Ray Dennis Steckler gets deep into his Huntz Hall and the Bowery Boys fixation in this kiddie comedy anthology. It’s three stories, each roughly the length of a sitcom episode, about the misadventures of the most delirious, dippy and dizzy crew of daffy ducks to ever hit the Saturday matinee screen, by golly. They’re the Lemon Grove kids and they’re constantly getting into trouble. If you’re not already a fan of Steckler’s eccentric eye, this slapstick car crash aimed at five-year-olds might be a little too much. It tests my own tolerance for all things wacky, gotta admit. What keeps me watching are Steckler’s 16mm color snapshots of the mid-1960s. That’s one of the great strengths of low-budget movies, particularly in the analog era when the technical limitations were more severe. They look like real life. When this film’s comedic trips and slips lose my interest, I start looking at the streets, alleys, beaches and front lawns of Steckler’s neighborhood. His cinematographer: the warm California sun. Everything happening in the foreground is a pure live-action cartoon, but the settings are all real. You can imagine neighbors peeking out their windows and wondering what the hell these people on the sidewalk acting like idiots all day are doing. I don’t know what they thought, but to me this is some real suburban madness.
Best segment: the middle one, “The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady From Outer Space” (Steckler, director of The Incredibly Strange Creatures That Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, has a way with titles). It’s the one where the Lemon Grove Kids run into alien monsters lead by, you guessed it, The Green Grasshopper, who looks a little like a villain-of-the-week for Adam West’s Batman, and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space as played by Steckler’s fetching wife Carolyn Brandt, Goth’d out in a black dress, her face in ultra-white mime make-up and her eyes ablaze with menace.