Hold That Line

Hold That Line (1952)

** (out of 4)

A couple rich snobs make a bet that they can take any group of idiots off the street, send them to Ivy school and make them smart. Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall) and the boys are selected but their dumbness follows them to college but Sach ends up making some "vitamins" that allow him to become a huge football star. As you can tell by the story, this was TRADING PLACES thirty-one years earlier than that classic 1983 film but don't expect the same quality. Yet again we've given a fairly weak story and not too much is done with it. Once again we have a plot where the boys get mixed up with gangsters who eventually kidnap Sach so that they can place bets on a big game. Other stuff in the film includes the boys of course mixing it up with the star football player, dealing with various college exams and we even get to see some football action. The football scenes are all filmed rather poorly and nothing else really works here either. The entire film has a very cheap look to it and it's clear that Beaudine is on auto-pilot as the scenes never really add up to much and the entire thing just feels rushed. There's one saving grace in the film and that's a sequence where the boys get hazed and must go into their old neighborhood in drag. The scene inside Louie's diner is very funny and seeing Louie in drag was well worth sitting through the film. Gorcey once again takes a backseat as his character really doesn't have too much to do. Hull takes over the lead and manages to be OK here and thankfully his character isn't as big a dope as some of the previous films. I'm sure fans of the series will want to check this one out but those new will certainly want to start somewhere else.

74/100. Exceptionally good Bowery Boys entry. A professor bets another professor that he can can make anyone a good student, and one professor insists that he gets to pick the person. Well, you guessed it, he picked some tough subjects, the boys themselves. This is sort of a distant twist of Pygmalion. Well, Ivy University has know idea what they are in for! Sach makes a mixture in chemistry that makes him very strong, and soon enough he is on the football team. The climax football game is quite similar to that of Harold Lloyd's The Freshman. Leo Gorcey does an exceptional job butchering the English language! Very funny, great pace and the boys are at their best.

"Hold That Line" is not the best Bowery Boys movie. That doesn't mean it's a bad movie. It's just not as good as some of the others. This movie does have its fair share of laughs. But even at very short running time (67 mins), it feels a little long. "Hold That Line" is worth the watch. It's just more silly than it is funny.

In "A Chump at Oxford", Laurel & Hardy are both sent to Oxford by a beneficiary who does this to thank them for capturing some bank robbers. And, in "Trading Places" many decades later, two rich jerks take a man out of the gutter and make him over into a rich and successful stockbroker...just to see if clothes make the man! Both films are much like "Hold That Line" from the Bowery Boys.

The story begins at a rich gentlemen's club. Two of the members have made a bet. One insists that you could take a poor guy and place him in a top university and he'll be a success....the other disagrees. So they both go in search of a poor, undereducated soul to test the theory. In the process, they meet the Bowery Boys and decide to send all five to college!

At first, Sach nearly gets them thrown out of school when he accidentally creates dynamite in chemistry class. Later, Sach plays around with chemicals again...and he thinks he's created vitamis. Instead, he's made a formula that gives him phenomenal strength...and soon this boob is the star athlete of the school! And, when it comes to the big game, the film becomes a bit like "Horse Feathers"....when Chico and Harpo are kidnapped so they cannot play in (once again) the big football game!

As you may have noticed, there are quite a few story elements in "Hold That Line" that are very familiar. And, in a surprising twist, a newer film, "Trading Places", sure seems to be based, in part, on this Bowery Boys movie.

So is this any good? Yes, surprisingly so. While it's no classic, it had good momentum, a few laughs and kept my interest.

It's the later Bowery Boys at the top of their game in this well-paced and satisfying comedy farce. Two elderly rich men make a bet that the classless Slip, Sach, and the rest of the group can be enrolled in a well-to-do college and still make the grade. While in chemistry class, Sach (Huntz Hall) then develops his own secret formula which transforms him into a powerhouse with super-strength, becoming a new football hero rivaling the All-American Football champ of the campus.

A recommended entry in this everlasting series which stands out a bit from most of the films.

**1/2 (of four)