Pretty Good

Powerful

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Sentimentality and social issues take over from the crazy, unbelievable (but fun) predicaments of the earlier films, beginning with the East Side Kids and moving to the Bowery Boys series. Gone are the delightfully silly malapropisms of Slip and Sach, and in are the sentiments of "Boy's Town". It's obvious that the writers decided to be more relevant with this entry, and unfortunately, they failed. Fortunately, they learned their lesson, and returned to the formula in the next entry of the series.While I would have been accepting of a different style, this one is jarring because with few exceptions, it seems like Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey are playing completely different characters. They are involved in helping Gorcey's recently released cousin Frankie Darro keeping on the straight and narrow, and that isn't easy thanks to his taking a job with gangster Nestor Paiva who has a penchant for practical jokes.The intrusion of occasional farce mixes with the crime element and sentimentality (a young neighborhood kid injured and ending up in the hospital simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time) in an odd, uncomfortable way. It's certainly a better acting opportunity for the boys, and Mary Gordon delivers her usual lovable performance as Gorcey's mom. Rosemary La Planche is an interesting femme fatale, but the loss of Louie's sweet shop is sorely missed, as is Bernard Gorcey. Hall gets in some amusing imitations, but this really seems like a parallel universe version of the series.

I usually use one of Leo Gorcey's fractured lines for my summary quote, but the one by Father O'Hanlon (Nelson Leigh) seemed a whole lot more appropriate for this picture's subject matter. This one seemed a bit of a throwback to an earlier time when the Boys teamed up with Cagney in "Angels With Dirty Faces", or the one that got them started, "Dead End" with Bogart in the lead role. Of course the core group here (Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell) were known as the Dead End Kids back then and their characters had different names. A decade later and they're still trying to tough it out on the streets of the city.More so than most any other of their pictures, this one goes for a bit of melodrama with the inclusion of Slip's (Gorcey) young cousin Boomer (Thomas Menzies). It doesn't start out that way, at the outset it looks like Boomer is an understudy to Slip in his penchant for torturing the English language. But later he's injured in a car accident, and Slip pulls out the emotional stops to comfort the youngster in his hospital bed. It's about the closest to serious drama that you'll find in a Bowery Boys flick.The inclusion of a parish priest was a pretty interesting way to go here. Father O'Hanlon was the pastor of St. Vincent's Parish, and I thought it was pretty cool the way the picture paid tribute to an earlier film from Paramount Pictures. When the priest surprises Slip with his presence, Slip reacts by saying "...I was just going' to church. You're Going My Way?" That was pretty cool and I wondered what Crosby might have thought of it.Coming right out of that scene, you'll catch a goof of sorts if you're paying attention. A few minutes before when Slip talks to Daisy (Rosemary LaPlanche) and Josie (Geneva Gray), behind them on a store front is a sign for the 'Home Appliance Company'. After Slip and Sach give Father O'Hanlon a ride to the St. Vincent Boys Club, right behind them on the sidewalk where they drop him off is the 'Home Appliance Company'! The window of the store was slightly altered, but in 1948 I doubt if there was a company big enough to have locations a couple of blocks apart. Now if it was a Starbucks....So with all of that going on, the thing that really got my attention in this picture was the appearance of Frankie Darro. I don't know why, but I've taken a shine to Darro in these types of early movies. Like Leo Gorcey, he was already thirty years old when this movie was made, and I always thought he would have fit right in with the Dead End/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys groups. If you're of a mind, you should try to catch Darro in "The Mayor of Hell" or "Wild Boys of the Road", both pictures from 1933 when he was still a teenager.Not to get too long winded here, as cousins, Jimmy (Darro) and Slip start out on the wrong foot with each other as the story gets under way, but patch things up when Slip takes the fall for one of Jimmy's failed robberies. Seeing the error of his ways, Jimmy goes straight and helps the Bowery bunch take it to mobster Tony Locarno (Nestor Paiva) and his auto theft ring.Oh yeah, can't let this one go by without mentioning it. If you're a fan of the Bowery Boys you know all about Slip's malapropisms and the way he just tortures his sentences. Well did you ever consider it might have been an inherited trait? There's a scene in which Mom Mahoney (Mary Gordon) is getting ready to serve the boys dinner and suddenly they're all gone. Walking into the dining room she responds by saying "One moment the room is crowded, the next it's full of nobody"! How's that for disturbing your equilibrium?

As if the world did not have enough troubles, the English language was sent back a few generations as Leo Gorcey acquired an understudy in diction and grammar in Angels' Alley. Other than that, this film takes a more serious tone than most of the Bowery Boys features.Young Thomas Menzies has adopted Gorcey as a hero and has taken to wearing the creased old fedora like him and using the big words without quite knowing the meaning. It's the best thing about Angels' Alley.Another actor who played troubled city kids, Frankie Darro, plays Leo Gorcey's cousin just released from prison. Immediately he gets tied up with the local gangster Nestor Paiva. It's up to the Bowery Boys to get the whole situation straightened.This film did miss Bernard Gorcey as Louie Dombrowski, proprietor of Louie's sweetshop and hangout for Leo, Huntz Hall and the rest. Nice film, but not in the usual Bowery Boys spirit.

***SPOILERS*** It's when Slip's ex-con cousin Chuck came over to crash at his mom's Moma Mahoney's place that things started tuning rotten for everyone involved. With him already a two time loser Chuck gets himself involved with big time gangster Tony Locerno's wear-house high-jacking and hot car racket that if caught can send Chuck away for life and end up killing Moma Mahoney by breaking her heart.Even though he has no use for his rotten Cousin Chuck Slip ends up taking the rap for him in trying to stop Cuck from high jacking a truck loaded with furs and electronic appliances when he ended up getting suckered punched, and left lying unconscious, by Chuck. This has the good Father O'Hanlon come to Slip's rescue in vouching for him and his good character that has Slip now try to get to the bottom of what's going on in the Locerno mob by joining it! Now on the in's with mobster Locerno Slip tries to set him up in a police sting involving hot cars that he and his boys keep hidden, in order to chop up, at the Ace High Garage on the city's waterfront. What Slip and his goofy friend Sach plan to do is get the hottest available cars for the unsuspecting Locerno to chop up that would lead the police straight to his front door at the Ace High Garage: The Mayor District Attorney and police Chief's official city automobiles!There's also Slip's former Bowery Boy buddy Ricky Moreno who's part of Locerno's sleazy operation who after seeing how crooked he is, even for a mobster, turns against him and helps Slip, without his knowledge, set his boss up. Ricky had all he could take from Locerno when he stiffed Ricky for a job he did for him in getting Locerno illegal gambling cash. But worst of all Ricky couldn't stomach Locerno's using young and misguided teenage boys and ex-cons, who faced life behind bars if caught, like Chuck to do his dirty work. Even Father O'Hanlon a man of pace and understanding just couldn't take what Locerno was doing by laying him out, with a straight right to the kisser, when he came to get him to stop corrupting the city's youth!P.S At the end of the movie Sach feeling that he's being stiffed, in being forced to play second fiddle, by his Bowery Boys pal Slip tells him : "This is the last picture I'll ever make with you". As things, and Bowery Boy's film history, turned out Sach was to make over 30 more Bowery Boys films with Slip until 1956 after Slip quit the series when his pop known in the series as sweet shop owner Louie Dumbrowski died, from the injuries he suffered in a traffic accident, on September 11, 1955.