Spook Busters (1946) User Reviews

"Have you got a license to practice the gentle art of extermination?"

[utgard14 · 6/10 · 12 December 2015]

The Bowery Boys tangle with a mad scientist in this fun fourth entry in the series. This time Slip Mahoney and the gang graduate from exterminator school and launch their own pest control business (from Louie's Sweet Shop). They get a job but, instead of exterminating bugs, they're hired to rid an old mansion of ghosts. There are no ghosts, however, just a scientist and his goons performing experiments.

The regulars are all great. In addition to Leo Gorcey's Slip and Huntz Hall's Sach, the rest of the gang is Whitey (William Benedict), Bobby (Bobby Jordan), Chuck (David Gorcey) and Gabe (Gabriel Dell). This was Dell's first Bowery Boys film, having been with the gang in their prior incarnations as the Dead End Kids and East Side Kids. The always fun Bernard Gorcey appears as Louie. Douglas Dumbrille is enjoyable as the mad scientist. No Karloff or Lugosi but he'll do. There are lots of laughs to be had with the many wonderful lines from Leo Gorcey, particularly his narration. His malapropisms are terrific and he delivers them perfectly. This entry also has a number of great sight gags, including the office for their exterminator business with funny signs all over that have humorously misspelled words. The 'haunted' house is full of the usual bits that one might expect after having seen countless comedies and cartoons involving such plots. Old or not, the bits still work here. It's a funny movie with the Bowery Boys all contributing to the laughs, instead of just Slip and Sach (as often was the case). The slow motion fight scene near the end is a highlight.

Brain Exchange

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 27 March 2010]

Although the name of the film might give you the idea that it was the ancestor of the immensely successful Ghostbuster films of the Eighties, Spook Busters has the Bowery Boys get into the ghost business quite by accident.

Not that there are any real ghosts in Spook Busters, but the people where newly graduated exterminator Leo Gorcey has been hired to rid the place of six legged pests by the rental agent are keeping up the rumors it's a haunted house because of the experiments they're conducting. But when chief scientist Douglass Dumbrille takes one look at Huntz Hall, he decides Hall would be a grand subject for his latest experiment. What is that you say, why merely to exchange Hall's brain for that of a gorilla's and vice versa. Just the sort of stuff that movie mad scientists go around doing, though one does have to ask why.

Douglass Dumbrille who was one of film's best villains at both a serious and a comic one. He's best known for being the shyster lawyer Mr. Cedar in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. But in a comic vein we've seen him roll down a department store floor after The Marx Brothers in The Big Store and in an Indian suit after Lou Costello in Ride 'Em Cowboy. Dumbrille really enjoyed the comic villain roles and he looks like he's having an equally good time with the Bowery Boys as a mad scientist.

You can't expect too much from Monogram Pictures, but Spook Busters is a good example of the Bowery Boys and their shtick.

Above Average Entry

[Flixer1957 · 6/10 · 23 August 2002]

**May Contain Spoilers**

The Bowery Boys are at it again, playing professional ghost exterminators. Mahoney and his crew of crazy clowns invade an allegedly haunted house; it's actually infested by mad doctor David Dumbrille and other villains who are just as knuckle-headed as the heroes. There are plenty of spook and skeleton gags and funniest of all, Dumbrille wants to swap Sach's brain with that of a gorilla. More unfair exploitation of animals–the gorilla would definitely be getting the worst of the deal. This is one of the better entries in a generally annoying series. As I watched the spook busters at work I got the distinct feeling that Ivan Reitman must have seen this a few times in his younger days.

I don't think this guy is cooking with all his burners!

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 28 March 2010]

**SPOILERS*** Forerunner to the 1984 smash hit "Ghostbusters" the film "Spook Busters" has Slip Mahoney and his Bowery Boys get into the extermination business in order to make an honest living for once. Instead of them just hanging around Louie Dumbrowski's Sweet Shop and mooching off him and his paying customers which their not.

