CRASHING LAS VEGAS

US, 1956, 65 minutes, Black and white.
Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Mary Castle, Don Haggerty.
Directed by Jean Yarborough.

Crashing Las Vegas comes to the end of the series of small-budget films starring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and various of the Bowery Boys, the series from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s.

It was the last for Leo Gorcey who had began his career as one of the Dead End Kids in Warner Brothers films of the 1930s. Huntz Hall also appeared in the films of that time and provided the comic relief for the Bowery Boys Films. An entertaining presence in many of the films was Bernard Gorcey, Leo Gorcey’s father. He was killed in a car accident some months before the filming of this film and it is said that his son was erratic during the filming, both from grief and of increasing alcoholism.

Leo Gorcey, filling out after many years, plays the head of the group, but is rather more abrasive than usual, trying to dominate – but still with many malapropisms.

The boys are living with a kind old lady who is in danger of being evicted. They want to raise money for her. When a radio quiz is advertised, they hurry along, trying to get into the seats where contestants are called to get rewards, Gorcey pushing out an innocent bystander – because Huntz Hall, after suffering an electric shock, is able to envisage numbers, especially in anticipation.

When they win a prize to go to Las Vegas, in an up-market hotel-casino at the time (looking somewhat seedy these days), Hall is able to amass huge amount of money because he is able to envisage the right number for every spin of the wheel.A criminal group decide to take advantage, puzzling about the system, but getting Mary Castle, member of the gang, to ingratiate herself – but the opposite result happens, Hall is so distracted by Mary Castle that he can’t see the numbers.

The film builds up to a climax, the boys entangled with the criminals, but happy ending when the old lady herself decides to move from New York and to come to live in Las Vegas – a happy ending all round.

These films were supporting features, popular with the fans of Gorcey and the Bowery Boys, and this one a little more amusing with the phenomenon of Hall and his electric shock and foreshadowing all the numbers.