Comedy and horror inevitably overlap in films where funnymen find themselves in haunted houses occupied with a surplus number of ghouls, mad scientists and ectoplasmic mayhem. The Bowery Boys had already run amok in such creepy settings during the 1940s with “Spooks Run Wild” and “Ghosts on the Loose,” back when they were under the East Side Kids banner. But this 1954 offering takes the old haunted house comedy into a wild, almost Dadaist environment.
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The film begins with harsh slapstick, as a baseball goes careening through the window of Louie\u2019s Sweet Shop and bops poor Louie (Bernard Gorcey) on his head. The baseball is the result of kids playing in the street because they have no local park for their recreational hours. A relatively rare brainstorm by the malaprop-slinging Slip (Leo Gorcey) results in phoning the owners of a vacant lot to seek permission to turn the space into a ball field. Slip and his dimwitted sidekick Sach (Huntz Hall) go to the lot owner\u2019s residence to discuss the matter \u2013 not realizing it is the mansion of mad scientist brothers (John Dehner and Lloyd Corrigan), each eager to transplant a human brain into their respective experiments: one has a pet gorilla in a cage, the other has an oversized robot. Also in residence is their sister Amelia (Ellen Corby), who tends to a giant man-eating plant, and their niece Francine (Laura Mason), a seductive babe who self-identifies as a vampire.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, Sach\u2019s brain-free behavior makes him a perfect candidate for the brothers, while Francine is eager to sink her fangs into Sach\u2019s unsuspecting neck. Only Amelia has eyes for Slip, believing his plump physique will satisfy her plant\u2019s diet. But when Louie and the other Bowery Boys (David Gorcey and Bennie Bartlett) show up in search of Slip and Sach, all hell breaks loose as the scientists and their machete-wielding butler Grissom (Paul Wexler) chase Slip and Sach, with the robot and the gorilla joining in the madness.<\/p>\n
Fans of the Bowery Boys series will appreciate Gorcey\u2019s brilliantly atrocious command of the language (\u201cThunder is something that never calcified me\u201d stands out as an extraordinary line) and the shameless milking of inane jokes (when Slip asks Sach how he is able to read a book in the dark, the indignant Sach responds, \u201cI went to night school!\u201d). And there\u2019s even the obligatory \u201cWalk this way\u201d gag, with Slip and Sach emulating the stiff gait of the formal butler Grissom (whom they repeatedly misidentify as Gruesome). While Gorcey is a lot of fun, as usual, Hall steals the show with over-the-top mugging that is presented with an intensity that he never displayed before or since \u2013 he is a force of power here that takes the comedy to a higher level of intensity.<\/p>\n
Yes, the film betrays the no-budget production of Allied Artists\u2019 1950s Bowery Boys output \u2013 the \u201cmansion\u201d looks particularly threadbare \u2013 and the clunky robot in particular with certainly generate laughs for all of the wrong reasons. But the film moves at a surprisingly rapid clip thanks to Edward Bernds\u2019 expert direction and his amusing screenplay co-written with Edward Ullman. And at 65 minutes it packs in more happy nonsense than any contemporary comedy running twice that length.<\/p>\n
“The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters” may not deserve to be called a classic, but it comes pretty close for sheer exuberance and energetic knockabout.<\/p>\n