On their first assignment as exterminators the Bowery Boys are giving the job to fumigate the long abandoned Menlo Mansion on 322 Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn. Unknown to Slip and the boys the mansion is being used by mad psychiatrist Dr. Coslow, Douglass Dunbrille, who's doubling as a mad brain surgeon in his experiments with the transplanting human brains into primates notably silver tipped mountain gorillas from the Belgian Congo. It's when Slip's friend Sach mistakenly slips into Dr. Coslow's secret underground laboratory that the startled doc sees what he's been looking for all these years. The perfect human specimen for his brain transplant operation, in Sach's underdeveloped brain, for the gorilla he's planning to transplant it into!

Slip Sach and the Bowery Boys have their hands full in dealing with Dr. Coslow who together with his gang of hoodlums that includes strongman Ivan and the former "Emperor of the Universe", in the "Flash Gordon" series, Charles Middleton as well as the Mrs. Grimes. Slip & Co. ends up battling Coslow Gang as the try to grab Sach's brain before he, by getting himself killed, can deactivate it! There's also Slip's good friend and former Bowery Boy Gabe a US Navy man who together with his French fiancée Migon came over to visit him and the boys at Louie's Sweet Shop. The two ended up getting a lot more then a milkshake or banana split in them ending up at the Menlo Mansion where they, or at least Migon, ended up being held captive by the crazed Dr. Coslow.

***SPOILERS**** It's with Slip impersonating world renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Bender, who's also being held captive by Dr. Coslow and his gang, attempts to free Sach who's brain he's supposed to transplant that all hell breaks loose. Together with the escaped gorilla and a can of ether, that helps slow down the action, Slip is able to put an end to Dr. Coslow's mad dreams of human to gorilla brain transplants before he has a chance to start them! Slip also is able to take care of the Coslow gang with his vast knowledge and execution of the "Sweet Science"-boxing-even before the police arrived!

bowery boys at it again.

[ksf-2 · 7/10 · 4 August 2019]

Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall are the ringleaders this chapter of the Bowery Boys. lots of puns, turns of phrase. They get hired to investigate strange goings on in an old mansion. some fun co-stars... character actor Chester Clute is in here as the real estate agent. Douglass Dumbrille had a dark side to his characters; usually played the bad guy. and Gabriel Dell appears now and then in the Bowery Boys films. Gorcey's brother David and father Bernard are also in here. the usual recipe of slapstick humor and word play get us to the end of the film. fun signs in the real estate office, where all the places for sale are crossed out, highlighting the shortage of houses after WW II. its pretty okay. aint nothing new here. but entertaining enough. Directed by William Beaudine; had directed a bunch of the Bower Boys films.

Digging Up an Old Plot

[wes-connors · 3/10 · 5 April 2009]

Leader Leo Gorcey (as Slip) and "The Bowery Boys" graduate from extermination school, and get off on a ghost-busting assignment. Actually, Huntz Hall (as Sach) is the school "dunce", and doesn't really graduate; but, he goes along anyway. Eventually, Mr. Hall is strapped down on an operating table, where mad doctor Douglass Dumbrille (as Coslow) intends to cut out his brain - and implant it in a gorilla!

The "old dark house" plot was dug up fairly often by Gorcey's groups (earliest in 1940's "Boys of the City"), with surprisingly little success. This "Spook Busters" is neither spooky nor funny. In a desperate attempt to induce chuckles, the climax is done in slow-motion. Gabriel Dell and supporting team players Bobby Jordan (as Bobby), William "Billy" Benedict (as Whitey), and David Gorcey (as Chuck) valiantly try to help.

*** Spook Busters (8/24/46) William Beaudine ~ Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Douglass Dumbrille, Bobby Jordan

"Every time I try to use my brain I get in trouble!"

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 29 November 2015]

The title of the picture is a bit of a misnomer as there really aren't any spooks or ghosts in the story. But then again, there weren't any in two prior pictures when the Bowery Boys were still the East Side Kids. 1941's "Spooks Run Wild" and 1943's "Ghosts on the Loose" were cool on the haunted house atmospherics but there were no other-worldly apparitions. Check out the later one for Bela Lugosi and an early screen appearance by Ava Gardner.

