Angels in Disguise

The usual cast of Leo Gorcey, with his brother, AND his father. Add in Huntz Hall and Bill Benedict, to make up the "Bowery Boys", in this middle chapter of the Bowery Boys films. In this one, Slip is a copy boy at the local newspaper, so he's hearing the good and the bad, first-hand. When he hears of a local robbery, the gang jumps in and starts investigatin'. wordplay. mis-understandings. slapstick comedy. the usual horsing around.... playing to the audience. It's pretty good! Directed by Jean yarbrough; had directed a whole bunch of Bowery Boys films, as well as Abbott & Costello! doesn't get better than that. lots of Yarbrouh's stuff showing on Turner Classics on a regular basis.

This film of the Bowery Boys series finds them as Angels In Disguise. Though Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall are only newspaper copy boys they go undercover as investigative journalists to track down the notorious Loop gang which has been pulling robberies all over the city. Their latest robbery wounds police officer Gabriel Dell and kills another officer who was a friend to the Boys.

Gorcey's skill with a pool cue gains him entry to the gang which is headed by Edmond Ryan who is a really chilling character, a bit out of the general fun of a Bowery Boys film. The gang has been getting inside information on which places to rob, but I will have to say that the way it is transmitted is one of the cleverest gimmicks I've ever seen on film. Talk about hiding it in plain sight.

The film is narrated by Gorcey with his usual command of the English language and syntax. And Huntz Hall is as clueless as ever. Definitely Angels In Disguise is one of the better Bowery Boys films.

"Angels in Disquise" is the most stylish, most Irish, and arguably the best of the Bowery Boys series. Eddie Ryan is great as an intellectual crime boss who believes the boys are tough gangsters. There are the usual number of amusing malapropisms from Slip, lots of zany moments from Sach, and the height-challenged Bernard Gorcey gets to play a gunman called "Big Louie Dumbrowsky".

The best part of "Angels", however, is Jean Dean as bad girl Vicki Darwell. Dean was a Vargas model in the 1940's (for his redheads) and Esquire calendar girl who was as close to physical perfection as any woman before or since. The scene in which she makes her first appearance is magical; that moment transcends the whole series. It even appears that the actors recognize this as it is happening, and are genuinely blown away by this stunning beauty.

"Angels in Disguise" is a mixed bag. While it does a great job of putting the Bowery Boys in a film noir style movie, it does not do a great job delivering many laughs. This movie is more interesting than it is funny. In fact, there are very few laughs. There is, on the other hand, a surprising amount violence. It's worth a watch but not repeated viewings.

Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) are lowly copy boys in the New York Daily Chronicle newspaper. They get news that their police friend Gabe Moreno is in the hospital after a shootout. They decide to go undercover to do their own investigation.

This is a satire of a noir crime drama. It's Slip and Sach pretending to be hard. That's a funny concept and I really like the premise initially. The jokes level off and the movie loses steam over time. The funny premise doesn't lead to a lot of laughs. The movie seems to struggle between the two opposing genres and can't quite combine them. It needs to be funnier.