Search - East Side Kids: Clancy Street Boys on DVD

Antics galore!

yvelise | PUTNAM VALLEY, NY United States | 08/07/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If you grew up watching the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys, you'll love this film. Muggs and the gang are always at their hysterical best. It's just as much fun to watch them now at age 51 than when I was 10. This is a keeper!"

Series fans, add 1 *.Huntz Hall in drag is worth price alone

Scott MacGillivray | Massachusetts, USA | 12/30/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The East Side Kids series took a definite turn for the better when director William Beaudine joined it in 1943. CLANCY STREET BOYS is Beaudine's first, and also the first East Side escapade to be played strictly for laughs. To impress his father's old friend from Texas, Leo Gorcey has to pass off his rowdy pals as his siblings (including Huntz Hall in lipstick as sister "Annabelle," and African-American Ernie Morrison as a stepbrother!). Noah Beery and Lita Ward (the future Mrs. Gorcey) are enjoyable as Gorcey's fresh-from-Texas visitors, and Rick Vallin is personable as the heavy. (Vallin became one of producer Sam Katzman's favorite actors.) This was filmed on Katzman's usual how-low-can-we-go budget, which results in frequent ad libs and a relaxed atmosphere. An hour of fun for comedy fans, and series fans will really enjoy it. The print was frequently cut and recut by TV stations, so there are splices at scene changes. Except for a few momentary digital glitches, the image is surprisingly sharp and clear."

EAST SIDERS BACK UP MUGGS.

rsoonsa | Lake Isabella, California | 05/27/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"During the course of the second manifestation for Leo Gorcey's mini-mob players, the East Side Kids, who followed the Dead End Kids, while preceding the Bowery Boys, producer Sam Katzman hired veteran director William Beaudine for the East Side series due to his established success at leading movie youngsters and this quite effective Monogram release is the initial effort with Beaudine at the helm. The mother of young Muggs McGinnis (Gorcey) shares with him a letter received from his late father's close friend, "Uncle" Pete, a wealthy Texan, in which he Pete tells of an impending visit by him and his daughter Judy to the McGinnis home in New York where the rancher expects to meet for the first time the five brothers and the sister Annabelle of Muggs, non-existent siblings invented by the widow McGinnis in order to receive Pete's financial support over many years. Muggs conscripts his East Side roustabout cohorts as his family, with Glimpy (Huntz Hall) dressed as Annabelle, and when Uncle Pete and Judy arrive in New York, confused jollity ensues, until a local thug plots to expose the impersonation as a means of obtaining some of Pete's wealth for himself. The film, produced with a virtually non-existent budget, has a virtually non-existent script, as well, with ad libbing contributed by most of the cast, notably Gorcey with his rather fascinating employment of malapropisms, all of which is very compatible to Beaudine's loose-reined directoral mode. His relaxed methods must also take responsibility for some ragged performing, and there is need for more efficient editing, but this comedic affair eschews the wonted wartime jingoism that marks the series, and Hall is enormously and unexpectedly hilarious in his gender bending role, joining the other members of the cast in patent enjoyment of playing in this entry. The DVD version offers no special features."