I saw this one coming at me from Turner Classics this morning and couldn't resist. The first thing that struck me was how much older the boys looked, with Gorcey and Hall already pushing thirty and growing out of their young street tough persona, and they'd keep at it for another ten years! I haven't seen any of those later flicks yet and kind of hazard the thought.
The movie is typical stuff, as Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) discover a fifty thousand dollar bundle left behind by a gambler who got bumped off. What bothered me for most of the story is how Augie Pollack (Benny Baker) got whacked with the dough, and his killer couldn't figure out it was in the rolled up newspaper. Talk about your world's dumbest criminals. Say, did you notice that Augie was rubbed out under a sign in the alley that said 'Lease Expiring Again' - how appropriate was that!
A lot of the story takes place in Louie's Sweet Shop, Louie portrayed by Leo Gorcey's real life Dad, Bernard Gorcey. The Bowery Boys films were a real family affair most of the time, with Leo's brother David part of the mix as well, most of the time as Chuck, with not much in the way of a speaking role.
I got a kick out of the character names in this one, the second hood to bite the dust was named Cold Deck Shapiro (Ralp Dunn) followed by Benny the Meatball (Ben Welden). The main goon was portrayed by Sheldon Leonard, he was Lippy Harris, and was the only villain to actually knock off a rival besides The Tipper (Lucien Littlefield), who if you were keeping score, polished off four of his former hood associates by the time it was over with the poison umbrella, including Lippy. Who did I miss? - oh yeah, Lippy knocked off Lullaby Kane (John Eldredge), so nobody got the girl in the end; that would have been Candy McGill (Betty Caldwell).
More so than in any other Bowery Boys flick, it seemed to me that Leo Gorcey had a malapropism in just about every sentence he uttered. That got me to thinking whether those lines were scripted for the most part or ad-libbed. They rolled off Gorcey's tongue so nicely, he made it seem like it was 'easy as A,B,3'!
The movie is typical stuff, as Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) discover a fifty thousand dollar bundle left behind by a gambler who got bumped off. What bothered me for most of the story is how Augie Pollack (Benny Baker) got whacked with the dough, and his killer couldn't figure out it was in the rolled up newspaper. Talk about your world's dumbest criminals. Say, did you notice that Augie was rubbed out under a sign in the alley that said 'Lease Expiring Again' - how appropriate was that!
A lot of the story takes place in Louie's Sweet Shop, Louie portrayed by Leo Gorcey's real life Dad, Bernard Gorcey. The Bowery Boys films were a real family affair most of the time, with Leo's brother David part of the mix as well, most of the time as Chuck, with not much in the way of a speaking role.
I got a kick out of the character names in this one, the second hood to bite the dust was named Cold Deck Shapiro (Ralp Dunn) followed by Benny the Meatball (Ben Welden). The main goon was portrayed by Sheldon Leonard, he was Lippy Harris, and was the only villain to actually knock off a rival besides The Tipper (Lucien Littlefield), who if you were keeping score, polished off four of his former hood associates by the time it was over with the poison umbrella, including Lippy. Who did I miss? - oh yeah, Lippy knocked off Lullaby Kane (John Eldredge), so nobody got the girl in the end; that would have been Candy McGill (Betty Caldwell).
More so than in any other Bowery Boys flick, it seemed to me that Leo Gorcey had a malapropism in just about every sentence he uttered. That got me to thinking whether those lines were scripted for the most part or ad-libbed. They rolled off Gorcey's tongue so nicely, he made it seem like it was 'easy as A,B,3'!