Am I Missing Something?

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

ONCE AGAIN WE find ourselves amazed that so many of these BOWERY BOYS series entries are so much better than we remember them. This flies in the face of the usual disappointment we find when some film or other just doesn't live up to the expectations that our fallible, human memories so often conjure up.RIGHT FROM THE get go, we can see that this will be a delight for fans of the boys. The opening situation sets the stage. The establishment of the premise of having the boys at odds with a criminal enterprise, while not so very original or refreshing, is well founded and strengthened by the presence of former BB member, Gabe Moreno (Gabriel Dell)now being a rookie NYPD foot patrolman on their beat.THERE SEEMS TO be an even greater supply of great malaprop for 'Slips' dialogue than usual. These are a definite lifeline and a real plus for any BOWERY BOYS outing.ONE PARTICULAR ELEMENT that was a central tenet of the various DEAD END KIDS/EAST SIDE KIDS/BOWERY BOYS series was a sort of Urban Myth about "that Old Gang of Mine." It tends to romanticize the "honor" of being a tough, street-wise and under-educated member of class on the lower rung on the socio-economic ladder. It's always a sure fire route to success for on screen comedies.TO OUR WAY of thinking, this theory of ours is a sort of modern Urban society's version of the long held theory of "The Noble Savage." In l this highly flawed (and widely discredited) Anthropological theory, primitive peoples are inherently much more moral, loving and genteel than their much more civilized relatives (us).THERE IS SOME definite merit in this thesis, so think about it, okay, Schultz? (It's our own original idea-as far as we know!) OUR IMPRESSIONS OF why this was another superior outing are many. It has a larger supporting cast, which features names like: Frankie Darro, Lionel Stander, John Ridgely, Helen Parrish and Fritz Feld. The Bowery Boys were now minus Bobby Jordan; but as we said, Gabriel Dell was present to add his talents to those of "Slip" (Leo Gorcey), "Sach: (Huntz Hall) and the other regulars (Dave Gorcey, Billy Benedict, Bennie Bartlett and "Louie:-father Bernard Gorcey.MISSING FROM THE credits is the name of their usual Director. William "One Shot Bill" Beaudine was replaced by Reginald Le Borg, a more recent arrival from the European movie scene. His was a specialty in "B" horror flicks and he did a lot of television work in the 1950's.WHEN THE TOTAL output of the DEAD END KIDS/EAST SIDE KIDS/BOWERT BOYS movies are filmed and their total effect on our pop cultural pool is considered, we wonder why the team of Leo Gorcey & Huntz Hall is mot considered to be a legitimate Movie Comedy Team. along with Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, both the Brothers Marx and Ritz, the 3 Stooges, Wheeler & Woolsey, Clarke & McCullough, Noonan & Marshall.....................

An entertaining addition to the Bowery Boys comedy series has Slip and Sach (Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall) accidentally witnessing a murder in a hotel room window through a telescope down on the street below. They alert their friend Gabe (Gabriel Dell) who has now graduated to the stature of a rookie police officer, but when the boys investigate the hotel there is no body to be found and Gabe is reprimanded by his superiors. It's then up to Slip and Sach to take on jobs as bellhops in the hotel to try and solve the mystery and prove what they saw. This is a good and satisfying chapter, with funny bits featuring Gorcey and Hall at the top of their game. Both actors have some strong moments...Gorcey is given some extra-humorous malapropisms to deliver with gusto, and Huntz has to get tough and even push Leo around in a scene where he pretends to be an ex-con. It's good to see Gabriel Dell put to solid good use in his part of a young policeman, and the roles in general are well cast this time around -- Frankie Darro, Lionel Stander and John Ridgely play the shady characters, with Fritz Feld as the hotel manager. This entry comes off as tighter and better polished than usual, and one wonders whether this was due in part to Reginald LeBorg taking over from William Beaudine as director. *** out of ****

Lazily entrepreneurial "Bowery Boys" leader Leo Gorcey (as Slip Mahoney) tries to sell passing pedestrians on peaks through a giant street telescope, erected outside "Louie's Sweet Shop". With Mr. Gorcey attracting no spenders, partner Huntz Hall (as Sach) hogs the viewing, but focuses on feminine figures instead of celestial orbs. When Mr. Hall aims the telescope at a nearby hotel, he is amused to see two men dancing together, and joins William "Billy" Benedict (as Whitey) for a brief two-step. Hall alerts Mr. Gorcey to the gay dancers - but, when Gorcey takes his turn to spy, the scene is revealed as a struggle, ending in murder! Witnesses Gorcey and Hall ask rookie officer and Bowery pal Gabriel Dell (as Gabe Moreno) for assistance, but he finds no evidence any murder was committed. With Mr. Benedict, David Gorcey (as Chuck), and Benny "Bennie" Bartlett (as Butch) helping, Gorcey and Hall go undercover as a couple of hapless hotel bellhops, to investigate. Hotel manager Fritz Feld (as Andre Schmidtlapp), ex-con Lionel Stander (as Hatchet Moran), and versatile Frankie Darro (as Ben Feathers) lead the guest cast. Genuinely funny, with Gorcey quipping "he was a very extinguished man" in the morgue, and Hall strangling several laughs out of the script.****** Trouble Makers (12/10/48) Reginald Le Borg ~ Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, Frankie Darro

As a kid watching the East Siders and the Bowery Boys I could never figure out why guys like Gabriel Dell and Bobby Jordan (not seen in this one) would often trade places as members of the gang, an outsider up to no good, or as in the case of Dell, an authority figure like he was in this flick. His character is Gabe Moran, up from the streets and making good as a local beat cop who still knows some of the toughs he grew up with, like Stinky Feathers (Frankie Darro). Come to think of it, I still wonder about those casting decisions, just not as much.As usual in these later pictures, Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall take the lead, with their generally silent partners, Billy Benedict, David Gorcey and Benny Bartlett confined to the background. Benedict had a line or two in this picture, but if the other guys did, I'd have to go back and listen for them.This time out, Slip (Gorcey) and Sach (Hall) witness a murder from a couple blocks away via a long range telescope ('Five cents a look, only a penny a peek'!), then convince Officer Gabe (Dell) to leave his beat to solve the mystery. You wouldn't have had to see many Bowery Boys flicks to know that Point B is never reached from Point A in a straight line. The trail to the killer is derailed by the murder victim showing up some fifteen miles away in the Bronx, so Slip and Sach have some fancy footwork to make things right. I think the story could have gotten a little more mileage out of the Sach/Chopper McGee connection, but that one went nowhere.That summary line I used came from hoodlum Silky Thomas (John Ridgely) eying up Ann Prescott (Helen Parrish), daughter of the murder victim where the story started. Political correctness and male chauvinism aside, you just don't hear clever lines like that in pictures anymore.