Up in Smoke

The Bowery Boys are collecting funds for polio victim Little Ozzie. Sach is supposed to take the money to the bank. Instead, he gets taken to a crooked bookmaker and loses all the cash in a horse race. In a fit of rage, Sach offers his soul to get revenge and the devil answers the call.

This is a Bowery Boys film with Sach but without Slip. I don't know how the studio thinks this would work. This is simply a guy fulfilling his contract and nothing more. There is something missing. It's half missing.

The latter Bowery Boys episodes without Leo Gorcey were not that bad, but he was missed. You often wonder how some of these films would have turned out had he not left the series.

Case in point is UP IN SMOKE, and one of the last of the series, in which Sach makes a pact with the devil, alias Mr. Bub ( well played by Byron Foulger). You may remember Foulger as the befuddled Professor Quizzard in HARD BOILED MAHONEY ten years earlier. This is a goofy movie; Duke (Stanley Clements) kicks Sach out of the gang for being so dumb --just like Slip used to do! Sach teams up with sly old Mr. Bub to raise money for a boy stricken with polio and to get even with a bunch of crooks. Sach, however, manages to turn the tables on Mr. Bub at the same time.

The gang has a lot of fun, but could you imagine Gorcey throwing his malaprops at Bub. Missed opportunity.

Not bad comedy due to the fact Sach is completely insane and that's what its all about.

Behind the scenes, the series producer quit and another independent producer, Richard Heermance, was brought in to manage production rather than to pay off Huntz Hall's contract. All about the money. Still worth watching, particularly for Sach's confrontations with the man downstairs! Warner Brothers box set dvd.

Thanks to TCM for faithfully running the series.

A refreshingly entertaining entry for the latter day Bowery Boys franchise, and that was not an easy thing to be by this time where we had lost leading goon Leo Gorcey for his replacement, Stanley Clements. Though the long-running series was winding down to its final gasp, Huntz Hall as the scatter-brained Sach is a lot of fun here, involved in a comical plot where he sells his soul to the Devil (Byron Foulger) in order to have the horned one supply him with the names of sure-winning horses at the race track. (Unsurprisingly, another group of crooks try to extract the information for themselves). Foulger is a delight in the character of Satan. **1/2 out of ****

Up in Smoke (1957)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Not to be confused with the Cheech and Chong flick from the 70s, this was the next-to-last entry in the long-running Bowery Boys series. Sach (Huntz Hall), Duke (Stanley Clements) and the boys are raising money for a kid suffering from polio but Sach loses the money when he's given a fake horse tip. Then Sach says he'd be willing to sell his soul for some money and the Devil (Byron Foulger) pops up offering him winning horses for a week and after wards Sach will belong to him. From what I've read the series was going to come to an end after the last picture but Hall still owed the studio two more movies so they decided to make them Bowery Boy movies instead of starting something fresh. I guess you have to give the supporting cast and Hall credit for at least giving it their all when they knew the series was over but there's just no way they could overcome this screenplay, which is extremely poor. The biggest problem is that there's nothing that really happens after Sach sells his soul. Each day the Devil pops up, gives Sach the tip and something will happen to where he can't bet the horse. This happens several times and after the third time you'll be wishing that the Devil would just go against his deal and steal the soul so that we the viewer can be done with the film. It probably didn't help matters that 'One Shot' Beaudine was behind the camera as every shot looks rather generic and there's not a bit of energy to be found anywhere. As I said, the cast at least gives a good effort with both Hall and Clements once again doing good work together. That is, whenever the two are on screen together. For the most part Hall is working on his own here as he has quite a few scenes where he's either with one of the supporting players like the Devil or the gamblers. Foulger certainly makes for one of the nicest Devils in the history of Hell but he was very good in the part as was Dick Elliott as Dick the restaurant owner. As is the case with any comedy, if there aren't any laughs then the movie isn't worth viewing and sadly UP IN SMOKE doesn't offer very many. There's a small bit with the boys trying to sell their car, which is somewhat funny but this scene certainly isn't great enough to watch the entire movie for it.

The Boys are collecting money for mine of the neighborhood kids who has polio. Sach loses what they collected to some crooked gamblers betting on a phony horse race. Desperate, Sach sells his soul to The Devil in exchange for being able to pick winners at the horse racing track. Can The Boys possibly get their money back and save Sach's soul in the process?

Character actor Dick Elliott took over as Mike, cafe owner, in place of Bernard Gorcey, who had been killed in a car accident.

After Leo Gorcey left the series following his father's death, Stanley Clements came back onboard as Duke. Stanley had been one of the original Dead End Kids. His Duke character didn't seem to be a true replacement of the Slip character, but instead was a combination of Slip and former character Gabe Moreno, played by Gabriel Dell. Duke was maybe 30% Slip and 70% Gabe. The series now focused almost entirely on Sach, as Huntz Hall had taken over the direction the series went.

Clearly, the Bowery Boys movies lost steam after The Gorcey were gone. There was only one more film after this one. They are all watchable and provide a few laughs, but are nowhere near as good as the earlier movies in the series.