L'école du crime

This was the first "Dead End Kids" film that I watched and I really enjoyed it (too bad they don't show it on television anymore). When I first watched it, it was at a time when I thought all "kid gang" films were like the Little Rascal/Our Gang Comedies. The Dead End Kids were the ones who broke the mold and made the kids believable and this film hooked me on them. The one scene that I was particularly shocked with was when Frankie (Billy Halop) tried to make a break for it and got caught in the barbed wire fence. What happened to him after still makes me cringe as he is whipped within an inch of his life with a cat-a-nine tails. Even though this film is not a classic like "Dead End", the film that introduced us to the Kids, it still is a good picture on it's own.

The Dead End Kids star with Humphrey Bogart in "Crime School," a 1938 film from Warner Brothers.

The boys live in a rough neighborhood. They steal things and bring them to a fence, whom Spike accidentally kills. They are sent to reform school, but the school turns out to be more like a prison, run by a horrible warden (Cy Kendall) and his henchman (Weldon Heyburn).

Bogart plays Braden, the new Deputy Commissioner of Correction. When he comes for a visit he sees Frankie (Billy Halop) untreated in the hospital with lash wounds all over his back. He tastes the food, which is inedible.

Braden also fired the warden and several guards. He fires the drunk doctor. The bars come off the windows, the food is better, the kids are in training for various skills, no more whippings.

Then the henchman, still working there, sets Braden up to take a big fall by convincing Spike (Leo Gorcey) to take his car keys and escape. Of course the rest of the boys come with him.

Entertaining, with Bogart playing a nice guy. Gale Page is Frankie's sister. If you like the Dead End Kids, this is okay, though I understand it's not their best.

Of interest, "under God" is left out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Crime School is a mediocre film, but still a good performance by Bogart. One of the Dead End Kids films, it struggles to keep you interested. The Dead End Kids are, well dead. The acting is very poor and the characters and almost annoying with the over done accents and supposed gang behavior. The main problem which contributes to the entire films downfall is the unrealistic dialog and actions. When one of the kids shows up at the pawnshop with a 100 lb cast iron bathtub, you roll your eyes. But when Cy Kendell gets fired from a job he has had for 12 years and he puts up almost no protest you have to reach for remote and try not to stop the tape. Its finer points are the moral and political statements the film makes on reforming child criminals. Sadism versus compassion, hate verses love, good points clouded by comical attempts at portraying tough street kids. Bogart is a great actor and plays the part well, of all the characters in the film his is the most believable and entertaining. Definitely not one of Lew Seiler's best movies. I would not rent it unless you are old enough to connect for nostalgic reasons, but if it shows on TV it is worth muddling through it.

Warner Brothers decided to save a bundle on purchasing new properties for the Dead End Kids. The boys did They Made Me a Criminal a year later which was a remake of The Life of Jimmy Dolan and Crime School is a remake of The Mayor from Hell.

Fellow gangster icon James Cagney starred in The Mayor from Hell which I also reviewed here. Such things as Cagney's motivation and commitment to the reform school and the manner with which the boys take matters into their own hands is pretty grisly. None of that in this kinder, gentler film.

Sleepers has a lot of the same elements in both The Mayor from Hell and Crime School. It's certainly better than Crime School. This was one film whose message was watered down to nothing.

Nevertheless Crime School does have Humphrey Bogart in it and the Dead End Kids are always entertaining.

I wonder what kind of stuff the Dead End Kids would have been turning out had they come along pre-Code?

"Crime School" is clearly from the same mold as "San Quentin" and Cagney's "The Mayor of Hell."

It is a predictable vehicle for the Dead End Kids, in which Bogart played, in a dull, unemotional style, a deputy commissioner of correction who takes over the running of a reformatory housing the Kids when he finds the warden is a sadist…

There is a threat to Bogart's plan when the Kids escape as part of the warden's calculated attempt to prove Bogart's regenerative prison policies are valueless, but the ruse fails as Bogart gets the boys back winning the solemn recognition of merit