Private Eyes

Private Eyes (1953)

** (out of 4)

The Bowery Boys Club is doing just fine in back of Louie's parlor but after Sach (Huntz Hall) is punched in the nose he grows the ability to read people's minds. Sach (Leo Gorcey) gets the bright idea to buy a detective agency and sure enough a beautiful blonde comes in asking for help and the boys soon find themselves battling crooks. If you've hung around the series long enough to reach this thirty-second film then you're not going to see anything you haven't already but the film moves along well enough for the fans. I think the first twenty-minutes are the best as the stuff dealing with the boys club will certainly have you flashing back to the East Side Kids days and the stuff with Sach getting beat up was rather funny. The early stuff dealing with Sach reading everyones mind actually had some well-written lines but once the entire subplot dealing with the crooks kicks in we get one tired joke after another. It's a real shame that everything was pretty straight-forward because there's enough material that they could have done to make this much better. Very briefly does Sach do his Sherlock Holmes impersonation so why they didn't keep this going is beyond me. They set up all sort of noir elements but do nothing with them. Instead we get the same boring joke over and over and the final slapstick dash through the health resort just falls on its face as we get the same gag over and over with the main one being men falling into a hot tub. Both Hall and Gorcey seem to be up for the events as both deliver fine performances with energy. Bernard Gorcey doesn't get much to do this time, although he at least gets a pie in the face. The rest of the cast are just so-so. PRIVATE EYES isn't a good film by any stretch of the imagination but it's certainly better than you'd expect from the thirty-second film in a series.

Slip, Sach, and the other Bowery Boys are using Louie's back room for a kids clubhouse. After getting knocked out by a kid, Sach is able to tell what everybody is thinking. Private eye Eddie is leaving town and sells his business to the boys. A blonde damsel in distress rushes into their office. She fears someone is trying to kill her.

As with all Bowery Boys movies, none of this is meant to be taken seriously. So, it is pointless to dissect the case or any minutia of the story. It is an excuse to spoof the private eye genre. It's not the best or the smartest. It is the Bowery Boys after all.

When Sach (Huntz Hall) is hit on the nose by Herbie (Rudy Lee), Sach develops a mystic-mind power. This prompts Slip (Leo Gorcey), Chcuk (David Gorcey as David Condon), Butch (Bennie Bartlett)and Louie (Bernard Gorcey) to buy the Eagle Eye Detective Agency...using, of course, Louie's money.

In waltzes Myra Hagen (Joyce Holden), who leaves with the boys a valuable fur coat and a sealed letter, to be given to the District Attorney, in the event anything happens to her. John Graham (William Forrest), makes his entrance following Myra's exit, and he poses as an insurance man, but is actually with the fur crooks, and he is given the coat but the Boys are unable to produce the letter, inasmuch as Sach, has wrecked the office by blowing up the safe, and the latter has vanished.

But, in the event it shows up, Professor Damon (Robert Osterloh), leader of the gang and operating a Health Farm as a cover, has his henchmen "Soapy" (William Phillips) and Al (Gil Perkins, whom some source evidently doesn't know and has him tagged 'unconfirmed')kidnap Herbie as a ransom against the delivery of the letter, which blows the lid on the gang.

Slip, disguised as a Viennese doctor, and Sach, as an invalid old woman wearing Mary Pickford curls, go the the Farm to rescue Myra---understandable---and Herbie.

Private Eyes is exactly the next line of business that Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall find for themselves in their never ending search for careers. One of these days they'll find success.

Chick Chandler who has to leave town abruptly sells them his detective agency which is now available. Seems like a perfect fit because Huntz Hall after getting a whack on the noggin has the ability to read minds. It comes and goes though with each blow and the way he aggravates Gorcey, Leo has to keep his temper in check.

The usual clichés about private eye films is found in Private Eyes, but this one doesn't quite jell. A lot of Abbott&Costello material recycled and the climax which is in an insane asylum comes right out of the Bob Hope classic, My Favorite Brunette.

The Bowery Boys movies are a hit or miss kind of thing. On which side of the ledger would I place "Private Eyes"? I'm not sure. I guess I would have to place it on the "hit" side but it's a close call. The story isn't that good but the cast is fine. There aren't that many laughs but there aren't that many groaners either. "Private Eyes" was an okay way to kill an hour on a very cold Saturday morning. (IMDB has a six hundred character minimum so I have to ramble on for a while. I have seen a bunch of Bowery Boys movies over the last couple of years. I wouldn't say that I'm a fan but they're usually a pretty easy watch. Mostly because they're only a little over an hour.)