By1950 the Bowery Boys were already among moviedom's oldest "teens," but incredibily the series lasted for another 6 years and more than 20 movies, with the scripts getting increasingly sillier and the plots more far fetched. This is a pretty good entry in the series, and at times feels like it could've been almost a conventional B crime picture, instead of a Bowery Boys vehicle. In part that may be due to the prescence of leggy Adele Jergens, one of the great B movie bad girls. She's actually playing the title character, the only time in the series I can remember that happening.
Adele seemed to be one of those actresses who just wanted to keep working. "Blonde Dynamite" is one of her 10 movie credits on IMDB for 1950, including another Bowery Boys feature and the classic film noir "Side Street." (In 1949 she was in another B noir classic, "Armored Car Robbery.") She was also a comic foil (and the requisite eye candy) for Abbot and Costello in two of their films. Later in her career she was in a couple of super low budget teen crime exploitation movies, but she was always a solid pro who gave it her all. She's probably the biggest "name" of the many alluring females who populated the Bowery Boys movies, vamping Slip and/or Satch for devious purposes.
The idea of the boys as high class "escorts" is a hoot and well played for laughs. Though of course their ability to turn Louie's Sweet Shop into their escort agency office and then back again overnight takes a huge suspension of belief, typical of these plots. It should be noted that the plot device of digging from a office or store into an adjacent bank vault has been used in several films with the first one I'm aware of being "A Slight Case of Larceny" with Edward G. Robinson.
The rating of 7 stars is in the context of the Bowery Boys series. Sometimes you just have to grade on a curve.
Adele seemed to be one of those actresses who just wanted to keep working. "Blonde Dynamite" is one of her 10 movie credits on IMDB for 1950, including another Bowery Boys feature and the classic film noir "Side Street." (In 1949 she was in another B noir classic, "Armored Car Robbery.") She was also a comic foil (and the requisite eye candy) for Abbot and Costello in two of their films. Later in her career she was in a couple of super low budget teen crime exploitation movies, but she was always a solid pro who gave it her all. She's probably the biggest "name" of the many alluring females who populated the Bowery Boys movies, vamping Slip and/or Satch for devious purposes.
The idea of the boys as high class "escorts" is a hoot and well played for laughs. Though of course their ability to turn Louie's Sweet Shop into their escort agency office and then back again overnight takes a huge suspension of belief, typical of these plots. It should be noted that the plot device of digging from a office or store into an adjacent bank vault has been used in several films with the first one I'm aware of being "A Slight Case of Larceny" with Edward G. Robinson.
The rating of 7 stars is in the context of the Bowery Boys series. Sometimes you just have to grade on a curve.