Boy Who Caught a Crook

Not seen by many it appears with just four reviews now. Not a brilliant film but not terrible either, I fell in love with one of the performers.............the wee dog who was mega cute, I think that it was a beagle puppy.

An interesting plot and the boy character was very well played as were all the others. Some plot holes of course but they were necessary for the plot of the film so have to be ignored as best they can.

Worth watching even though the average score is fairly low here, very much like a Children's Film Foundation (CFF) film made in the UK from the 1950s to 1970s where children foil the crooks.

Young newsboy Roger Mobley and an old man friend of his Don Beddoe find a briefcase in a vacant lot that was presumably thrown by bank robber Johnny Seven to avoid getting caught. Beddoe opens the briefcase in a filling station bathroom and says it's empty to the cops Robert Stevenson and reporter Richard Crane.

But Seven is coming back for his stolen loot and despite protestations to the contrary he's convinced Mobley or Beddoe or both of them have it. He's already risked time in the federal penitentiary for bank robbery so he wants his money.

The Boy Who Caught A Crook is a nice, but below average kid's film with a few too many holes in the story to be terribly convincing to anyone over 14. Wanda Hendrix turns in a nice performance as well as Mobley's widowed mother. In fact the whole cast is decent and sincere, but the film just doesn't rise above mediocrity.

And I guess the title itself gives it all away.

Edward L. Cahn was approaching the end of a thirty year career as a prolific director of exploitation quickies when he made this very poor man's version of 'The Window' which resembles a production by the Childrens Film Foundation; although THEY never set a story in Los Angeles. Although briefly bookended by scenes shot on authentic locations 'The Boy Who Caught a Crook' is for the most part confined to obvious process work and the street where he lives was plainly built on a soundstage.

As in the British equivalent a young lad inadvertently crosses the path of a crook and ultimately (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) brings about his downfall; but being American as played by a scar-faced Johnny Seven in a sharp suit he's a far more serious proposition, carries a gun and displays a considerably greater capacity for violence.