Master Minds

I have to chime in with the other two users in singling out Glenn Strange's performance as the high point of this movie. Sure there are lots of the usual Bowery Boys hi-jinks to keep their fans amused, but it's when the hulking Strange shows up in full monster make-up doing a dead-on Huntz Hall impression that this movie really takes off. Who knew the one time Frankenstein monster had this kind of comedy talent in him? Probably my favorite of the series for just that reason.

(I need three more lines to get this posted, which is really a shame because it would be nice to be able to compliment an actor's performance without having to resort to padding --- although since I'm not padding this with "junk words" I hope it will be considered a valid submission. If not, forgive me. I did my best. I myself think brevity is an asset and would like to see it encouraged.)

During the course of many Bowery Boys films, Sach is endowed with amazing super-powers again and again. In one, he can predict numbers on the Roulette wheel, in another he has super-intelligence and here, in "Master Minds", he's endowed with the ability to predict the future! Yet, inexplicably, by the end of each movie these abilities disappear and are never spoken of again!

When the film begins, Sach goes into a weird trance and predicts the future. When Slip realizes that he's right, he does what any friend would do...put Sach into a sideshow where 'Ali Ben Sachmo' (Sach) can tell futures and make him lots of money. However, a nutty scientist (Alan Napier) is working on a Dr. Moreau-like method of making animals look human...but he wants to give his newest creation a brilliant mind...and assumes incorrectly that Sach is such a genius! Soon, he manages to put Sach's mind into the gorilla-like man (Glenn Strange) and vice-versa.

Like the Bowery Boys films of the 1940s, this one is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, just a year or two later, the team's films would become more stale--more repetitive and less funny. Considering they made so many movies (48--not counting the ones made as the East Side Kids and Dead End Kids), this isn't surprising! Worth seeing and considerably better than later offerings. Stupid but fun!

The 16th Bowery Boys entry from Monogram, 1949's "Master Minds" served up some rare mad scientist shenanigans during a lean period for horror films, set in the haunted Forsythe mansion that locals tend to avoid. Huntz Hall's Sach once again finds himself gaining an unexpected ability, not a crooner's voice as in "Blues Busters" but a fortune teller predicting the future after reading about Nostradamus, caused by a candy-induced toothache (betting on horses would come later). Leo Gorcey's Slip trots out sideshow star 'Ali Ben Sachmo, Bowery Prophet' for a typical get rich quick scheme, allowing Alan Napier as Dr. Druzik to utilize this supposed seer as the perfect subject for mind transference with his savage creation Atlas, played to the hilt by Glenn Strange (much neater than a messy brain transplant). Strange absolutely nails his impersonation of Huntz Hall and his effeminate mannerisms, under a hirsute Jack Pierce makeup that harkens back to the glory days of Universal's "House of Dracula," even adding several more cast members as lab assistants, Skelton Knaggs and pretty Jane Adams, no longer burdened by a hump. One would have wished that after several costarring roles opposite good friend Boris Karloff ("Isle of the Dead," "Lured," "The Strange Door") that Alan Napier might have learned something from the master, playing his one and only mad doctor with a permanent smirk, a bemused performance that can only be described as ordinary, similar to John Dehner's later turn in "The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters" (surely, Bela Lugosi must have been available!). Strange was in the midst of several Abbott and Costello vehicles ("The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap," "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," "Comin Round the Mountain") but would not play another monster in a Hollywood feature, both Gabriel Dell and Billy Benedict departing the Bowery Boys series within two years.

Sach goes into a trance and starts predicting the future. Slip uses him as a fortune teller in a carnival sideshow. Mad scientist Dr. Druzik kidnaps Sach for his monstrous experiment, Atlas.

This is The Bowery Boys, Freaky Friday style. The first half is fun but then it goes body swapping. Atlas in Sach body doesn't really work because it's not Sach. The mannerisms are all corrupted. Then they keep switching the minds back and forth. Sach should stay a monster until they switch bodies again. Sach acting like a monster does hold more potential for comedy. Here's how to make it even better. Have both Sach and Slip get kidnapped. Slip is the one getting body swapped and Sach helps him escape. Sach would be walking around with a monster Slip and maybe Sach could befriend the wild beast. That would be the best comedy.

No doubt inspired by the success of Abbott&Costello Meet Frankenstein, the folks at Monogram Pictures did a nice reworking of the plot at albeit a lower budget for the Bowery Boys in Master Minds.

Although with the rest of the human race eating too much sugar is a guarantee of diabetes, with Horace DeBussy Jones it gives psychic powers that are positively diabolic. They intrigue Alan Napier who is conducting the usual mad scientist experiments and he manages to electrically transfer Huntz Hall's brain into the body of Frankenstein creature Glenn Strange and vice versa.

If I were unkind I'd say that Universal Pictures and A&C were ripped off by the Bowery Boys. That doesn't mean this particular comedy wasn't good in fact seeing Glenn Strange with Huntz Hall mannerisms imitated and Huntz Hall voice coming from him is positively hilarious. Added to the rest of the Bowery Boy monkeyshines, Master Minds is one of the best of the series.