So the boys are new graduates of the College of Insect Extermination, Class of 1946, and itching for a gig under the leadership of Leo Gorcey, president and chief executive officer of the Mahoney Extermonating Company. Hey, I'm not spelling it wrong by mistake, that's the way Slip went with. You know, I realize things were a lot cheaper in the Forties, but I'm still trying to figure out how the company would be profitable charging ten cents an inch to get rid of mice.

One of the unusual things about the picture is how much narration there is from Gorcey's character. That along with the quantity of Slip's malapropisms. Not that they were all that unusual ordinarily, but here Slip said something goofy with almost every sentence. Another off beat element was having Gabriel Dell show up fresh off a hitch in the Navy and bringing a new French (Tanis Chandler) bride along for the ride.

Douglass Dumbrille plays the main heavy in this story as a scientist experimenting with brain transfers using an abandoned old house as his base of operations, the one that Slip and the Boys are supposed to clean up for their first job. Fortunately for the gorilla in the basement, Dr. Coslow never got a chance to perform the operation; he would have gotten Sach's brain in a backward slide on the evolutionary scale.

There was a real head scratcher of a scene at one point when Bobby (Jordan) and Whitey (Billy Benedict) dig a hole in the basement of the old house and wind up breaking into the ceiling of the room they started out from. I started trying to figure out how they could have done that, but decided that the whole problem was so oblivious as to be defective.

So Who're the Real Exterminators

[dougdoepke · 31 March 2010]

Slip's (Gorcey) candyshop exterminator co. (read the Bowery Boys) is called to a creepy old house where the boys meet real exterminators!

The best thing about this so-so entry are two stellar bad guys—Charles Middleton and Douglas Dumbrille. Middleton's a walking graveyard, while Dumbille's a leering madman. Together they menace Gorcey and Hall inside their old dark mansion (where else). Except Monogram appears to be paying Middleton by the word since he mostly stands around and nods—too bad because his voice of doom is enough to freeze a ranger battalion. Also, cheapjack Monogram confines the last 20 minutes to two meager sets, not exactly a treat for the eyes.

The movie manages a few chuckles, especially when the mad Dr. Coslow (Dumbrille) eyes Sach's moronic cranium like a slice of beefsteak, rare. Some choice dialog follows. But what's Gabe Dell's navy man doing in this knock-about. He reminds me of Zeppo of the Marx Bros. — the zanies' link to romance and the normal world, but also a drag on the humor. Note too the familiar face of Billy Benedict as gang member Whitey. I expect he kept the newspaper business alive during the 30's and 40's by hawking them from a thousand backlot street corners.

Anyway, it's a passable entry in the long-running series. But if you think you've seen it before, you probably have.

Better than average Bowery Boys Comedy-where they should have stopped!

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 28 September 2010]

It's been 10 years since some of these boys first appeared together on Broadway in "Dead End", and now they are still haunting both NoHo and SoHo (on the East Side, of course) with their antics, driving Louis crazy and giving out the worst malapropisms since Laurel and Hardy insisted that you can bring a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead. Here, they must deal with a mad scientist while playing exterminators and prevent their pal from having his brain switched with a gorilla's. (Who would be the loser there?) Veteran villain Douglas Dumbrille is the mad scientist here (Bela Lugosi must have been busy!) and is just right for the part; Vera Lewis, who played all sorts of nosy neighbors, landladies, aunts, etc. in Warner Brothers films of the 30's and early 40's, was still traipsing around to take on a part usually assigned in BB films to Minerva Urecal. This does look like the same set used three years previously in the similar "Ghost on the Loose", where it was Nazis the boys were chasing/running from instead of mad scientists. With few exceptions, the Bowery Boys movies just got worse and worse, but this is probably the last really recommendable one.

