Spook Busters

The Bowery Boys tangle with a mad scientist in this fun fourth entry in the series. This time Slip Mahoney and the gang graduate from exterminator school and launch their own pest control business (from Louie's Sweet Shop). They get a job but, instead of exterminating bugs, they're hired to rid an old mansion of ghosts. There are no ghosts, however, just a scientist and his goons performing experiments.

The regulars are all great. In addition to Leo Gorcey's Slip and Huntz Hall's Sach, the rest of the gang is Whitey (William Benedict), Bobby (Bobby Jordan), Chuck (David Gorcey) and Gabe (Gabriel Dell). This was Dell's first Bowery Boys film, having been with the gang in their prior incarnations as the Dead End Kids and East Side Kids. The always fun Bernard Gorcey appears as Louie. Douglas Dumbrille is enjoyable as the mad scientist. No Karloff or Lugosi but he'll do. There are lots of laughs to be had with the many wonderful lines from Leo Gorcey, particularly his narration. His malapropisms are terrific and he delivers them perfectly. This entry also has a number of great sight gags, including the office for their exterminator business with funny signs all over that have humorously misspelled words. The 'haunted' house is full of the usual bits that one might expect after having seen countless comedies and cartoons involving such plots. Old or not, the bits still work here. It's a funny movie with the Bowery Boys all contributing to the laughs, instead of just Slip and Sach (as often was the case). The slow motion fight scene near the end is a highlight.

The Bowery Boys are graduating college... the college of insect extermination. They start up their own exterminating service and get a job clearing out a spooky empty mansion in the dead of night. The late owner was a magician.

It's the Bowery Boys led by Slip and Sach. There is plenty of their hijinks. The magician home is built for them. I always have good clean fun with these guys.

Slip's (Gorcey) candyshop exterminator co. (read the Bowery Boys) is called to a creepy old house where the boys meet real exterminators!

The best thing about this so-so entry are two stellar bad guys—Charles Middleton and Douglas Dumbrille. Middleton's a walking graveyard, while Dumbille's a leering madman. Together they menace Gorcey and Hall inside their old dark mansion (where else). Except Monogram appears to be paying Middleton by the word since he mostly stands around and nods—too bad because his voice of doom is enough to freeze a ranger battalion. Also, cheapjack Monogram confines the last 20 minutes to two meager sets, not exactly a treat for the eyes.

The movie manages a few chuckles, especially when the mad Dr. Coslow (Dumbrille) eyes Sach's moronic cranium like a slice of beefsteak, rare. Some choice dialog follows. But what's Gabe Dell's navy man doing in this knock-about. He reminds me of Zeppo of the Marx Bros. — the zanies' link to romance and the normal world, but also a drag on the humor. Note too the familiar face of Billy Benedict as gang member Whitey. I expect he kept the newspaper business alive during the 30's and 40's by hawking them from a thousand backlot street corners.

Anyway, it's a passable entry in the long-running series. But if you think you've seen it before, you probably have.

This is one of the better movies in this series because there's a lot going on. A spooky mansion, a beautiful girl, crazy doctors who want to remove brains, mysteries upon mysteries, slapstick, funny lines, funny words, and funny situations. It even has a slow-motion fight scene.

The boys want to make money as exterminators. They get a job at a mansion. The mansion is full of mysteries and strangeness. That sparks the action and the comedy.

As I said this is one of the better ones. Sure, it might have lots of recycled elements, but all movies have that. Every movie ever made has that. But this is a good Saturday movie. Popcorn not included. Bring your own. And enjoy the film.

Although the name of the film might give you the idea that it was the ancestor of the immensely successful Ghostbuster films of the Eighties, Spook Busters has the Bowery Boys get into the ghost business quite by accident.

Not that there are any real ghosts in Spook Busters, but the people where newly graduated exterminator Leo Gorcey has been hired to rid the place of six legged pests by the rental agent are keeping up the rumors it's a haunted house because of the experiments they're conducting. But when chief scientist Douglass Dumbrille takes one look at Huntz Hall, he decides Hall would be a grand subject for his latest experiment. What is that you say, why merely to exchange Hall's brain for that of a gorilla's and vice versa. Just the sort of stuff that movie mad scientists go around doing, though one does have to ask why.

Douglass Dumbrille who was one of film's best villains at both a serious and a comic one. He's best known for being the shyster lawyer Mr. Cedar in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. But in a comic vein we've seen him roll down a department store floor after The Marx Brothers in The Big Store and in an Indian suit after Lou Costello in Ride 'Em Cowboy. Dumbrille really enjoyed the comic villain roles and he looks like he's having an equally good time with the Bowery Boys as a mad scientist.

You can't expect too much from Monogram Pictures, but Spook Busters is a good example of the Bowery Boys and their shtick.