BA_Harrison This is the first Bowery Boys movie I've ever watched, and judging by what I've seen, I won't be in a hurry to check out their other movies, the 'boys' particular brand of slapstick and buffoonery leaving me straight-faced throughout.Clearly modelled after Abbot and Costello's 'Meet' series of films (which I also find not very funny), '..Meet The Monsters' sees Bowery boys Slip and Sach (Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall) paying a visit to a creepy mansion inhabited by a family of kooks and oddballs, each of whom want the unwary guests for their own nefarious reasons.With Hall's painfully unfunny dumb routine and Gorcey's excessive use of maladroits (that's fancy speak for using the wrong word), this film is already on shaky ground, but chuck in a moth eaten killer gorilla, a crap robot, and a rubber man eating tree, and what you have is a film that gives new meaning to the term 'lowbrow'.

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.

frivelli This movie is a riot. I think that Sach is a very funny man, and that Leo Gorcey/Huntz Hall were as funny a team as any of them. Personally, I think the Bowery Boys are funnier than The Three Stooges, Though I enjoy them to. in this movie, there is a commotion in almost every scene. and I think that the Bowery Boys add their own flavor to things. Actually, I favor the Bowery Boys over Abbott and Costello as well. My two favorite teams are the Bowery Boys and Martin and Lewis. Too bad they never made a movie together. That would have been fun. Aside from this movie, I also loved the 'Navy' movie the Bowery Boys made. Just hilarious. A commotion in every scene. My kind of movie.

curly-17 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.