Spook Busters (1946) **1/2

[JoeKarlosi · 6/10 · 30 March 2010]

It's been theorized that SPOOK BUSTERS was the inspiration for the 1984 hit comedy GHOSTBUSTERS, and given that the titles of the two films are so similar, well ... it's possible. But the idea here of Leo Gorcey and his Bowery Boys buddies getting diplomas from exterminating school and setting out to open a business for terminating household pests is about as close as this gets to the latter movie. The show begins with some humorously mangled voice-over narration from Gorcey commenting on his graduation ("I was overwhelmed with commotion and there was a lunk in my throat"), and from there the chuckles slow down a bit. But what happens is the gang gets a gig to work at an old house that might be haunted, and the opportunity for VERY light comedy occurs when a scientist wants to put Sach's brain into a gorilla. There's a cute slow-motion fight sequence, but overall this is another typical entry of the day from Slip and the guys. Also making a reappearance from earlier movies is Gabriel Dell (as "Gabe") who returns from the Navy as a serious character and adds nothing. In future films Gabe would drift in and out of these comedies and be more like a pesky fly at a picnic. **1/2 out of ****

B-film is a weak forerunner of "Ghost Busters"...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 27 March 2010]

The gags and, in fact, all of the humor in this Bowery Boys featurette is both dated and unfunny. LEO GORCEY is the self-appointed president of the Insect Exterminating Company who goes after bigger prey when CHESTER CLUTE invites him to investigate the old Menlo house, now deserted, which appears to be haunted.

So, LEO GORCEY, HUNTZ HALL, BOBBY JORDAN and gang get into their jalopy and head for the deserted looking house which, unknown to them, is being used for sinister purposes by none other than DOUGLAS DUMBRILLE and some of his foolish henchmen.

None of the situations that ensue are particularly funny and the humor is as sophomoric as it gets. If you enjoy being hit over the head with one dumb remark after another, this is for you. Others better beware this offering from Monogram from their assembly of B-films.

THE EXTERMINATING CLASS OF 1946

[tcchelsey · 10/10 · 11 June 2022]

This is a Halloween fave. The BOWERY BOYS graduate exterminating school(!) and go into business for themselves. Their first job is a haunted house and the rest is insane!

The Bowery Boys is actually a revamping of the East Side kids, which was a re-working of the Dead End Kids. Credit Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall for putting this all together, and becoming executive producers of the long series. I do agree with the last reviewer that these early films had more Bowery Boys, that being Bobby Jordan and Billy Benedict (as Whitey). Also Gabe Dell is introduced as their old pal who just return from the war. By the 1950s, it would be a Slip and Sach show, with the rest of the gang taking a back seat?

You'll also see that the guys employ lots of slapstick and there's a mad doctor. Kind of Three Stooges stuff, ya think? The guys did borrow a bit from the Stooges, and in fact were directed (in later years) by Edward Bernds, who also wrote material for the Stooges.

This is goofy stuff with the guys bumping into a nutty surgeon (played by Douglas Dumbrille) who is into brain transplatation. Guess whose brain? And it's all so sweet with a secret laboratory, grave stones that open and lead to hidden passages and a caged gorilla that gets loose. They had a lot of fun putting this one together.

Of course, the real deal star is Gorcey's narration and malaprops and Huntz Hall just being goofy. Best scene has Slip and Sach sprayed with ether and the fight scene is done in slow motion!

A gotsta' see.

Finally reissued on dvd by Warner Brothers box set and re-mastered, which have come down in price over the years. First issued on vhs in the 90s, and those tapes are now a collectors item.

Bowery Boys hijinks

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 13 June 2022]

The Bowery Boys are graduating college... the college of insect extermination. They start up their own exterminating service and get a job clearing out a spooky empty mansion in the dead of night. The late owner was a magician.

It's the Bowery Boys led by Slip and Sach. There is plenty of their hijinks. The magician home is built for them. I always have good clean fun with these guys.

