Feudin' Fools (1952)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Sach (Huntz Hall) learns that his Southern uncle has left him the family farm so he packs up Slip (Leo Gorcey) and two others and head south. Once there they realize that Sach's family is feuding with another, which leads to many problems but things take a turn for the worse when the boys get mixed up with a bank robber (Lyle Talbot). The shocking thing is that it took the series twenty-seven films before they'd tackle the redneck genre, which had been popular since the silent days. Everyone from Buster Keaton to Abbott and Costello had played city folk traveling to the south and getting involved with rednecks but it took a while for our Bowery Boys. They really should have waited because the jokes here are just downright pathetic, boring and feature not an ounce of imagination. Whenever you watch one of these films you can expect a few jokes to fall on their face but this one here has pretty much everyone of them doing so. I was really surprised to see how poorly written this thing was and the perfect example happens early on when the boys arrive in town and we get a good fifteen-minute sequence of them hiding in the cabin while the rednecks are outside shooting. We get a wide range of jokes from them trying to wave a white flag only to be shot at to the redneck looking in the window and Sach thinking they're a picture. Neither of those scenes are funny and they're actually the best written gags, which is rather scary. Both Gorcey and Hall appear to be mailing in their performances as there's not a touch of energy from either of them and this is especially true of Gorcey. Talbot is clearly just cashing a paycheck and none of the rednecks stick out in a good way. FEUDIN' FOOLS is certainly one of the series low points and it's rather hard getting through the short 63-minutes.
