Boys of the City

Boys of the City has relatively good production values and the story and props are creepy enough to make it suspenseful and exciting.

Unlike Ghosts on the Loose, most of the "gang" gets talking time.

But let's cut to the chase. There are twists and turns and there is a mansion-wide hunt for Miss Louise and a mysterious stalker who roams the house.

Something I want to Know: when the "gang" and Knuckles and the Asst. D.A. split up to search the grounds, where is Buster and Skinny? They just disappear until the chase.

I enjoyed this tremendously and renew its acquaintance every once and then. It is not to the level of Spooks Run Wild, but it's a very close second.

Cheap sets. B-list performers and some typical-for-the-era (but nonetheless annoying) racial stereotypes fail to distinguish this tale of embezzlement and murder set at a creepy country mansion.

Leo Gorcey and the gang provide the comic relief, which -- except for the cigar scene -- is not particularly funny. Unless, that is, you get a kick out of things like watching Ernest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison get pop-eyed over graveyards and spooks, or listening to him extol the virtues of a big slice of watermelon.

Though Minerva Urecal did a fairly good job as a sort of cut-rate Mrs. Danvers, I'd only recommend this one to rabid Gorcey fans and B-movie antiquarians.

En route to a boys camp for the summer, our favorite juvenile delinquents find themselves stranded overnight at a crooked judge's house. There they battle racketeers and the usual old dark house tropes. This is former Dead End Kid (and future leader of the gang) Leo Gorcey's first entry in the East Side Kids series (also the first for his brother David). As such it feels like much more of a proper start to the series than the first film did. Returning from the first one is Dave O'Brien as Knuckles, the reformed gangster acting as the boys' guardian. It's a forgettable movie in every way. At this point Gorcey hadn't yet developed his malapropism-spouting character and he doesn't have Huntz Hall, either, and he was always best with Huntz. Plus the Kids, regardless of which version, did this material better in several other pictures.

The pieces weren't quite all there yet (paging Huntz Hall!), but this erratic poverty row feature set the parameters for the long running Bowery Boys series. Additionally, the film was directed by Joseph H. Lewis, who did his best to add interesting camera angles and spooky lighting to this low budget affair. Unfortunately, TCM's print is in very rough condition and a lot of Lewis' work has been washed out by decades of mishandling. Nonetheless, this is well worth a look for fans of the noir director as well as those who enjoy the teenage antics of the East Side Kids.

If there's one regrettable element in Boys of the City, it's the appalling racism of screenwriter William Lively's script. One of the most commendable things about the later films in this series is the (generally) colour blind approach to Sammy Morrison's character, but in this effort, poor Sammy was burdened with jokes about spooks, watermelon, the ol' plantation, and his beloved Mammy. Still and all, he does a good job with the material and remains (after Gorcey and Hall) the most memorable of the series' characters.

I never thought I would say it, but this Gorcey and gang entry had me wishing for the buffoonery of Huntz Hall. That would at least have livened up some of the byplay. Except for a few clever malaprops, the only "humor" comes from Scruno's crudely racial gags. Otherwise, the gang trails after Jordan and Gorcey in pretty unimaginative fashion. Director Lewis may have been a brilliant helmsman of noir, but he doesn't seem comfortable with low-grade humor. That may be because the screenplay loads too much familiar plot into an hour's run-time, which Lewis then has to coordinate. Anyway, as others point out, Urecal's performance as the witchy housekeeper is worthy of an A-feature, making the 60-minutes almost worthwhile. All in all, if you think you've seen the spooky plot done better before, you probably have, (Spooks on the Loose {1941}, Ghosts Run Wild {1943}).