The Origin of the Marshmallow Monster

[tedg · 16 April 2010]

This popular series reverses the trend we saw in the sixties with kids playing grownup roles. Here, we have 30-somethings playing teenagers, a gang (in the old sense) of kids from New York City. The gags are the usual, the stereotypes as well. Its only value is in how it deepens the stereotypes.

I keep coming back to this film because it seems to have been one of a group, inspiring much of what we have today, from Scooby-doo to Ghostbusters.

We have goofy pest exterminators who encounter ghosts; the ghosts turn out to be evil scientists trying to preserve seclusion for their experiments. I may have seen a dozen of these, all with the same scenes: revolving walls, graves that are secret stairways, television and or hidden microphones. A standard gag missing here is the guy who snags a skeleton that then chases him.

What is surprising is that they worked in the gorilla. For some reason, gorillas frequently appear in this subgenre. The mix of discovered ghosts, mad scientists and escaped gorillas is so unlikely it astounds. But it is so common, you have to sit down and wonder why.

Ghosts and science is easy. Popular entertainment has only two kinds of scientists. One smokes a pipe and there to provide background on the science, for instance explaining why giant ants are attacking. The other is a madman, going against nature in ventures into the dark side. That "dark side" is conflated with the world of spiritualism, a relatively recent invention. Spiritualism was characterized by supposed real ghosts and clearly exposed charlatans. The devices these fakers used (mostly architectural) became permanently glued to spookiness in movieland.

But why gorillas? Because "King Kong" worked and by this time had scared the poo out of a sizable percentage of viewers. Because it referenced the other dark, spooky side: sex. Here this is underscored by the otherwise unnecessary character of Gabe who brings home a sexy French babe to be threatened by the three unknowns.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Surprisingly...pretty much a typical Bowery Boys film.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 10 November 2016]

Because this is an early Bowery Boys film, it features more than just Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall). Bobby Jordan and Whitey are on hand and the film is a better than average one for the team as a result. In the later films, any real pretense of a gang of friends is gone and it basically was the Slip & Sach Show...and the pictures were much more repetitive and less enjoyable.

The film begins with the boys graduating...from exterminator school. Soon they have their own insect extermination business and they are asked to take care of a creepy mansion that appears to be abandoned. But, there's actually a nutty scientist hiding in the basement doing experiments. At first he tries to scare away the boys but when he meets Sach he knows he'll be the perfect candidate for a brain transplant with gorilla!

Surprisingly enough, this enjoyable nonsense is pretty typical of a Bowery Boys film! The weird haunted house and brain transplant are both themes that would be repeated many times during the course of this franchise. It's very enjoyable if you like that sort of thing...and for others it might be a bit of a trial to get through this B-movie silliness.

The Vidiot Reviews...

[capone666 · 6/10 · 12 October 2016]

Spook Busters

The hardest part of ghost hunting is violently murdering the innocent to increase business.

Fortuitously, the restless spirits in this comedy are just a ruse by the resident.

Receiving their first job after graduating exterminating school and starting their own business, The Bowery Boys (William Benedict, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, David Gorcey) head to a haunted house to rid it of its unwanted inhabitants.

Accompanied by their friends (Gabriel Dell, Tanis Chandler), the gang enters the mansion unaware that the mad scientist (Douglass Dumbrille) within plots to use one of their brains for transplant into his gorilla.

Merely the fourth instalment in the long running series, Spook Busters, née Ghost Busters, remains one of the comedy troupe's most recognized and rambunctious episodes, thanks mostly to the inclusion of the zany primate.

But in the end apes are much easier to capture than ghosts on account you can club them.

