Loose in London

Horace Debussy 'Sach' Jones is an heir to an English fortune. He and the gang travel to London. The Earl's other relatives disapprove of Sach and work to scare him away. On the other hand, the Earl takes a liking to Sach. With the intention to rewrite an ancient wrong, he insists on making Sach his principal heir.

The Bowery Boys go to England. There is a Scooby-Doo feel to it. It's light weight and fitting for the franchise. It's fine. Fans will like it.

Fair is fair Oliver came to America to make movies, so America sent its finest...Mr. Huntz Hall to England.

The Bowery Boys wreak havoc in England in this so-so entry in the series (the thirtieth!). The flimsy plot has Sach finding out he's related to an earl, so he and the fellas head to London. The plots to these things always seem to revolve around Sach. Anyway, it's basically like the one where they hung out with hillbillies except the gags are changed to fit the new locale. Still another "fish out of water" story. Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall are both in fine form doing what they do. Bennie Bartlett and David Gorcey prop up scenery (as usual). Bernard Gorcey is fun as Louie the Sweet Shop owner, an unofficial Bowery Boy himself and the scene stealer in many of these films. It's really not a great movie but it is fun in spots. Not one of my favorites.

It is with this film that the focus of the Bowery Boys movies becomes pure comedy. The change from gangster melodramas to comedy is gradual, and many of the Jan Grippo and Jerry Thomas films which precede this one point in the direction of comedy. Ben Schwab, the new producer of the series, wanted a purer sense of comedy. After doing "Jalopy", which used the regular writers and the regular director, William "One Take" Beaudine, Schwab replaced them with Ed Bernds and Elwood Ullman. These men had been working on Three Stooges shorts for years. Ullman was always a writer and Bernds had started as a sound effects man and had graduated to writer-director. The Bernds directed Columbia short comedies are usually superior to the ones produced at the same time by Jules White. Bernds and Ullman brought their short subject slapstick comedy style to the Bowery Boys and this produced the funniest movies in the series. Sure, the stories might have been better before, but the formula of someone walking in Louie's Sweet Shop and taking the boys out of their element was a great set-up for slapstick comedy. The focus of the films became Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall; Bernard Gorcey is given better material, but David Gorcey and Bennie Bartlett slip more into the background or even out of the films. Schwab also replaced longtime musical director Edward Kay, whose music consists of transformations of "Sidewalks of New York" and "B" western clichés, with the more modern and comic sound of Marlin Skiles.

The Bowery Boys movies are hit and miss. This one is one of the hits. There are more smiles than laughs but that's okay. The movie is enjoyable. The boys are all in fine form, especially Huntz Hall. The last fifteen minutes or so of "Loose in London" is actually really funny. I put this one in the Bowery Boys win column.