arfdawg-1 The Plot.It's been two weeks of unrelenting New York City summer heat. Sooner or later the boys are apt to get into mischief, so Knuckles takes the load of 'em to Algy's father's camp in the mountains. The trip gets sidetracked when they cross paths with Judge Parker' party on the road. The Judge, hiding from the mob, is desperately heading to his mountain manor when he runs the boys' vehicle off the road, nearly disabling it right before his own car conks out. With only the boys' car barely able to travel, they all wind up at the judge's manor where ghostly sightings, spooky organ music, death threats and a creepy housekeeper await them. Judge Parker is the very judge who once nearly put Knuckles on death row for murder. When the judge turns up dead, Knuckles is in trouble again, with little brother Danny and the gang ready to help him out. I used to love the Bowery Boys / East Side / Dead End Kids when they ran on local TV as a kid. These guys sure knew how to milk a series and they might have lasted as long as the 3 Stooges. In movies, from 1937-1956! With nearly 70 features to their credit. Huntz Hall isn't in this one yet, and he's missed. The movie is only 68 minutes long but feels like 3 hours! Half the film is over before they even get to the haunted house.As an aside, the guy from Reefer Madness is in this movie. It's not a very good film. The later humor filled movies were far better.

mark.waltz Determined to keep the East Side Kids out of trouble and ultimately out of juvenile hall (which to be honest, they'd still be too old for at this early point in her career...), an understanding judge sends them to his country home in the mountains. They end up in the spooky mansion of a judge who is an important witness in a criminal case and deal with the possible presence of ghosts, as well as a spooky housekeeper, various secret passageways, and most frighteningly, murder! The result is one of the best of the early East Side Kids films after their Warner Brothers years that is entertaining from start to finish.While this entry in the series is missing Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan and Leo Gorcey are still around as the leaders of the gang, leading in both dialog and action, with only a few comic bits given to the black Sammy Morrison. Of course, some of those bits are extremely racist, especially when sinister looking housekeeper Minerva Urecal serves the boys small fruit cups and gives Morrison a huge piece of watermelon. Urecal has one of the best roles of her career, spoofing every sinister housekeeper or strange relative, most obviously Eva Moore in "The Old Dark House" (spooking heroine Inna Gest with comments on her "pale, white flesh") and Judith Anderson in "Rebecca".While the plot is predictable, the screenplay is loaded with some of the funniest malapropisms of the kid's extremely lengthy career and there is definitely a macabre element to the spooky atmosphere, from the antique graveyard in Judge Forrest Taylor's back yard to the "Cat and the Canary" like candle-lit hallways. It ranks high above many of the similar films being done at the low-grade Monogram and PRC (and even the slightly more expensive Universal) and the results make this a film you might want to re-visit, even if you'll steer clear of this delightfully haunted mansion.

accidentaldays Boys of the City has relatively good production values and the story and props are creepy enough to make it suspenseful and exciting.Unlike Ghosts on the Loose, most of the "gang" gets talking time.But let's cut to the chase. There are twists and turns and there is a mansion-wide hunt for Miss Louise and a mysterious stalker who roams the house.Something I want to Know: when the "gang" and Knuckles and the Asst. D.A. split up to search the grounds, where is Buster and Skinny? They just disappear until the chase.I enjoyed this tremendously and renew its acquaintance every once and then. It is not to the level of Spooks Run Wild, but it's a very close second.

henri sauvage Cheap sets. B-list performers and some typical-for-the-era (but nonetheless annoying) racial stereotypes fail to distinguish this tale of embezzlement and murder set at a creepy country mansion. Leo Gorcey and the gang provide the comic relief, which -- except for the cigar scene -- is not particularly funny. Unless, that is, you get a kick out of things like watching Ernest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison get pop-eyed over graveyards and spooks, or listening to him extol the virtues of a big slice of watermelon.Though Minerva Urecal did a fairly good job as a sort of cut-rate Mrs. Danvers, I'd only recommend this one to rabid Gorcey fans and B-movie antiquarians.