A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

As if the Bowery Boys didn't create enough havoc on the streets of New York, they bring their brand of merry mayhem to London when Sach (Huntz Hall) discovers that he's an heir to the fortune of the British Earl of Walsingham. With his pals and Sweet Shop owner Louie (Bernard Gorcey) in tow, the boys head on over across the pond to make Sach's claim.You know, if you think about it, the inept family members of the Earl (Walter Kingsford) could have prevented Sach from becoming principal heir if they only did their homework ahead of time and prevented the solicitor from ever making it to America. I guess then we wouldn't have had a story, or get to see them even more inept when their plans of taking out the Earl and the Boys goes down the tubes.With Slip's (Leo Gorcey) malapropisms kept to a minimum, Sach takes up the slack with his dazzling display of British history and knowledge of London's landmarks. A quick flashback instructs how one of his ancestors wound up banished to the Colonies in the first place, so at least there was that one non-sensical bit attempting to establish his English heritage.Well, with Lady Marcia (Angela Greene) failing to foil Sach's favor with the Earl, and the inept family assassins dropping like flies, the Boys might have been successfully transplanted to the English version of the Bowery, whatever that might have been. But just in the nick of time, Scotland Yard arrives on the scene to make the save, though it all turns out for naught. Seems that the wrong Horace Debussy Jones was contacted as a relative to the Earl. You mean there were two of them?

It is with this film that the focus of the Bowery Boys movies becomes pure comedy. The change from gangster melodramas to comedy is gradual, and many of the Jan Grippo and Jerry Thomas films which precede this one point in the direction of comedy. Ben Schwab, the new producer of the series, wanted a purer sense of comedy. After doing "Jalopy", which used the regular writers and the regular director, William "One Take" Beaudine, Schwab replaced them with Ed Bernds and Elwood Ullman. These men had been working on Three Stooges shorts for years. Ullman was always a writer and Bernds had started as a sound effects man and had graduated to writer-director. The Bernds directed Columbia short comedies are usually superior to the ones produced at the same time by Jules White. Bernds and Ullman brought their short subject slapstick comedy style to the Bowery Boys and this produced the funniest movies in the series. Sure, the stories might have been better before, but the formula of someone walking in Louie's Sweet Shop and taking the boys out of their element was a great set-up for slapstick comedy. The focus of the films became Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall; Bernard Gorcey is given better material, but David Gorcey and Bennie Bartlett slip more into the background or even out of the films. Schwab also replaced longtime musical director Edward Kay, whose music consists of transformations of "Sidewalks of New York" and "B" western clichés, with the more modern and comic sound of Marlin Skiles.

And, they nor anybody else in this film saw London or England during its six-day production.As fate, and the writers, would have it, word comes to the Bowery that titled, great, great granduncle of Horace Debussy Jones (Huntz Hall), better known as Sach, is near death and has provided transportation to summon relatives from around the world. Sach and the Bowery Boys, Slip Mahoney (Leo Gorcey), Butch Williams (Bennie Bartlett), Chuck Anderson (David Gorcey as David Condon)and Soda Shoppe owner Louie Dumbrowsky (Bernard Gorcey), trade Sach's pre-paid first class ticket for lesser (much lesser) accommodations and embark for ye olde London towne.There, they find the old man, the Earl of Walsingham (Walter Kingsford) already surrounded by sinister Sir Edgar Whipsnade (John Dodsworth); Reggie (William Cottrell), the obligatory Fop; the spinster Aunt Agatha (Norma Varden); the young and seductive Lady Marcia (the young and seductive Angela Greene), moronic Cousin Herbert (Rex Evans), and Hoskins (James Logan), the Butler.They, of course,are assembled in a plot to slowly poison the old Earl and to get rid of Sach and his pals.No giveaway to lay their chances at slim-to-none.

Fair is fair Oliver came to America to make movies, so America sent its finest...Mr. Huntz Hall to England.