A movie about the East Side Kids, a gang of wise cracking juvenile delinquents who got up to trouble. They head off to camp and get waylaid, winding up in a haunted house.
It's like Dead End Kids meets The Cat and the Canary - an old dark house story with our heroes bumbling around and meeting a scary house keeper, mysterious chef - there's a scared black kid who is terrified a la Willie Best in The Ghost Breakers, a scene where the house keeper torments a young girl a la Rebecca, a Charlie Chan style denouement.
It was directed by Joseph Lewis who always tries to do something visually interesting. For a while I enjoyed this - a quite complex plot is set up with the kids staying at a house owned by a judge whom people are trying to kill, the judge was a bit corrupt, the kids were mentored by a former gangster who the judge sent to jail, there's a girl in there.
But the script becomes muddled. There were so many characters it was hard to tell who was who. The middle section drops the plot and consists of the boys poking around the house in some unscary scenes. It's not very scary. It was hard going as it went on and I was glad the film ended.
No comments:
Post a Comment