The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood!1965

You think your neighborhood was a fun place to grow up in? Fine. But it cannot possibly have been as much fun as Lemon Grove Avenue in Hollywood where some industry fringe-dwellers moved with their young families in 1965. Between more commercial assignments, they decide to make a series of shorts riffing on the BOWERY BOYS movies, kiddie matinee favorites of the 1940s and 1950s involving a gang of harmless, hapless urban "delinquents" (making use of their friends, their kids and anyone or anything else at hand). In this typically silly segment the "Kids" get hired to do handiwork for a "beautiful movie star", unaware that she is the target of some nefarious-if-inept would-be kidnappers. A decade later, credited director Ted Roter became a prolific maker of adult "cinema." Better-known Dennis Ray Steckler (who was married to dancer Brandt) had already directed his most famous exploitation flick, the nutty horror gem THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES; billed as "Cash Flagg," he puts his resemblance to Bowery Boy Huntz Hall to good use playing rubber-faced beanpole "Gopher." - Dennis Harvey