Yellow Light

vidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

Spook Busters

[Scarecrow-88 · 6/10 · 15 October 2016]

William "One Shot" Beaudine directed this Bowery Boys outing, this time Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and the gang are exterminators assigned a dead magician's mansion, encountering a mad scientist and his henchmen with plans to experiment by removing part of a human brain and apply the matter to a gorilla (yes, *another* gorilla!). Ludicrous premise aside, "Spook Busters" has some fun sight gags (magician's trick room has lots of props the Bowery Boys play around with) and secret passages to the mad scientist's lab and current habitation…including a fake tombstone and grave which leads to the lab, along with a piano in the magician's trick room that, when a certain melody is played, opens the wall to a cavern that leads also to the lab. Once again, the Bowery Boys must contend with near death (thrown hatchet and knives at them, henchmen trying to use force to subdue them) and plenty of Three Stooges-type slapstick ensues (Huntz' Sach often annoys Leo to the point of the handslap and gets himself into trouble through clumsiness and sheer moronic behavior). Gabriel Dell arrives from the Navy with his French bride (Tanis Chandler), looking to find his pals, located to the mansion where they become inadvertently involved in the action when targets on the Bowery boys are aimed at them, also. Douglass Drumbrille is Dr. Coslow, the mad scientist who kidnaps Dr. Bender (Maurice Cass), prepared to force him to help in the surgery, with poor Sach (of course) chosen to be the human to lose part of his brain. Bobby Jordan, David Gorcey, and William Benedict (given the unfortunate name, Whitey!) are the other members of the Bowery boys. There's the loose gorilla, fisticuffs, and running around providing the action of the film. Once again Leo's mishandling of the English language is incorporated in his character for laughs. Hall's ineptitude remains a constant of his comedy shtick. The plots of these movies often feel repetitive with slight variations added to the formula. The police only arrive at the very end. Bernard Gorcey has an opening cameo as the café owner with mouse problems who patiently allows Leo's Slip to run his extermination business in the corner of the room!

A Good Mix Of Wacky Fun

[sambase-38773 · 7/10 · 2 October 2023]

This is one of the better movies in this series because there's a lot going on. A spooky mansion, a beautiful girl, crazy doctors who want to remove brains, mysteries upon mysteries, slapstick, funny lines, funny words, and funny situations. It even has a slow-motion fight scene.

The boys want to make money as exterminators. They get a job at a mansion. The mansion is full of mysteries and strangeness. That sparks the action and the comedy.

As I said this is one of the better ones. Sure, it might have lots of recycled elements, but all movies have that. Every movie ever made has that. But this is a good Saturday movie. Popcorn not included. Bring your own. And enjoy the film.

Bowery Boys #4

[Michael_Elliott · 27 March 2010]

Spook Busters (1946)

** (out of 4)

Fourth film in The Bowery Boys series has the gang graduating exterminating school and soon they're offered their first job. The boys must travel to a creepy old house, which is rumored to be haunted and sure enough strange things begin to happen once they enter. This entry in the series will have fans feeling flashbacks to the East Side Kids days with movies like SPOOKS RUN WILD and GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE. I'm really not sure what it is but the horror spoof is one genre that these kids should stay away from no matter what name they're going under. As with the previous two films, this one here is a very weak spoof of the horror genre and the worst thing is that the screenplay never really knows what it wants to be. There's some voice-over narration at the start of the movie that is clearly meant to be spoofing the various film noirs out at the time yet this eventually goes away and then shows up out of no where at the very end of the movie. The confusion doesn't stop there as the movie starts off as a spoof of the horror genre and quickly jumps away from it. After what happens in SPOOKS RUN WILD and GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE it would seem like the screenwriters would want to try something different and have the group really fighting some ghosts. Leo Gorcey actually doesn't take up too much here as his character is pretty underwritten for the most part. He really doesn't get anything fun to do and outside of the mangled dialogue he has pretty much nothing to do. Huntz Hall gets the majority of the "jokes" here and he takes them and goes way over the top trying to get any laugh. The supporting boys are all wasted and that includes Bobby Jordan who is pretty much just standing around the entire time. The final ten-minutes is when the film finally starts to pick up with a couple good comedy sequences. The first involves Hall trying to escape the bad guys by pretending that a ghost is forcing him to do things. This is followed up with a pretty funny ending where Hall and Gorcey must fight to get out of their trouble. Director Beaudine must have been really bored here because there's not an ounce of energy to be had in the first sixty-minutes and in the end this is yet another disappointment.