Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Inadvands Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

John T. Ryan FOLLOWING THE TRADITION and almost obligatory foraying into the realm of the Detective Story, THE BOWERY BOYS made their contribution to the comic parody of the genre. To be sure, this sort of a send-up had been done before. Its history dates back to the days of the Silents with the likes of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Laurel & Hardy. It continued with the advent of the "Talkies" with people like both the Brothers Ritz & Marx, the Stooges, Red Skelton and even Bob Hope.IN TAKING THIS foray into these heretofore uncharted waters for the Bowery Boys series, all stops were pulled out. The story had the office of the gumshoe that would have doubled for that of either Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe. A weeping and partially veiled, weepy female victim brings a sad story which is obviously not wholly the truth.THE NOTION OF having Leo Gorcey's "Slip" Mahoney becoming the tough was not such a stretch. Anyone who's seen Leo's dramatic abilities as "Spit" in the film version of DEAD END certainly would not have been surprised. He possessed an intensity that was both totally believable and natural.HOWEVER, WE DIGRESS, as we are supposed to be putting the comic aspects of the movie under a sort of microscope, OF COURSE, WE have rounding out the action sleuth spoofing from the boys (Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, David Gorcey). Proper and atmospheric characters provided by the likes of Pierre Watkin, Dan Seymour, Byron Folger and Noble Johnson provide the necessary mysterious and menacing characters befitting a Dashell Hammitt or Raymond Chandler story.OH, DEAR ME! How could we forget the 'subtle' performance of Huntz Hall, comic relief supreme. In this outing he sports a calabash pipe and a deerstalker hat. Now, Schultz, who do you suppose that he was lampooning here? No Schultz, Basil Rathbone is incorrect!

wes-connors At the "Elite Detective Agency" hoping to collect some much needed funds, "The Bowery Boys" leader Leo Gorcey (as Slip Mahoney) and "sidekick for years" Huntz Hall (as Sach) are mistaken for agency detectives. Mr. Gorcey accepts a $50 retainer from Betty Compson (as Selena Webster) to help find her attractive younger "sister." Bobby Jordan (as Bobby), Gabriel Dell (as Gabe), William "Billy" Benedict (as Whitey), and David Gorcey (as Chuck) are deputized as Gorcey's private dicks. After a few pratfalls, the gang locates Teala Loring (as Eleanor Williams), but she says she's not Ms. Compson's sister.This series entry is so loosely plotted, you tend to forget what is going on, exactly. The cast is obviously not being used well. Character actor and frequent TV guest star Byron Foulger (as Professor Quizard) enlivens a segment. Points of interest... prematurely nearing the end of her career, Betty Compson was a major film star for a decade, beginning with "The Miracle Man" (1919). Hall says "Sach" was named after the character's "Aunt Satchel". And, irregular regular Dell uncharacteristically appears as a nearsighted addition to the increasingly wallpaper-like, underused supporting "Bowery Boys".**** Hard Boiled Mahoney (4/26/47) William Beaudine ~ Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Betty Compson, Teala Loring

Michael_Elliott Hard Boiled Mahoney (1947)* 1/2 (out of 4) Weak sixth entry in the Bowery Boys series has Slip (Leo Gorcey) pretending to be a detective and getting hired to locate a missing girl. Soon him and the gang are in over their heads as they must go up against a psychic who holds a lot more secrets than the boys realize. This here is (so far) the weakest of the series as we get very few laughs and enough bad plot for three different movies. There's no question that this here is a take off on the film noir genre that was big at the time but the screenplay is so lazy that we don't get any good jokes aimed at the genre and even the main cast members seem to be overlooked. The biggest problem here is the screenplay because there aren't very many good jokes written. The type of humor they go for here is incredibly lazy and the perfect example of this is a scene where Sach is told to "hold onto your hat" until the boys can meet up with him. The joke? Sach holds onto his hat until they arrive. The film is all over the place and there's way too much attempted plot. There are a few twist and turns but everything is so muddy that you really won't care about the actual mystery going on. The film actually runs out of steam around the thirty-minute mark and it's pretty bad when it's hard to get through 63-minutes. It seems even the actors are bored here as Gorcey doesn't have any energy and even his line-delivery seems to be slow as if he was wishing to be somewhere else. Huntz Hall is also pretty quiet here and the rest of the boys are so far in the background that they might not have even been in the picture (especially the wasted Bobby Jordan). In the end, the lack of laughs really kill this one and the sluggish running time doesn't help matters.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Slip and his Bowery Boys get themselves involved with this fortune teller ring when his friend Sach ends up getting fired from his job as as an assistant private investigator by his boss, who skipped town, Greg Grogan. Showing up at Grogan's office to get Sach his back pay Slip finds the door opened and Gorgan gone. Within minutes Selena Webster shows up with a $50.00 retainer to find her missing sister Eleanor not knowing that both Slip & Sach are just visitors not the persons who run the detective agency.Taking on the case and the $50.00 Slip and the boys start to follow Dr. Rolfe Carter a psychic whom Selena suspects in her sisters disappearance. Trailing Dr.Carter to his home away from home at the Wentworth Arms Apartments Slip ends up finding Dr. Cater shot dead and him, after being knocked out cold by the killer, the prime suspect in Dr. Carter's murder! Slip also finds Selena's lost sister Eleanor in the building who claims that she's not related at all to her! In fact she doesn't even have a sister!In trying to get to the bottom of this mystery Slip & Co. on a tip from gangster Lenny the Meatball end up tracking down master fortune teller Dr. Armard the master mind of the fortune teller ring who's been using his talents of telling fortunes to dig up very sensitive information from his clients, whom both Selena & Eleanor are, in order to blackmail them. In fact it was Eleanor's husband Tom who Dr. Armand and his hoods kidnapped when he was about to expose his fortune telling blackmail racket to the police!The usual slap sticks you've learned to expect from Slip & Sach and the Bowery Boys who end up trapping Dr. Amand and his hoodlums at Louie's Sweet Shop with the help of Louie's waitress, and Slip's girlfriend, Alice who together with the police comes to their rescue. Before that Slip and the boys in trying to escape from the Dr. Armand's Mob busted into the Prof. Quizard Radio Quiz show by impersonating the members, after knocking the out and tying them up, of the biggest brain trust that the world, or Prof. Quizad, could assemble! Slip and the boys proved to be anything but a bunch of academic geniuses by not being able to come up with the answer to who the Washington Monument was named after? George Washington you dummies!