everything you have heard about this movie is true.
... View MoreClose shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
... View MoreAll of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
... View MoreGreat movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
... View MoreThis is a very bad film, though as far as bad movies go, there are still worse--though not much worse! The Lemon Grove Kids film is definitely one of the most amateurish and dopey films I have ever seen and it looks like a home movie, though because it doesn't take itself too seriously, I couldn't completely hate it.The Kids are a very bad knockoff of the Bowery Boys--though it begs you to wonder why anyone would want to do this in the first place?! One of the "actors" is Cash Flagg as a Huntz Hall-like idiot. According to Flagg's impersonation, all you need to do is wear a baseball cap, make stupid faces and walk around like an idiot. The film's knockoff of Leo Gorcy wasn't much better. Like some of the silliest Bowery Boys films, this one has monsters, a rival gang, etc. but is squarely placed in the 1960s with the music and fashions.The bottom line is that with terrible music, rotten dubbing, horribly exaggerated action and slapstick sound effects, this film is a dud on every level and would probably appeal only to small children and bad movie fans. All others approach at your own risk.FYI--Cash Flagg is the stage name for Ray Dennis Steckler. He also appeared in such great films as "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?" and was equally pitiful there. Also, there is a homage to the previous film RAT PFINK A BOO BOO--look for it after the gorilla appears.
... View MoreThis movie holds a special place for me in my movie going experience. It was the absolutely worst movie I ever saw in my hometown theater. After more than 35 years, I can still remember walking home from the theater and thinking that this was the worst movie I had ever seen. And, yes, this was the same theater where I had seen Edward D. Wood Jr.'s "Plan Nine From Outer Space" (1959) years earlier. This movie was shown as a special event with people dressed up as monsters invading the theater during a point in the film. If there was anything good to say about this film, it would be about Cash Flagg's impersonation of Huntz Hall (I was a Bowery Boys fan). For rather obvious reasons, no other Steckler film ever played in my hometown. I have since seen worse films, but I would have to go to other cities for that torture.
... View MoreRay Dennis Steckler put together a trilogy of comic shorts modeled on the Bowery Boys series, with impressive results if you're not expecting any sort of masterpiece. In the first story, the kids, a motley bunch of toddlers and adults dressed as teenagers, head to Coleman Francis's house to do some housework. Extraterrestrials start picking them off, a green grasshopper in a flying saucers claiming the main kid, so it's up to doofy Steckler (acting as Cash Flagg) to find a way to save the day.. In the second part, the kids get a job doing housework for falling star Carolyn Brandt. Some bumbling villains kidnap her, but her sleazy agent says she's not worth the ransom. Thus it falls to Steckler once again to intervene and rescue both Brandt and her career. This episode also features a very annoying adult who spends a little too much time with the kids and sings remarkably uninspired songs about them on an acoustic guitar. Not a person I would trust with my own offspring, but Steckler probably couldn't afford high-end babysitters. In the final part of the trilogy, Steckler heads into the wrong side of town to buy some sodas on a hot afternoon, instigating a rumble. They decide to settle their differences with a cross-country race. A funny French saboteur, hired by the rival team, does their best to put the Kids' star athlete out of the ahem running, and somehow we're led into a startling monster attack sequence. This conclusion seals tight the possibility that Steckler was having a grand time making these shorts, possibly never intended for theatrical release. In a way, Lemon Grove Kids exists as an interesting home-movie documenting the styles and culture of the early 1960's made by a barely experienced filmmaker, who had only been in the business for a few years. Although I enjoyed this film quite a bit, I'd only show it to children I really hated. Some of the women-children boast some surprisingly sexy outfits, plus a certain amount of the humor veers toward the sophisticated. Brandt appeared in a number of Steckler's films. Steckler fans with be happy to see hero Ray Pfink in a cameo.
... View MoreBorn in 1965, I can't say much about this movie. I remember, as a little kid being scared silly, since there were 'live' monsters in the audience at the theater during the movie. This was the most scared I ever was at a movie.....ok, so I was probably 5 years old. E-mail me if you saw this show in the theater back then.
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