Up in Smoke

A refreshingly entertaining entry for the latter day Bowery Boys franchise, and that was not an easy thing to be by this time where we had lost leading goon Leo Gorcey for his replacement, Stanley Clements. Though the long-running series was winding down to its final gasp, Huntz Hall as the scatter-brained Sach is a lot of fun here, involved in a comical plot where he sells his soul to the Devil (Byron Foulger) in order to have the horned one supply him with the names of sure-winning horses at the race track. (Unsurprisingly, another group of crooks try to extract the information for themselves). Foulger is a delight in the character of Satan. **1/2 out of ****

After seeking inspiration for stories from every source available the Bowery Boys finally had a Faust type story where Sach gets to sell his soul to a most polite little devil played by Byron Foulger. Of course the story is also laced with elements from the Marx Brothers A Day At The Races and Abbott&Costello's It Ain't Hay.

It all begins innocently enough with Huntz Hall wanting to get money to help a polio stricken kid. All you have to say is that you would do anything and up pops the devil with a tempting offer. The devil has many tips on horse races, but somehow due to Bowery Boy shenanigans, Hall never gets to place a bet.

Best scene in the film is Huntz Hall with Fritz Feld as a psychiatrist who with his ingenuousness Hall manages to turn the tables on. Seems as though Stan Clements thinks Hall is off his rocker talking to imaginary people.

It's not saying much but Up In Smoke might be the best of the post Gorcey Bowery Boys films.

Up in Smoke (1957)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Not to be confused with the Cheech and Chong flick from the 70s, this was the next-to-last entry in the long-running Bowery Boys series. Sach (Huntz Hall), Duke (Stanley Clements) and the boys are raising money for a kid suffering from polio but Sach loses the money when he's given a fake horse tip. Then Sach says he'd be willing to sell his soul for some money and the Devil (Byron Foulger) pops up offering him winning horses for a week and after wards Sach will belong to him. From what I've read the series was going to come to an end after the last picture but Hall still owed the studio two more movies so they decided to make them Bowery Boy movies instead of starting something fresh. I guess you have to give the supporting cast and Hall credit for at least giving it their all when they knew the series was over but there's just no way they could overcome this screenplay, which is extremely poor. The biggest problem is that there's nothing that really happens after Sach sells his soul. Each day the Devil pops up, gives Sach the tip and something will happen to where he can't bet the horse. This happens several times and after the third time you'll be wishing that the Devil would just go against his deal and steal the soul so that we the viewer can be done with the film. It probably didn't help matters that 'One Shot' Beaudine was behind the camera as every shot looks rather generic and there's not a bit of energy to be found anywhere. As I said, the cast at least gives a good effort with both Hall and Clements once again doing good work together. That is, whenever the two are on screen together. For the most part Hall is working on his own here as he has quite a few scenes where he's either with one of the supporting players like the Devil or the gamblers. Foulger certainly makes for one of the nicest Devils in the history of Hell but he was very good in the part as was Dick Elliott as Dick the restaurant owner. As is the case with any comedy, if there aren't any laughs then the movie isn't worth viewing and sadly UP IN SMOKE doesn't offer very many. There's a small bit with the boys trying to sell their car, which is somewhat funny but this scene certainly isn't great enough to watch the entire movie for it.

The Bowery Boys go to the Devil in this penultimate entry in the series. Sach is ripped off by con men so he sells his soul to Satan to get even with them. As with most later Bowery Boys movies, this is a rather lazy and uninspired effort that's primarily a showcase for Huntz Hall. Hall plays the wide-eyed buffoon who contorts his face for laughs like he had in dozens of other pictures before. He never made me laugh once in this movie, but I admit I may just find his shtick tiresome at this point. If this was someone's first Huntz Hall picture, maybe they'd love it. I doubt it but strange things do happen.

Backing up Hall are Stanley Clements as the insufferably barking Duke, Eddie LeRoy as the annoying Blinky, and David Gorcey as the invisible Chuck. The best parts of the movie don't belong to the Boys, however. The best parts are the bits with great character actors who handily steal their scenes from the less talented stars. These include Byron Foulger as the Devil, Earle Hodgins as a used car salesman (in probably the movie's funniest scene), and Fritz Feld as a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, none of these scenes can save the picture. There's simply too much of Hall's nonsense for my tastes and the other Bowery Boys bring nothing to the table.

After UP IN SMOKE (1957), the Bowery Boys had one last movie in them, IN THE MONEY, even though the series had essentially run out of steam years earlier, about when Leo Gorcey left, following the death of Gorcey's father, Bernard, who'd played soda shop owner Louie Dumbrowsky in the series. (Gorcey's last was CRASHING LAS VEGAS, 1955.) Seven more films followed Gorcey's departure, with Huntz Hall taking the lead, and Gorcey's function being filled by Stanley Clements in the role of Duke, who wears a suit, tie and sharp fedora in the manner of adults of the era, but looks nothing like a Bowery "Boy." Hall's Sach is still the lovable goofball, while Clements' Duke is the dyspeptic straight man, with none of Gorcey's charm or vocabulary-mangling wit.

UP IN SMOKE offers up the premise of Sach seeking the devil's help to earn money after he's been conned by a gambling ring into betting and losing the $90 the boys have raised for a neighborhood kid with polio. The devil appears in an elegant old-fashioned dress suit, complete with top hat and horns, and, in exchange for Sach's soul, agrees to provide tips on winning horses for a week. To make a long story short, the plan backfires day in and day out, but not before the gambling ring gets tough on Sach and his friends in order to find out the source of the daily tips.

It's never very funny, but there is one redeeming element in the film. Byron Foulger has a grand time playing the mild-mannered, velvet-voiced Beelzebub, or "Mr. Bub," as Sach calls him. He oozes with snaky charm, but is quick to take advantage of Sach at every opportunity and torment him in subtle, clever ways. The maneuver by which Sach ultimately manages to elude his fate is actually set up very well and plays out in a genuinely suspenseful fashion in a racetrack finale mixing cheaply made studio shots with stock racetrack footage. It also reveals quite a bit of daring and initiative on the layabout Sach's part. Beelzebub's final outcome is handled in quite an amusing and—dare I say it?—even sympathetic manner. Foulger (1899-1970) was a dependable character player and bit part actor who spent most of his career playing harried bank managers, tellers, desk clerks and other kinds of functionaries. This role gave him the chance to spread his comic wings and he wasted no time in running with it, basically stealing the film from Hall, Clements and the rest of the cast.

Quite a number of old-school Hollywood character actors are on hand. Fritz Feld plays an irate Mittel-European psychiatrist trying to examine Sach who gets so flustered at his patient's unflappability that he winds up on the couch himself subjected to Sach's questioning. It's an amusing scene and even features one of Feld's trademark mouth pops. Other dependable old comic/tough guy players in the cast include Benny Rubin, Ralph Sanford, Joe Devlin, James Flavin, and, in the role of Mike, the coffee shop owner taking the place of Louie Dumbrowsky, Dick Elliott. Another familiar face, spotted as a desk sergeant, is John Mitchum, Robert's lesser-known brother. He would play a cop again, some years later, in the role of Inspector DiGiorgio alongside Clint Eastwood's Inspector Callahan in the first three Dirty Harry films.