Strong and Moving!

A Brilliant Conflict

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The casting in this East Side Kids film is pretty weird. Three guys star as a gang of killers and thieves---yet all three of these guys usually played bumbling idiots (particularly Billy Gilbert). Who would have thought of making Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams the gang leader as well as Warren Hymer as the other gang member?! Odd to say the least.'Also odd are the occasional logical lapses in writing. For instance, when the boy help a truck driver, the police later arrest them because the truck and its contents were stolen. Instead of looking for the driver, they just assumed the boys were guilty despite no real evidence...and they are sent to reform school. Later, the same sort of thing happens when Danny's straight-arrow brother is accused of murder...there really isn't any evidence and so it's up to the boys to get out of reform school and investigate things themselves (in other words, find one of the crooks and beat him up). A rather dopey episode...but at least it isn't one where Muggs (Leo Gorcey) is so obnoxious and unlikable like he is in "Kid Dynamite" and a few other East Side Kids films!

Another "Kids" movie involving the gang. Danny's older brother, Bill, gets framed for a murder he did not commit, just before his induction into the army no less. The gang gets thrown in to reform school as truck thieves even though they are innocent for a change. Danny's brother is convicted and sentenced to die. As zero hour approaches the gang breaks out of reform school, grab the guilty parties and get their confessions to clear the brother just minutes before his execution. With Huntz Hall in this film the humor is again well done, even Muggs is funny at times. Of course things work out in the end as the bad guys are arrested and he gang is cleared of any wrong doing.

Monogram's Sam Katzman busted the studio piggy bank and came up with an unusually good and familiar cast of character players for the East Side Kids in Mr. Wise Guy. The story centers around the efforts of the lads to save Bobby Jordan's brother Douglas Fowley from the chair. That is if they can bust out of the reform school they're in.Turns out the same guy Guinn Williams is responsible for the fix both brothers are in. The kids unwittingly help henchmen Billy Gilbert and Warren Hymer with Williams crashing out of Blackwell's Island and then are left with the stolen truck that was used. Then Williams and the gang stickup a drugstore and kill the clerk and Williams commandeers a car driven by Fowley for the getaway.Billy Gilbert dusted off his eternally flustered character so familiar in major films like On The Avenue and His Girl Friday as the incredibly dopey henchman. Williams must keep him around for laughs because he really isn't much good for anything else. Williams gives him a chore to get the money for his getaway with a good sweepstakes ticket, but his moll Ann Doran decides to cash in herself with that one. Some days you can't trust anyone even if they're too stupid to think of a doublecross themselves.Mr. Wise Guy is the usual East Side Kids Monogram programmer on the cheap side. But the character players especially Gilbert make this one a bit above average.

A very by-the-numbers East Side Kids film.Here, Leo Gorcey is a little more laid-back than usual and not as threatening as in prior roles. Bobby Jordan actually looks more the leader and is more intense.. Huntz Hall is the so-called comic relief with not much to do.. 'Sunshine Sammy' Morrison does a better job as being somewhat funny.David Gorcey,Leo's brother, is in the background as usual. Even though he is just basically background dressing, he still has some 'presence' enough for you to still acknowledge him. So does Bobby Stone who here was cast as an adversary and is Gabriel dell's partner-in-crime.Gabriel Dell makes his 1st appearance in the series that his Dead End Gang had started without him. He is cast here as an adversary of the gang. I'm not even going to mention much on the sixth member of the gang except that he was completely wasted and was background dressing at that. This was his 1st and last appearance as a East Side kid! He didn't even have any lines at all!? So it was not surprising.Billy Gilbert is miscast as a blustery mobster. So he is completely wasted and he barely gets to show off his considerable comedic skills at all. For anyone who has seen this great comic in full comic action (as in countless Laurel and Hardy and Little Rascals comedies) it is sad to see Gilbert treated as he isAnd last but not least, are two late great character actors who also happened to be Three Stooges foil in several of their shorts. The late Benny Rubin who plays a waiter in a scene with Gilbert. And the late Stanley Blystone who plays a uncredited role as a police officer who hauls the boys in. .