In conventional English, this four disc, 12-movie set completes the Bowery Boys' 48-feature run at Monogram (known later as Allied Artists). The set runs that gamut of permutations and movie genres this sort-of-but-not-quite comedy team made between 1946 and 1958, with some of their better (hardly best; there are none) and worst films: Mr. Hex (1946), Trouble Makers (1948), Triple Trouble (1950), Bowery Battalion (1951), Here Come the Marines (1952), Jungle Gents (1954), Bowery to Bagdad, Spy Chasers, Jail Busters (all 1955), Fighting Trouble (1956), Hold That Hypnotist (1957), and In the Money (1958). Now if all the parties, of which Warner Bros. apparently is the most dominant, can get together and release the gang's earlier East Side Kids movies, that'd really be something.

If you've made it this far you already know what to expect. The Bowery Boys movies are hardly in the same class as the Marx Bros. or Laurel & Hardy or even Martin & Lewis. From beginning to end, without exception, these were cheap, made-to-order bottom-of-the-bill fodder for, as the trades used to say, "undiscriminating audiences," i.e., kiddie matinees, grindhouses, rural theaters too poor to book anything better, and, especially nowadays, fans of low-brow comedy. They're able to overlook (endure?) the cheap sets, unambitious, painfully corny scripts, same stock footage openings (Is the Ruby ever going to get a new feature?), lazy performances (by some), and other failings, finding interest and, yes, sometimes even an honestly-earned laugh or two in this cheapest of cheap but long-running comedy series.

To recap, the Bowery Boys weren't a comedy team in the traditional sense, and some of the movies they made, especially in their earliest incarnations, weren't even comedies at all. Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall were the actors most associated with the various teamings though Gorcey is absent from the last batch of entries, and neither of them is in some of the early films, predating those in this set.

The Bowery Boys series was the product of Monogram, a Poverty Row studio that later spruced up its image slightly when they renamed themselves Allied Artists. But the Bowery Boys series was always fast and cheap. It's unlikely even the most lavish entries took much more than a week to shoot, on budgets probably well below $200,000. There are no masterpieces of screen comedy in the bunch but, as the saying goes, familiarity breeds affection, and the movies generally are likeable in the same way one becomes attached to a smelly old mutt.

The Bowery Boys' Byzantine back-story begins with Sidney Kingsley's 1935 Broadway play Dead End, about a group of juvenile delinquent types living at the height of the Great Depression at or near Dead End, specifically the corner of East 53rd Street and the East River in New York City. The play generally eschewed using polished teenage performers, instead casting real street toughs for many of the roles. The cast included Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hull, Bernard Punsley, Gabriel Dell, David Gorcey and his older brother Leo. Originally Leo and David were only understudies, but by the time the show opened Leo especially had won a major supporting part.

The show was a hit, running 684 performances, and eventually turned into a 1937 film, also called Dead End, starring Humphrey Bogart though produced by Sam Goldwyn and released through United Artists. It was quite the prestigious production, featuring a screenplay adapted by Lillian Hellman and direction from William Wyler, and it featured the same "Dead End Kids" as the play.

The success of the film prompted Warner Bros. to attempt to brand the gang as the "Crime School Kids," which was fine with Goldwyn as the boys apparently wreaked havoc at the studio during production. (Even on the train to California they got into trouble, playing baseball in their car and at one point Leo nearly threw Bobby Jordan from the moving train.) Halop, Jordan, Hall, Punsley, Dell, and Leo Gorcey, again with Humphrey Bogart, began the unofficial series with Crime School (1938) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), later supporting John Garfield in They Made Me a Criminal (1939). By the time they made Hell's Kitchen and Angels Wash Their Faces (both 1939), co-starring Ronald Reagan, they were more or less the main attraction. The "Crime School Kids" moniker was quickly forgotten and they once again became the Dead End Kids.

After On Dress Parade (1939), Warners dropped the gang, again because of their antics and propensity for violence, and the band minus Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan moved to Universal. They had actually signed to make pictures there in 1938 immediately following Angels with Dirty Faces, and Warner Bros., realizing their mistake, also signed the boys to a multi-picture contract concurrent with the Universal films. The first Universal, Little Tough Guy featured all the Dead End Kids except for Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan, though the next three, probably owing to the Warner deal, featured different actors except for Leo's brother David, though they did introduce William "Billy" Benedict, later an important supporting player in the group.

Further confusing things, "The Little Tough Guys" were soon joined by "The Dead End Kids" themselves, initially Huntz Hall and Billy Halop, and later on by Gabriel Dell and Bernard Punsley. These Universal titles collectively billed them as "Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys." Eventually they made 12 movies and three serials at Universal.*

Meanwhile, over at Monogram, producer Sam Katzman, wanting to cash in on all this success, made East Side Kids (1940) which featured Hal E. "Halley" (or "Hally") Chester, one of the original kids from the play Dead End but who skipped the Warner Bros. movies though appeared in the Universal films. (Chester later produced films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Curse of the Demon.) None of the other, more familiar actors were in that one, but gradually Katzman recruited Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, David Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Benedict and a few other stragglers when the Universal films ended.

