Hard Boiled Mahoney

Hard Boiled Mahoney (1947)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Weak sixth entry in the Bowery Boys series has Slip (Leo Gorcey) pretending to be a detective and getting hired to locate a missing girl. Soon him and the gang are in over their heads as they must go up against a psychic who holds a lot more secrets than the boys realize. This here is (so far) the weakest of the series as we get very few laughs and enough bad plot for three different movies. There's no question that this here is a take off on the film noir genre that was big at the time but the screenplay is so lazy that we don't get any good jokes aimed at the genre and even the main cast members seem to be overlooked. The biggest problem here is the screenplay because there aren't very many good jokes written. The type of humor they go for here is incredibly lazy and the perfect example of this is a scene where Sach is told to "hold onto your hat" until the boys can meet up with him. The joke? Sach holds onto his hat until they arrive. The film is all over the place and there's way too much attempted plot. There are a few twist and turns but everything is so muddy that you really won't care about the actual mystery going on. The film actually runs out of steam around the thirty-minute mark and it's pretty bad when it's hard to get through 63-minutes. It seems even the actors are bored here as Gorcey doesn't have any energy and even his line-delivery seems to be slow as if he was wishing to be somewhere else. Huntz Hall is also pretty quiet here and the rest of the boys are so far in the background that they might not have even been in the picture (especially the wasted Bobby Jordan). In the end, the lack of laughs really kill this one and the sluggish running time doesn't help matters.

"In order to be a detective ya gotta have a deductible mind. Ya gotta have the power of treason."

Not one of the more agreeable Bowery Boys movies for me. The plot is bungled as Leo Gorcey (as Slip Mahoney) takes it upon himself to become a self-made private eye attempting to find a missing woman. Not much humor to howl about in the mix. Interesting note: Gabriel Dell, who as far as I've known up till this viewing had usually played the straight man against all the insanity, actually dons a pair of geeky glasses as one of the zanies in the group this time around. He looks completely forced and out of his element.

The Bowery Boys try their hand at detective work in this breezy sixth entry in the Monogram series. Slip Mahoney is mistaken for a private detective and, naturally, uses it to his advantage to try and earn fifty bucks investigating a missing girl. With help from his friends, of course. It's a good one with hilarious malapropisms from Leo Gorcey, rubberfacing goofiness from Huntz Hall, and wacky support from Bobby Jordan, William Benedict, and David Gorcey. Gabriel Dell is also part of the gang, taking a part in the slapstick more than he has been in the series so far, where he's mostly been playing it straight. Teala Loring and Patti Brill provide the pretty. Brill also has a funny bit at the end. Bernard Gorcey is fun as Louie the Sweet Shop owner. I never get tired of the Bowery Boys, particularly Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. I'm not sure what some other reviewers were complaining about. I thought this one was very funny with a quick pace and many great lines. Love the trivia contest bit!

Even though the story of this film is serious, we are witnessing the evolution of the Bowery Boys. Gorcey and Hall are becoming comic actors. After their debut in "Dead End", the kids appeared at Warners in serious crime melodramas. By the end of their Warners' tenure, they became respectable. The early Monogram East Side Kids films and the Universal Dead End Kids films had them in teary melodramas, where they were supposed to provide comic relief.

By the time they became the Bowery Boys, the comedy was beginning to overshadow the melodrama. "Hard Boiled Mahoney" is still an over-plotted crime melodrama, but the comedy of Gorcey and Hall was beginning to take center stage. Hall now refers to Gorcey as "Chief" more often than not, and Gorcey hits Hall with his hat constantly. The story still centers as Gorcey, as most of the previous efforts had, but Hall is almost his equal. Unfortunately, the other boys suffer because of this. Jordan was terrific as the leading man in the early East Side films, but he has been relegated to background boy. What a shame! Billy Benedict had some good moments in the past and will have some good moments in future films, but he is definitely subordinate to Leo and Huntz. David Gorcey was always a background boy. Surprisingly, Gabe Dell is just one of the gang in this picture. He had had that role in the Warners and Universal series, but even in the early Monogram films he had varied roles. After this point, Dell would play the mature member of the gang, sometimes on the right side of the law and sometimes on the wrong side of the law. The character he plays here is reminiscent of the one he played in the East Side film "Come Out Fighting". He is a bi-speckled stooge.

This is not a bad Bowery Boys film, but Ed Bernds was really needed to later turn Gorcey and Hall into comedy stars.

Slip Mahoney (Leo Gorcey) is mistaken for an honest to goodness private detective and a lady asks him to find her lost sister. The trail leads to a phony psychic and it's soon apparent that this man, Dr. Carter, is a mobster with plenty of henchmen ready to kill Slip and the gang. Not surprisingly, much of the final half of the film involves these nasties chasing the gang. The highlight during this portion was when these six idiots appear on a game show, Dr. Quizard, and are thought to be geniuses in their respective fields. Overall, this film is exactly what you'd expect from a film in the series...corny jokes, Louie loaning the boys money and the gang managing to somehow survive and win the day by the end of the film. Not what anyone would call great entertainment but modestly entertaining. If you love these films, you'll like this one and if you hate them, it won't change your mind.