Gas House Kids (1946) User Reviews

Surprisingly good!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 1 November 2023]

Following the success of Monogram Studios' Bowery Boys series, tinier PRC decided to try their hand at making a similar series...a series featuring some tough but decent New York teens and their adventures. In total, they only made three Gas House Kids films...and after seeing "The Gas House Kids Go West" some time ago, I could see why the series bombed. However, surprisingly, it turns out that this first film in the series WASN'T bad at all...and was a decent Bowery Boys style picture.

The plot for "The Gas House Kids" is pretty complicated, though I'll try to summarize it briefly. Eddie was a cop in the neighborhood before going off to war. Sadly, he's just returned...paralyzed and unable to walk on his own. Despite the Gas House Kids not particularly loving cops, they have good hearts and decide to try to help Eddie and his fiancee to buy a farm in the country. Unfortunately LOTS of complications arise...and one of the gang is nearly killed for his efforts.

The series starred Billy Halop, who used to be one of the East SIde Kids...a precursor to the Bowery Boys. Additionally, Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer is there as well...though he clearly is a minor member of the gang. However, the rest of the 'kids' are pretty talented as well.

So how did this film succeed where the final film failed? I think it's all about the writing. While the plot to this film is complex, it is interesting and rewarding...whereas I think their "West" effort was written by a chimp, albeit a somewhat talented one! Overall, an engaging film and a look at how the series MIGHT have worked...given decent material.

The Bowery Boys films are a class act in comparison to this.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 7 November 2019]

Certainly, the East Side Kids, Bowery Boys, Dead End Kids, whatever they were called between 1937 and 1957 are not Shakespeare. Their early films are classics, some of the B films pre-Bowery Boys surprisingly fresh, and the last films they did guilty pleasures. Billy Halop left Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and their malapropism spouting a associates and ended up here, with former little rascal Alfalfa, Carl Switzer, and the result of the first film is less than memorable.

Set near the Williamsburg Bridge, this series is set in a tough but close-knit neighborhood and focuses on returning vet Robert Lowery who is wheelchair bound and had thus broken up with fiancee Tea Loring. But the neighbors don't want them to break up, and soon, Lowery and Loring are in the country, running a chicken farm. Halop is accused of murder after a fight with the landlord, having discovered the landlord's bag of money after he was murdered by a group of gangster's.

This is just the most prepsterous and convoluted, unbelievable story, with too many fingers in the storyline pie, too much sentiment and little humor. The coincidence of the landlord accidentally being killed right after being punched by Halop is too hard to a believable pill to swallow. Monogram's esteem must have been raised by the even more lowly PRC emulating their series, although the different sets of young men seem completely different.