Year:  1954
Rating: 5.0

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I feel like I am 10-years old again sitting in the basement of my parent's house watching Sunday Matinee back in the 1960's when films like this played all the time on TV. I imagine I found it funnier back then but if you are ever forced to watch a Bowery Boys movie at gunpoint, this might not be a bad choice.


The two "boys" end up visiting a house right out of the Addams Family with two mad scientists, a female vampire, a Lurch-like Butler, an old lady who wants to feed people to her man-eating plant, a gorilla and of course a robot. What kind of fun could you have without a Robbie the Robot. Oh, throw in an elixir that turns one into Mr. Hyde. Lots of running around aimlessly as the two scientists want their brains, the vamp their blood and the lady a treat. Just another night for the Bowery Boys.


Of course, by 1954 the actors Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey were far from boys being in their 30's but looking a decade older. You look back to that period and think how popular comedy teams were with Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Hope and Crosby, The Marx Brothers - a comedic device that just doesn't exist any more. Hall and Gorcey confuse me totally with their Bowery Boys - East Side Kids and Dead End Kids which they seem to proliferate in. Not something I probably need to know. Dumb comedy has been around for a very long time.