East Side Kids - Boys of the City

This review is for the Alpha Video DVD. This is your classic East Side Kids move full of fun and antics by the boys. The film is not re-mastered as with most of Alpha's DVD's so don't expect great picture quality and audio. It's what would you should expect to get for this price. With that said, the movie is still worth buying if you enjoy The East Side Kids classics. Hopefully some day they will all be re-mastered.

It arrived exactly when they told me it would,& I'm very pleased with the quality,& the item!

fun movie

Pure nostalgia. A great time to be living in. I still remember these films in the movies.

Always enjoyable to watch!

The cover was misleading as the DVD is in B & W. Granted this movie is old, but there were some spots where dialog was garbled or inaudible.

BOYS OF THE CITY (1940) has the sort of un-P.C. humor that easily offends modern sensibilities.Here, the gang (minus Glimpy, that is, Huntz Hall) get in trouble once too often and are sent to the mountains for a vaycay. The story quickly turns into a dark house mystery with a creepy housekeeper, a ghost and secret passageways that look like something out of  THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME  (1939).Ernest Morrison, credited only as Sunshine Sammy, endures heavy-handed racism throughout the hour with his skeered o' spooks rattlin' and a disgusting watermelon sight gag. While the kids all have a substantial meal served to them, 'Scruno' is given a quarter-wedge of melon. He looks at it and happily declares, "Ah sho' do loves wahtahmelin!" then takes an enormous no-hands bite, like a pig at a trough. When presented with searching through the weird old house, a saucer-eyed Scruno nervously admits that, "Mah head's willin' but ah cain't convince mah feet!" And later: "Ah wish mah mammy was heah!"We never noticed this stuff back when we were kids, or perhaps it was ignored, but I for one can no longer enjoy the antics of "Sleep 'n Eat," "Sunshine Sammy," Stepin Fetchit and other pioneering black actors. And Butterfly McQueen's "Ah don' know nuthin' 'bout birthin' babies" from  GONE WITH THE WIND  (1939) is starting to grate on me, too.ALPHA VIDEO is the dba of a Pennsylvania-based outfit called GOTHAM. They specialize in niche market material, mostly vintage programmers and public domain stuff. Quality of their unrestored movie transfers varies from fair to good, based on condition of film stock and source material (often old 16mm broadcast prints). The only extras provided are a catalog insert and DVD-accessible title list.Also from ALPHA:For their very next programmer,  THAT GANG OF MINE  (1940), Muggs McGinnis (Leo Gorcey) becomes Muggs Maloney and Glimpy is still AWOL.

Guess Huntz was waitin' out in the hall to soon be Mugg's sidekick. Not sure if leo Gorcey was "Muggs" through all these transformations:: Dead End Kids / East Side Kids / Bowery Boys, but he could also be depended upon as a believable, cool, character, the "Boss" (who did not mind any member of his gang to "go first" into that abandoned building!).A good script, as usual, with good, fast-paced direction, keeps the craziness on an even keel; plus the bonus of nice black and white cinematography, to enhance the "who dunnit in the haunted house" senario.There's plenty of period stereotyping as "Scruno" goes over the top, over-reacting to just the *thought* of a ghost in a graveyard, or to "watermelon" served only to him at a big dinner at a Judge's country mansion, where the boys land on their way to a summer get-away in the Adirondacks. A classic "woodie" carries them to the spot where the Judge, (nervously seeking some Peace as he prepares for his own court trial), his new young wife, and his suspicious assistants stall, along the same road, their Guardian takes, to get them out of the boiling City.I don't know the actress' name but she is superb as the scary housekeeper.[reviewed as part of a DVD-set].