Master Minds

No doubt inspired by the success of Abbott&Costello Meet Frankenstein, the folks at Monogram Pictures did a nice reworking of the plot at albeit a lower budget for the Bowery Boys in Master Minds.

Although with the rest of the human race eating too much sugar is a guarantee of diabetes, with Horace DeBussy Jones it gives psychic powers that are positively diabolic. They intrigue Alan Napier who is conducting the usual mad scientist experiments and he manages to electrically transfer Huntz Hall's brain into the body of Frankenstein creature Glenn Strange and vice versa.

If I were unkind I'd say that Universal Pictures and A&C were ripped off by the Bowery Boys. That doesn't mean this particular comedy wasn't good in fact seeing Glenn Strange with Huntz Hall mannerisms imitated and Huntz Hall voice coming from him is positively hilarious. Added to the rest of the Bowery Boy monkeyshines, Master Minds is one of the best of the series.

This is definitely one of the better entries in the Bowery Boys movies, full of clever plot devices which seem to be borrowed heavily from other even scarier Abbot and Costello movies like A & C MEET FRANKENSTEIN. In this one, Huntz Hall and Glenn Strange are forced to switch brains (and personalities) by mad doctor Alan Napier.

The result is some really hilarious acting from Hall and Strange. Glenn has much more to do than he usually did in those Universal horror films he often appeared in. When he apes the mannerisms of Huntz Hall (with Hall's high pitched voice and giggle), he's hilarious.

The other Bowery Boys go through their usual paces, but it's a fun film from start to finish with Glenn Strange really given a chance to show what a good character actor he was.

If you're a fan of the Boys, this is of their best.

I usually watch the Dead End kids out of nostalgia. I must have seen many of their films in first run showings as a kid, since I still think "Whitey" whenever I see Billy Benedict in any movie. This movie has to be one of my "guilty pleasures" since it's pretty silly stuff, yet I couldn't help laughing throughout. The plot has Glenn Strange and Huntz Hall exchanging brain contents because of experiments conducted by mad scientist Alan Napier. Hall's voice is used whenever Strange talks, but Strange's movements and mannerisms are his, and they are perfect imitations of Hall's. If you have watched a few of the Bowery Boys series and get to know Hall's antics, you will enjoy this movie. There are other pleasures, the best of which is Leo Gorcey's fracturing of the English language, but the reason to see this movie is Glenn Strange.

During the course of many Bowery Boys films, Sach is endowed with amazing super-powers again and again. In one, he can predict numbers on the Roulette wheel, in another he has super-intelligence and here, in "Master Minds", he's endowed with the ability to predict the future! Yet, inexplicably, by the end of each movie these abilities disappear and are never spoken of again!

When the film begins, Sach goes into a weird trance and predicts the future. When Slip realizes that he's right, he does what any friend would do...put Sach into a sideshow where 'Ali Ben Sachmo' (Sach) can tell futures and make him lots of money. However, a nutty scientist (Alan Napier) is working on a Dr. Moreau-like method of making animals look human...but he wants to give his newest creation a brilliant mind...and assumes incorrectly that Sach is such a genius! Soon, he manages to put Sach's mind into the gorilla-like man (Glenn Strange) and vice-versa.

Like the Bowery Boys films of the 1940s, this one is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, just a year or two later, the team's films would become more stale--more repetitive and less funny. Considering they made so many movies (48--not counting the ones made as the East Side Kids and Dead End Kids), this isn't surprising! Worth seeing and considerably better than later offerings. Stupid but fun!

The 16th Bowery Boys entry from Monogram, 1949's "Master Minds" served up some rare mad scientist shenanigans during a lean period for horror films, set in the haunted Forsythe mansion that locals tend to avoid. Huntz Hall's Sach once again finds himself gaining an unexpected ability, not a crooner's voice as in "Blues Busters" but a fortune teller predicting the future after reading about Nostradamus, caused by a candy-induced toothache (betting on horses would come later). Leo Gorcey's Slip trots out sideshow star 'Ali Ben Sachmo, Bowery Prophet' for a typical get rich quick scheme, allowing Alan Napier as Dr. Druzik to utilize this supposed seer as the perfect subject for mind transference with his savage creation Atlas, played to the hilt by Glenn Strange (much neater than a messy brain transplant). Strange absolutely nails his impersonation of Huntz Hall and his effeminate mannerisms, under a hirsute Jack Pierce makeup that harkens back to the glory days of Universal's "House of Dracula," even adding several more cast members as lab assistants, Skelton Knaggs and pretty Jane Adams, no longer burdened by a hump. One would have wished that after several costarring roles opposite good friend Boris Karloff ("Isle of the Dead," "Lured," "The Strange Door") that Alan Napier might have learned something from the master, playing his one and only mad doctor with a permanent smirk, a bemused performance that can only be described as ordinary, similar to John Dehner's later turn in "The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters" (surely, Bela Lugosi must have been available!). Strange was in the midst of several Abbott and Costello vehicles ("The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap," "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," "Comin Round the Mountain") but would not play another monster in a Hollywood feature, both Gabriel Dell and Billy Benedict departing the Bowery Boys series within two years.