The East Side Kids films were a Poverty Row hit, with 22 features produced over less than five years, despite being made on pitifully low budgets of around $35,000 apiece with 5-7-day shooting schedules. When Leo Gorcey demanded a raise in 1945, Katzman ended the series, but then Gorcey, working with producer Jan Grippo, reconfigured the series as, finally, The Bowery Boys the following year.

Forty-eight more features were produced over the next dozen years. Unlike the early, Depression-era dramas and straight gangster films of the earliest days and the genre-free form of the Little Tough Guys/East Side Kids movies, the Bowery Boys movies almost from the start consisted mainly of broad slapstick comedy. The dynamics of the group also changed, with Gorcey firmly in charge both on and off-camera. (Gorcey had been dominating onscreen since the East Side Kids days.) Gorcey received $52,000 per movie, more than the entire budget of most of the East Side Kids films, as well as 33% of the profits. Credits usually billed "Leo Gorcey and The Bowery Boys," with Huntz Hall and the others receiving only supporting billing, though Hall's improved as the series progressed. Hall, Gabriel Dell, and to a lesser extent Billy Benedict were prominent in the ‘40s films but the rest, notably David Gorcey and Bobby Jordan, were pretty much reduced to spear-carriers. The later films typically featured two anonymous Boys who kept to the background.

Tough-talking Terrence Aloysius "Slip" Mahoney (Leo Gorcey), his dialogue tangled with awkward, often very forced malapropisms ("sometimes to the point of near-incoherence," notes historian Bill Warren), was the leader of the perennially broke gang, with Horace Debussy "Sach" Jones (Huntz Hall) as the group's dim-witted patsy. Slip constantly beats Sach over the head with his pinned-back hat.

Huntz Hall's rise within the group was deserved, for he proved to be a good comedian, his lanky frame, bug eyes and long, pushed-in and crooked nose adapting well to the Bowery Boys' new, more clownish format. Equally important was the addition of another cast member, Bernard Gorcey, Leo and David's father, who played Louie Dumbrowski, the tiny (4'10"), long-suffering, excitable owner of Louie's Sweet Shop, the Boys' hangout. The elder Gorcey, the funniest thing about the movies beyond Huntz Hall, was a Vaudeville and Broadway veteran, Bernard being best-known for the incredibly long-running (2,327) Broadway production and silent film adaptation of Abie's Irish Rose (1922-27 for the play; the film came the following year). Most of the comedy revolves around Slip, Sach, and Louie.

In the early films Gabriel Dell, generally regarded as the best actor among the original Dead End Kids, played a "reformed" Bowery Boy working some job that always figured into the plot (a reporter, a policeman), while Billy Benedict, the most unpredictable of the Boys, was always good for an unexpected reaction shot or funny, off-kilter line of dialogue. They, however, left the series in the early ‘50s.

The stories almost invariably fell into one of two basic plots. In the first (more prominent in the early films), the boys come up with a scheme to make a lot of money, often to help an old lady about to be evicted or some such thing, and they take over the back room of Louie's Sweet Shop as their headquarters. They're either surprisingly successful, attracting the attention of underworld types who want to cut in, or are mistaken for being successful, attracting underworld types who want to cut in. A variation of this plot, more prominent in the later entries, has Sach accidentally coming up with some fantastic new invention or acquiring some incredible new power (often after getting bonked on the head) that could make the Boys millions, attracting underworld types who want to cut in.

The other basic plot has the Boys stumbling upon a spooky haunted house or den of (by this point) Commie spies, resulting in the Boys (and Louie) running around the soundstage sets for the last 30 minutes or so until enough film has been exposed.

These pictures, especially the ‘50s ones, were heavily influenced by the phenomenal popularity at the time of (Dean) Martin & (Jerry) Lewis, and the lasting popularity of Abbott & Costello, as well as the Three Stooges' two-reel shorts (more about which in a moment). The Bowery Boys movies, however, were hindered by their cheap budgets and short shooting schedules. In many of the films the "Boys" (by this point in their mid-30s) barely leave the malt shop and its back room. In Bowery to Bagdad, for instance, though not literally true it seems like the first half-hour takes place almost entirely in the back room of the malt shop, and the second half-hour in a gangster's penthouse apartment. Slip and Sach are only in Bagdad (a modest soundstage set) for about five minutes near the end.

There is, surprisingly, a perceptible difference between the better and lesser Bowery Boys movies. Where the Three Stooges and Abbott & Costello had honed their comedy in Vaudeville and Burlesque, with their films written and directed by people like Jules White, Charles Lamont, and Clyde Bruckman, veterans of silent film comedy, The Bowery Boys weren't so lucky. They were saddled with hacks like William Beaudine and Jean Yarbrough. (Both had made comedies before this, but were hardly masters of that craft.) As with Volume Three, Volume Four features several moderately better entries co-written by Elwood Ulman and directed by Edward Bernds, both late of the Three Stooges films.

