User Reviews

'Aladdin's Lamp must be found'! declares the ancient Grand Poobah, as the scene quickly switches to that veritable Bagdad on the Hudson - New York City. (For purposes of this review I'll use the movie spelling, but I'm itching to stick that 'h' in there). Since this is a Bowery Boys movie, there's not a whole lot of exposition necessary to describe how the magic lamp made it down to Louie's. Let's just say the whole thing adds up to the fair sum of the quotient.

For story purposes, and not to play favorites, Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) take joint custody of the Genie in the Lamp (Eric Blore), and spend the rest of the picture battling two sets of villains after the same prize. Ever notice the main hood always has a femme fatale moll ready to take on Slip and Sach? This time Velma Calhoun (Joan Shawlee) brings along her 'niece' Claire Culpepper (Jean Willes) to ply their own brand of magic on the boys.

There's also a nattily attired Arab (or would that be Persian) duo (Rick Vallin and Paul Marion) ready to take on the Bowery and Duke Dolan's (Robert Bice) gang. It's enough to drive a two thousand year old genie to drink; he just can't keep up with who owns the lamp without a scorecard.

It's mostly slap-dash action and general mayhem, and if I were writing the story, I would have ended it with Slip and Sach right there in the middle of that harem instead of back at Louie's. But then again, I'm not the Thief of Bad Gags.

***SPOILERS*** The story takes place some 2,000 ago in old Bagdad when Hamud the Caliph of Bagdad found his magic lamp stolen from right under his nose in the royal palace! Sending out a search party to find the magic lamp it was finally tracked down 2,000 years later in of all places the Bowery in lower Manhattan! And what do you know the person who discovered and bought it, for two bits, at a thrift shop in the neighborhood for a birthday gift for Sweet Shop owner Louie Dumbrowsky was the Bowery Boys' own Horace Debussy Jones; known only as Sach to his friends!

The person who really steals the show is the Genie in the lamp who despite being from Bagdad speaks with a British accent and goes by the name of, what else, Genie. It's the hoods Tiny & Canarsie who want Louie to give up his lease who discover, together with Sach, that their's a Genie in the bottle, or lamp, and do everything they can to get their grubby hand on it. What makes things in the movie a bit complicated is that both Sach and his friend Slip make a wish that the Genie can only do his thing or magic only if they both agree to it! This not only sets up a number of hysterically funny scenes but is in fact insurance that both Sach & Slip will live to make their next "Bowery Boys" flick!

There's also a very interesting time travel sequence in the movie where both Sach & Slip are transported back to old Bagdad by the Genie only to find, despite all the belly dancers present, that their better off back home where they were before they wished themselves away: On a ledge 30 stories up with Tiny Canarsie Gus and their boss Duke Dolan trying to whack them! That's until fellow "Bowery Boys" Butch Chuck and the NYPD come to their rescue just before they were about to be dropped; Not from the script but the high-rise building!

P.S With all the wild and crazy antics in the film it was non other then mob boss Duke Dolan who by far got the worst of it! With Duke constantly getting banged up and hit over the head, like every 30 seconds he was on screen, he took the worst beating that I've ever seen since Ezzard Charles in his June 1954 15 round slug fest with World Heavyweight Champion Rocky Marciano!

After doing practically everything else in spoofing practically every type of films, it seems logical that the Bowery Boys would get down to spoofing the Arabian Nights tales. Unfortunately, the boys only briefly leave the Bowery for what is supposedly Bagdad, and it is for a scene that lasts maybe two minutes. The story tells of a magic lamp that somehow ends up in a New York City thrift shop that Sach gets his hands on. Decendents of the followers of the Caliph who have been sent out to get the missing lamp end up in the Bowery (of course) and have to deal not only with the boys but some racketeers as well. There are plenty of hijinks to make the film's 64 minutes fly by, some funny, and some not so amusing. Eric Blore is very funny as the Genii of the Lamp who likes to drink after escaping from his home and plays pranks on the unsuspecting gangsters. This is really for fans of the series only, rather than those looking for a good Arabian Nights film. For those people, stick with Maria Montez and Sabu.

On of the last of the 41 "Bowery Boys" films in which Leo Gorcey ('Slip' Mahoney) served as the gang leader. He quit the series soon after his diminutive father, Bernard, was killed in an auto accident, in the same year this film was released. In : sweets shop proprietor, where the gang usually each of the "Bowery Boys" films, Bernard had played Louise Dumbrowski proprietor of a sweets shop, where the gang usually hung out between escapades........ Hadn't seen a Bowery Boys" film in years, although, as a boy, I saw quite a few, as well as the former related series: "East Side Gang" and "Dead End Kids", going back to the late '30s. Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall played the main characters: Slip, and Sach, respectively, and constituted one of the best loved comedy teams of their era.. Among other things, Gorcey was infamous for his invented malapropisms, with a Brooklyn accent. Huntz was a genius with his natural combination of physical and verbal comedy, packaged in a naïve persona, that perfectly complemented Gorcey's tough guy persona.......Veteran comedic retainer Eric Blore, with his distinctive manner of speaking was a great choice for the genie associated with the Aladdin's lamp Sach bought for 25c as a curiosity piece. Sach polished it with a cloth , and Blore popped out. This was Blore's last film appearance, in a career than spanned 25 years in Hollywood. If you've seen some of the Astaire and Roger's films, you probably remember him as a prominent functionary, as in "Top Hat", for instance. Here, he appears and disappears at will, after the lamp is rubbed. He arranges it so that Slip and Sach have to agree on a wish before it is given. This makes things complicated for 2 sets of lamp thieves who spend most of the film trying to steal the lamp and get the 2 together, and agreed to their wish(usually money). One pair wears towels(turbans) on their heads and apparently have come to NYC from Bagdad, looking for the lamp. The other is apparently a group of gangsters, headed by Duke Dalan(Robert Bice), who have a moll(Joan Shawlee , as Cindy Lou) who plays a role in trying to seduce Sach into giving up the lamp. The lamp changes hands a number of times. Near the end, the Genie decides that the 'boys' need to get somewhere far away with their lamp. So, he magically transfers them and himself to Bagdad, in the midst of the Sultan's harem. When the Sultan arrives, he is angry. Thus, the Genie transfers them back to NYC for the finale......Apparently, this is one of the more silly, yet interesting, films of this series. I suspect many adults will find it too anarchic. But, many children will probably relish it's magical mayhem. See it at YouTube.