Trouble Chasers (1945) User Reviews

Every cliché in the book over-utilized in this rip-off of gags as old as cinema itself.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 10 August 2013]

I admit that in a few spots, I couldn't help but laugh hysterically at the gags I've seen a million times in other films, but overall, the result of this "Z" grade farce is not one to recommend. Billy Gilbert steals every line he gives with an attempted sneeze, a squint of his over-stuffed nose, or his befuddled accent. This leaves his partners, Slapsy Maxie Rosenbloom and Shemp Howard to struggle for laughs in this hour long film which had already been done (much better) by the Marxx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Olsen and Johnson, the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, well...you get the drift. It's all about the whereabouts of a valuable necklace and the very clichéd gangsters who believe that the three clowns know where it is located. Culminating with a burlesque number of the three in drag (a sight to behold!), it is mainly pedestrian stuff where veteran actress Barbara Pepper gets to chew a few scenes as one of the most stereotypical gangster molls ever presented on film.