The Bowery Boys are back in the seventh film in the series. This time around, Slip (Leo Gorcey) is working as a copy boy at a local newspaper, and the guys help him get the goods on gangsters who are trying to fix sporting events and ensure the paper can avoid a libel suit. There’s …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>News Hounds</em> (1947)”
Radio star Larry Abbot (Gene Wilder), who is about to marry co-star Vickie Pearle (Gilda Radner), suffers from bouts of anxiety that threaten his career. His uncle (Paul L. Smith) undertakes to cure him during a weekend family reunion in an old dark house. The movie is just silly fun, with Wilder and Radner in …
This early entry in the Bowery Boys series offers another example of the blend of crime and comedy so often found in the films. This time, thanks to a photographer friend, Sach (Huntz Hall) ends up suspected of involvement in a bank robbery, one in fact committed by a gang led by Ace Deuce (Sheldon …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Bowery Bombshell</em> (1946)”
A-Haunting We Will Go opens with our heroes, Laurel and Hardy, being warned to leave town after a night in jail. To accomplish that, the boys, who are down on their luck, take a job escorting a coffin to Dayton, Ohio. Yet unbeknownst to them, the coffin contains not a cadaver, but a notorious criminal, …
What should have been a lighthearted screwball romp (based on the Thorne Smith novel The Night Life of the Gods), as a mad scientist (Alan Mowbray) brings the ancient gods to life, unfortunately falls flat, with just a few chuckles amid an overall meandering plot that offers oddities instead of laughs. Despite the poor writing …
Read the full post →“<em>Night Life of the Gods</em> (1935)”
The Bowery Boys (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and the rest) square off against a strong-arm taxi company on behalf of the independent hack drivers in this early series entry that benefits from a supporting cast including Jane Randolph and Douglas Fowley. The boys’ usual antics provide action and humor in a movie that zips right …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>In Fast Company</em> (1946)”
Dirk Bogarde held a spot at the top in British cinema in the 1950s, in part thanks to this movie, a smash success in the year of its release (1954). The movie is the comedic story of medical student Simon Sparrow, played by Bogarde, who begins school at the start and finds congenial companions in …
Limp entry in the caper genre has a gang of inept criminals working with a retired (and poor) mobster as he plans one last big score to recover his self-esteem and make it possible to live it up in retirement. The laughs are fewer than they should be, and though there are reasonable contributions from …
Read the full post →“<em>The Biggest Bundle of Them All</em> (MGM, 1968)”
After six years as the East Side Kids (for a total of 22 movies), several of the actors who started out in Dead End moved over to the long-running Bowery Boys series. Live Wires was the first of 48 Bowery Boys movies made through 1958, and like many of the other entries, it provides a …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Live Wires</em> (1946)”
Chills and chuckles, with an emphasis on the latter, are both provided by this little programmer, in which two comedians (Alan Carney and Wally Brown) promise to supply a gangster (Sheldon Leonard) with a real zombie for the opening of his new nightclub, the Zombie Hut. Their efforts bring the boys to the island of …
Read the full post →“<em>Zombies on Broadway</em> (RKO, 1945)”
