Up in Smoke

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.

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.

The Boys are collecting money for mine of the neighborhood kids who has polio. Sach loses what they collected to some crooked gamblers betting on a phony horse race. Desperate, Sach sells his soul to The Devil in exchange for being able to pick winners at the horse racing track. Can The Boys possibly get their money back and save Sach's soul in the process?

Character actor Dick Elliott took over as Mike, cafe owner, in place of Bernard Gorcey, who had been killed in a car accident.

After Leo Gorcey left the series following his father's death, Stanley Clements came back onboard as Duke. Stanley had been one of the original Dead End Kids. His Duke character didn't seem to be a true replacement of the Slip character, but instead was a combination of Slip and former character Gabe Moreno, played by Gabriel Dell. Duke was maybe 30% Slip and 70% Gabe. The series now focused almost entirely on Sach, as Huntz Hall had taken over the direction the series went.

Clearly, the Bowery Boys movies lost steam after The Gorcey were gone. There was only one more film after this one. They are all watchable and provide a few laughs, but are nowhere near as good as the earlier movies in the series.

The Bowery Boys are collecting funds for polio victim Little Ozzie. Sach is supposed to take the money to the bank. Instead, he gets taken to a crooked bookmaker and loses all the cash in a horse race. In a fit of rage, Sach offers his soul to get revenge and the devil answers the call.

This is a Bowery Boys film with Sach but without Slip. I don't know how the studio thinks this would work. This is simply a guy fulfilling his contract and nothing more. There is something missing. It's half missing.

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 ****