man best known for his film The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. If that's his best film, you can only imagine how bad his worst film was. The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters - Trilogy is that worst film. Not only is it Steckler's worst film, it is easily the worst film I have ever seen in my life. I thought nothing could be worse than Caress of the Vampire 2 - I was wrong.

Maybe you're wondering about the trilogy thing. Well, this movie is actually three short films in one - and every one of them brings deep hurting to the unfortunate viewer. I know some people think Steckler was some kind of low-budget, independent genius - luckily, I don't know any of those people. This whole project is just horrible beyond words. The guy basically just got his friends and neighbors around and filmed incredibly stupid stories in his backyard. Steckler supposedly looked a lot like Huntz Hall, and he made these short films as some sort of devilish homage to the work of The Bowery Boys. I've never seen a Bowery Boys film, nor do I want to after watching this dreck of a tribute. You basically take a ludicrous plot, toss in some Keystone Kops routines at an advanced film speed, and tell every one of your actors and actresses to act as idiotic and childish as possible. That's pretty much the essence of The Lemon Grove Kids. They aren't even kids, either. Most of them are adults pretending (or are they pretending?) to be severely brain-damaged. Apparently, children were supposed to find them amusing, as these short films came into this world as kiddie matinees back in the mid-60s. Friend, if your kid thinks The Lemon Grove Kids are funny, I must advise you to seek psychological help for the little tyke before it's too late.

The first film, named simply "The Lemon Grove Kids," features said kids against their cross-town rivals. Like all gangs, they decide to settle their differences by staging a cross-country race. Lots of vaudevillian antics ensue as the evil Duke and his hired saboteur attempt to throw the race in favor of Killer Krump's gang. Somehow, the whole thing ends with Gopher (arguably the dumbest character in cinema history, played - of course - by Steckler himself) fighting mummies. In theaters, ushers dressed as mummies would actually pop out of the shadows to scare the hell out of the kiddies, but the odds of this happening in your home are remote at best. Just when you think things can't get any more stupid, though, you roll right in to "The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space." I won't even bother trying to explain this little story, as the title pretty much says it all. The only remotely watchable story comes last in the form of "The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood." Luckily, we're spared most of the adult Lemon Grove Kids in this one, and Gopher himself actually seems to be almost human for once. The gang gets a job cleaning at the home of movie star Cee Bee Beaumont (Carolyn Brandt, Steckler's wife at the time, who also polluted the screen as The Vampire Lady) and goofily manage to foil a kidnapping plot put in motion by the nefarious Killer Krump. High speed Bennie Hill action is at a minimum here, thank goodness, but you do have to take the good with the bad (not one but two renditions of the Lemon Grove Kids theme song). And speaking of the bad, did I mention that Coleman Francis appears in two of these short films?

The one good thing I can say about this movie is that it looks fantastic. These films were originally shot on 16mm film back in the 1960s, yet the picture and color are incredibly sharp on this new release. It's just too bad that the movie itself is so unbearably, painfully unwatchable. Steckler makes Ed Wood look like Alfred Hitchcock. They should make al Qaeda prisoners watch this dreck over and over again; decent, law-abiding citizens have done nothing to deserve the cruel fate of seeing The Lemon Grove Kids in action.