Trouble Makers

Trouble Makers was kind of in the middle of the Bowery Boys stories. Sach (Huntz Hall) and Slip (Leo Gorcey, along with his real dad and brother, of course!) get into the usual trouble when they accidentally witness a moidah. keep an eye out for Lionel Stander, who made films for years, but we all know him as Max in Hart to Hart. in this one, slip and sach take up jobs as bellboys in a hotel to keep an eye on things and figure out how the body disappeared. of course, they take on the bad guys, and there must be a big rough and tumble at the end. bake at 350 for an hour and you have a bowery boys adventure. Directed by Reginald Le Borg.. the first of three he would make with the gang. it's the usual fare, probably aimed at a younger audience.

Plus Fritz Feld, Lionel Stander, Helen Parrish and the usual top-notch supporting cast of toughs and characters.

Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) are in the sidewalk star-gazing business when they see a murder committed in a room at the El Royale Hotel, blocks away. In spite of the fussy-and-fidget objections of the hotel manager, Andre Schmidtlapp (Fritz Feld), the Bowery Boys (including Frankie Darro and Billy Benedict with lines and David Gorcey and Benny Bartlett looking on...as usual) and their friend Police Officer Gabe Moreno (Gabriel Dell)search the murder room and find nothing beyond learning that the room is occupied by "Silky" Thomas (John Ridgely.) Police Captain Madison (Cliff Clark)reprimands Gabe for leaving his beat on a false alarm, but later tips from Slip and Sach help Gabe lead raids on Silky's gambling operations.

The latter sends Gabe's former friend "Feathers" (Frankie Darro)to Gabe with a bribe offer but Gabe refuses. The boys read about the killing of a Professor Prescott and identify him as the man they saw murdered. Slip and Sach tell the professor's daughter, Ann Prescott (Helen Parrish), they will find her father's killers, and they get jobs as bellhops at the hotel. "Hatchet" (Lionel Stander), one of the gangsters, thinks Sach is a former cellmate and this causes a complication or two along the way.

ONCE AGAIN WE find ourselves amazed that so many of these BOWERY BOYS series entries are so much better than we remember them. This flies in the face of the usual disappointment we find when some film or other just doesn't live up to the expectations that our fallible, human memories so often conjure up.

RIGHT FROM THE get go, we can see that this will be a delight for fans of the boys. The opening situation sets the stage. The establishment of the premise of having the boys at odds with a criminal enterprise, while not so very original or refreshing, is well founded and strengthened by the presence of former BB member, Gabe Moreno (Gabriel Dell)now being a rookie NYPD foot patrolman on their beat.

THERE SEEMS TO be an even greater supply of great malaprop for 'Slips' dialogue than usual. These are a definite lifeline and a real plus for any BOWERY BOYS outing.

ONE PARTICULAR ELEMENT that was a central tenet of the various DEAD END KIDS/EAST SIDE KIDS/BOWERY BOYS series was a sort of Urban Myth about "that Old Gang of Mine." It tends to romanticize the "honor" of being a tough, street-wise and under-educated member of class on the lower rung on the socio-economic ladder. It's always a sure fire route to success for on screen comedies.

TO OUR WAY of thinking, this theory of ours is a sort of modern Urban society's version of the long held theory of "The Noble Savage." In l this highly flawed (and widely discredited) Anthropological theory, primitive peoples are inherently much more moral, loving and genteel than their much more civilized relatives (us).

THERE IS SOME definite merit in this thesis, so think about it, okay, Schultz? (It's our own original idea-as far as we know!)

OUR IMPRESSIONS OF why this was another superior outing are many. It has a larger supporting cast, which features names like: Frankie Darro, Lionel Stander, John Ridgely, Helen Parrish and Fritz Feld. The Bowery Boys were now minus Bobby Jordan; but as we said, Gabriel Dell was present to add his talents to those of "Slip" (Leo Gorcey), "Sach: (Huntz Hall) and the other regulars (Dave Gorcey, Billy Benedict, Bennie Bartlett and "Louie:-father Bernard Gorcey.

MISSING FROM THE credits is the name of their usual Director. William "One Shot Bill" Beaudine was replaced by Reginald Le Borg, a more recent arrival from the European movie scene. His was a specialty in "B" horror flicks and he did a lot of television work in the 1950's.

WHEN THE TOTAL output of the DEAD END KIDS/EAST SIDE KIDS/BOWERT BOYS movies are filmed and their total effect on our pop cultural pool is considered, we wonder why the team of Leo Gorcey & Huntz Hall is mot considered to be a legitimate Movie Comedy Team. along with Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, both the Brothers Marx and Ritz, the 3 Stooges, Wheeler & Woolsey, Clarke & McCullough, Noonan & Marshall.....................

An entertaining addition to the Bowery Boys comedy series has Slip and Sach (Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall) accidentally witnessing a murder in a hotel room window through a telescope down on the street below. They alert their friend Gabe (Gabriel Dell) who has now graduated to the stature of a rookie police officer, but when the boys investigate the hotel there is no body to be found and Gabe is reprimanded by his superiors. It's then up to Slip and Sach to take on jobs as bellhops in the hotel to try and solve the mystery and prove what they saw. This is a good and satisfying chapter, with funny bits featuring Gorcey and Hall at the top of their game. Both actors have some strong moments...Gorcey is given some extra-humorous malapropisms to deliver with gusto, and Huntz has to get tough and even push Leo around in a scene where he pretends to be an ex-con. It's good to see Gabriel Dell put to solid good use in his part of a young policeman, and the roles in general are well cast this time around -- Frankie Darro, Lionel Stander and John Ridgely play the shady characters, with Fritz Feld as the hotel manager. This entry comes off as tighter and better polished than usual, and one wonders whether this was due in part to Reginald LeBorg taking over from William Beaudine as director. *** out of ****

Ever the entrepreneurs, in this one the Bowery Boys are hawking star gazing to passers-by for 5 cents a pop. While playing around with the telescope, Sach sees two men fighting in a room of a hotel several blocks away. Then Slip takes over and sees one of the men strangled by the other and then he convinces up and coming rookie cop Gabe Marino to leave his beat and investigate the incident. However, when they arrive at the hotel, there is no body in the room. Slip tells Sach "to search every nook and granny." When the police captain arrives, Slip explains to him what he saw but that "we can't find the corpus delicious." With tips from Slip, Gabe is putting a big bookmaker's operations under a lot of pressure and in return they set Gabe up and he ends up suspended from force for 90 days. This Bowery Boys outing benefits from a strong supporting cast in Fritz Feld as the delightfully officious hotel manager, Lionel Stander as the humorously murderous "Hatchet" Moran and Frankie Darro as the small time thug Ben Feathers.