Bernds was no great auteur, but he knew his way around broad slapstick better than Beaudine or Yarbrough, and he and frequent partner Ulman incorporate some of the same Three Stooges gags and comedy situations into their Bowery Boys films moderately well, sometimes. The Bernds-directed films also tend to have slightly better supporting casts: Bowery to Bagdad, for instance, features Eric Blore (in his last film role) as a magical genie, his cultured English accent making a funny contrast to Sach's uncultured stupidity. Also in the cast are Joan Shawlee, Jean Willes, and Dick Wessel, the latter two veterans of various Stooge shorts. Spy Chasers features Leon Askin and Sig Ruman, (fine nemesis to the brothers Marx in three movies). All knew their way around material like this, though struggle to wring laughs out of the tired slapstick and corny dialogue.

To his credit, Huntz Hall manages to rise above even the feeblest of gags. He shrewdly capitalized on his big fish/little pond status, throwing himself completely into every scene. Most of the time Sach comes off merely silly instead of funny, but sometimes his frightened or delighted reactions amuse. In one of the films, for instance, Slip orders Sach to fake a seizure in an otherwise empty bar in order to distract the barkeep. Hall flails wildly about, knocking over furniture and making funny gurgling noises, feigning agony and, I gotta admit, it's pretty hilarious.

Though the Bowery Boys movies typically run little more than 60 minutes, in most of the films the last 15, even 20 minutes tend to devote themselves to the gang being chased by the bad guys, the Boys repeatedly trying and failing miserably to gain the upper-hand. These scenes tend to go on forever, and modern audiences will be sorely tempted to reach for that iPad or SmartPhone until these trite set pieces exhaust themselves into resolution.

The series went into free-fall in the second-half of 1955. On 31 August, a car Bernard Gorcey was driving collided with a bus at the corner of 4th and La Brea, in Los Angeles, and he died from his injuries 12 days later. Leo, a troubled, mean drunk off-screen to begin with and very close to his formerly estranged father, was devastated. He did one more film, Crashing Las Vegas, drinking heavily all the while, so much so that he had to be driven home each night. He divorced his third wife the following February, and left the series, though kid brother David, himself a closet drinker, remained. David later became sober but Leo became a wreck.

Leo didn't appear in another movie for nearly seven years. He played the first cabbie in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and has all but one line. (I've often wondered if Gorcey's part was originally intended to continue through to the end of that film but that, probably because of his drinking, Peter Falk took over those scenes. The movie sure plays like those two parts were written for a single character.)

Gorcey was reunited with his old pal Huntz for the low-budget Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar (1966), one of a spate of ‘60s films made strictly for rural audiences with long stretches of country music performances loosely connected with comedy relief. Gorcey was only in his late forties but looks at least ten years older and is obviously soaked. Incredibly, he looks even worse in The Phynx (1970), released nearly a year after his premature death in 1969, where he was again reunited with Hall for a brief cameo.

With Leo Gorcey out of the series and Bernard Gorcey dead, Huntz Hall become the only reason to see the last batch of Bowery Boys movies, which had Stanley Clements, briefly an East Side Kid, replacing Leo as Stanislaus "Duke" Covelske. Clements isn't bad as Sach's new, less temperamental partner, but these movies only exist at all because of a contract commitment between Hall and Allied Artists, and are among the feeblest of all Bowery Boys movies.

Video & Audio

The transfers on The Bowery Boys, Volume Four are variable. Parts of the first one, Mr. Hex, look terrible, as if salvaged from the Dumpster of an old UHF station in Idaho, but other reels within that same film look fine. The other movies generally look better than expected, with some of the later, 1,85:1 enhanced widescreen ones (from Jungle Gents onward) a bit cleaner and more pristine than in previous volumes. The Dolby Digital mono audio is adequate and the discs are region-free. (Note: The initial run of this release is on pressed discs, not DVD-Rs. Get ‘em while they're hot.)

Extra Features

Unlike most Warner Archive releases, The Bowery Boys, Volume 4 has one terrific extra feature: a whopping 28 trailers presented over two of the discs. A few are missing text or narration, but most are complete and all are in their correct aspect ratios. A word of caution, however: Once viewed, you'll never be able to hear more than a few bars of "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here" without screaming.

Parting Thoughts

As before, non-fans will want to avoid this like Liberia. However, for fans of "Hollywood's Made-to-Order Punks" (as biographer Richard Roat describes them), their pictures are still amusing in their own unambitious way, and still entertain all these decades later. Recommended.

* Sergei Hasenecz adds, "And an addition to your history of the various film series: Billy Halop ended up doing The Gas House Kids for PRC in 1946, with Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer as the comedy foil. He didn't appear in the two other series entries (The Gas House Kids in Hollywood and The Gas House Kids Go West, both 1947). This was PRC's attempt at an imitation Bowery Boys or East Side Kids. Alfalfa did all three movies. Benny Bartlett was in the last two. He did at least one East Side Kids and was Butch in quite a few of the Bowery Boys movies, usually standing in the back next to David Gorcey."

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes film history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.