Spook Busters

This is one of the better movies in this series because there's a lot going on. A spooky mansion, a beautiful girl, crazy doctors who want to remove brains, mysteries upon mysteries, slapstick, funny lines, funny words, and funny situations. It even has a slow-motion fight scene.

The boys want to make money as exterminators. They get a job at a mansion. The mansion is full of mysteries and strangeness. That sparks the action and the comedy.

As I said this is one of the better ones. Sure, it might have lots of recycled elements, but all movies have that. Every movie ever made has that. But this is a good Saturday movie. Popcorn not included. Bring your own. And enjoy the film.

Slip's (Gorcey) candyshop exterminator co. (read the Bowery Boys) is called to a creepy old house where the boys meet real exterminators!

The best thing about this so-so entry are two stellar bad guys—Charles Middleton and Douglas Dumbrille. Middleton's a walking graveyard, while Dumbille's a leering madman. Together they menace Gorcey and Hall inside their old dark mansion (where else). Except Monogram appears to be paying Middleton by the word since he mostly stands around and nods—too bad because his voice of doom is enough to freeze a ranger battalion. Also, cheapjack Monogram confines the last 20 minutes to two meager sets, not exactly a treat for the eyes.

The movie manages a few chuckles, especially when the mad Dr. Coslow (Dumbrille) eyes Sach's moronic cranium like a slice of beefsteak, rare. Some choice dialog follows. But what's Gabe Dell's navy man doing in this knock-about. He reminds me of Zeppo of the Marx Bros. — the zanies' link to romance and the normal world, but also a drag on the humor. Note too the familiar face of Billy Benedict as gang member Whitey. I expect he kept the newspaper business alive during the 30's and 40's by hawking them from a thousand backlot street corners.

Anyway, it's a passable entry in the long-running series. But if you think you've seen it before, you probably have.

The Bowery Boys tangle with a mad scientist in this fun fourth entry in the series. This time Slip Mahoney and the gang graduate from exterminator school and launch their own pest control business (from Louie's Sweet Shop). They get a job but, instead of exterminating bugs, they're hired to rid an old mansion of ghosts. There are no ghosts, however, just a scientist and his goons performing experiments.

The regulars are all great. In addition to Leo Gorcey's Slip and Huntz Hall's Sach, the rest of the gang is Whitey (William Benedict), Bobby (Bobby Jordan), Chuck (David Gorcey) and Gabe (Gabriel Dell). This was Dell's first Bowery Boys film, having been with the gang in their prior incarnations as the Dead End Kids and East Side Kids. The always fun Bernard Gorcey appears as Louie. Douglas Dumbrille is enjoyable as the mad scientist. No Karloff or Lugosi but he'll do. There are lots of laughs to be had with the many wonderful lines from Leo Gorcey, particularly his narration. His malapropisms are terrific and he delivers them perfectly. This entry also has a number of great sight gags, including the office for their exterminator business with funny signs all over that have humorously misspelled words. The 'haunted' house is full of the usual bits that one might expect after having seen countless comedies and cartoons involving such plots. Old or not, the bits still work here. It's a funny movie with the Bowery Boys all contributing to the laughs, instead of just Slip and Sach (as often was the case). The slow motion fight scene near the end is a highlight.

Although the name of the film might give you the idea that it was the ancestor of the immensely successful Ghostbuster films of the Eighties, Spook Busters has the Bowery Boys get into the ghost business quite by accident.

Not that there are any real ghosts in Spook Busters, but the people where newly graduated exterminator Leo Gorcey has been hired to rid the place of six legged pests by the rental agent are keeping up the rumors it's a haunted house because of the experiments they're conducting. But when chief scientist Douglass Dumbrille takes one look at Huntz Hall, he decides Hall would be a grand subject for his latest experiment. What is that you say, why merely to exchange Hall's brain for that of a gorilla's and vice versa. Just the sort of stuff that movie mad scientists go around doing, though one does have to ask why.

Douglass Dumbrille who was one of film's best villains at both a serious and a comic one. He's best known for being the shyster lawyer Mr. Cedar in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. But in a comic vein we've seen him roll down a department store floor after The Marx Brothers in The Big Store and in an Indian suit after Lou Costello in Ride 'Em Cowboy. Dumbrille really enjoyed the comic villain roles and he looks like he's having an equally good time with the Bowery Boys as a mad scientist.

You can't expect too much from Monogram Pictures, but Spook Busters is a good example of the Bowery Boys and their shtick.

Spook Busters (1946)

** (out of 4)

Fourth film in The Bowery Boys series has the gang graduating exterminating school and soon they're offered their first job. The boys must travel to a creepy old house, which is rumored to be haunted and sure enough strange things begin to happen once they enter. This entry in the series will have fans feeling flashbacks to the East Side Kids days with movies like SPOOKS RUN WILD and GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE. I'm really not sure what it is but the horror spoof is one genre that these kids should stay away from no matter what name they're going under. As with the previous two films, this one here is a very weak spoof of the horror genre and the worst thing is that the screenplay never really knows what it wants to be. There's some voice-over narration at the start of the movie that is clearly meant to be spoofing the various film noirs out at the time yet this eventually goes away and then shows up out of no where at the very end of the movie. The confusion doesn't stop there as the movie starts off as a spoof of the horror genre and quickly jumps away from it. After what happens in SPOOKS RUN WILD and GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE it would seem like the screenwriters would want to try something different and have the group really fighting some ghosts. Leo Gorcey actually doesn't take up too much here as his character is pretty underwritten for the most part. He really doesn't get anything fun to do and outside of the mangled dialogue he has pretty much nothing to do. Huntz Hall gets the majority of the "jokes" here and he takes them and goes way over the top trying to get any laugh. The supporting boys are all wasted and that includes Bobby Jordan who is pretty much just standing around the entire time. The final ten-minutes is when the film finally starts to pick up with a couple good comedy sequences. The first involves Hall trying to escape the bad guys by pretending that a ghost is forcing him to do things. This is followed up with a pretty funny ending where Hall and Gorcey must fight to get out of their trouble. Director Beaudine must have been really bored here because there's not an ounce of energy to be had in the first sixty-minutes and in the end this is yet another disappointment.