Schule des Verbrechens

The Dead End Kids star with Humphrey Bogart in "Crime School," a 1938 film from Warner Brothers.

The boys live in a rough neighborhood. They steal things and bring them to a fence, whom Spike accidentally kills. They are sent to reform school, but the school turns out to be more like a prison, run by a horrible warden (Cy Kendall) and his henchman (Weldon Heyburn).

Bogart plays Braden, the new Deputy Commissioner of Correction. When he comes for a visit he sees Frankie (Billy Halop) untreated in the hospital with lash wounds all over his back. He tastes the food, which is inedible.

Braden also fired the warden and several guards. He fires the drunk doctor. The bars come off the windows, the food is better, the kids are in training for various skills, no more whippings.

Then the henchman, still working there, sets Braden up to take a big fall by convincing Spike (Leo Gorcey) to take his car keys and escape. Of course the rest of the boys come with him.

Entertaining, with Bogart playing a nice guy. Gale Page is Frankie's sister. If you like the Dead End Kids, this is okay, though I understand it's not their best.

Of interest, "under God" is left out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

This is a Warner Bros crime film, but instead of speaking of gangsters, it focuses on young delinquents, and what better figures than the Dead End Kids to such topic? But you must be an absolute fan of Leo Gorcey and his bunch, I am not. Definitely not. So, useless to say that I prefered Humphrey Bogart in other films, not this one. But I admit that his character is excellent, so unusual for this period. Director Lewis Seiler did his job quite good and I will prefer other movies from him, such as KING OF THE UNDERWORLD, BIG SHOT, WOMEN'S PRISON than this one. So this feature is more a social drama than a true crime gritty yarn.

This is a re-pairing of much of the cast of DEAD END--with the Dead End Kids and Humphrey Bogart together in the same film. The BIG difference this time is that instead of Bogey playing the nasty gangster, he is a juvenile prison crusader--bent on reforming the system and stressing rehabilitation. While this is an interesting twist, it is odd considering Bogart mostly played heavies during this era. And the overall effort isn't bad BUT once again I need to knock off a point because I simply find the Dead End Kids annoying at times. While not as annoying as they were to become when they were re-dubbed the Bowery Boys (complete with a few cast changes), a little of their hijinks goes a long way!

This was the first "Dead End Kids" film that I watched and I really enjoyed it (too bad they don't show it on television anymore). When I first watched it, it was at a time when I thought all "kid gang" films were like the Little Rascal/Our Gang Comedies. The Dead End Kids were the ones who broke the mold and made the kids believable and this film hooked me on them. The one scene that I was particularly shocked with was when Frankie (Billy Halop) tried to make a break for it and got caught in the barbed wire fence. What happened to him after still makes me cringe as he is whipped within an inch of his life with a cat-a-nine tails. Even though this film is not a classic like "Dead End", the film that introduced us to the Kids, it still is a good picture on it's own.

"Crime School" is clearly from the same mold as "San Quentin" and Cagney's "The Mayor of Hell."

It is a predictable vehicle for the Dead End Kids, in which Bogart played, in a dull, unemotional style, a deputy commissioner of correction who takes over the running of a reformatory housing the Kids when he finds the warden is a sadist…

There is a threat to Bogart's plan when the Kids escape as part of the warden's calculated attempt to prove Bogart's regenerative prison policies are valueless, but the ruse fails as Bogart gets the boys back winning the solemn recognition of merit