Crime School (1938)

Judge Clinton: "If I don't find out who the guilty boy is, you're all going to suffer."

By Lewis Seiler
With The "Dead End" Kids and Humphrey Bogart

Here's one more movie with Humphrey Bogart and the "Dead End" Kids, this seemed to cast them in a much similar role to Dead End (1937) and it had Bogie so I was interested immediately.

The gang of kids is once again disturbing the peace of a poor neighborhood but things get worse when one of them accidentally kills the local pawnbroker. Unwilling to reveal the true identity of the killer to the judge, the kids stick together and are all sent to reform school. The arrival at the reform school is quite a shock for them and Frankie, the leader of the gang, learns the hard way that this ain't gonna be so easy anymore. The ruthless warden teaching him lessons the hard way--but a new special officer in charge of the schools will start investigating in their case and will do his best to change the ways of a school that is acting more like a prison.

The "Dead End" Kids are not exactly playing different characters as they seem to carry their personality over from movie to movie while their surroundings and story changes. It actually works fairly well as we seem to follow their gang and get to know them personally. Their ways of talking and thick accent also gets better when we get used to them over the course of a movie or more movies.

The story is a classic prison tale of corruption and abuse of power. The real philosophical issue is more social and consists of whether the behavior of the kids is inherently wrong or whether their surroundings force them to act this way. The film offers quite an optimistic point of view and appears like such a feel good movie in the end. It doesn't seem to be the most realistic in its treatment of reform schools or the power one person has against a whole institution.

Humphrey Bogart doesn't disappoint in a role where he seems to drift away from the usual early gangster persona. The movie editing, scene cuts and sound is quite poor but I reckon this is due to the poor recognition of the movie and the loss of the original material or original quality. We don't learn much from the movie and there is no big moral to be learnt but it's quite entertaining and it does bring up some interesting issues. The duo Dead End Kids and Bogart does it for me.

I liked: A stand against physical disciplinary actions. Feel good movie. Lot of charisma.

I disliked: Quite predictable. The villains lack quite a bit of characters.

70/100
I enjoyed every minute of it even though it doesn't stand out as much as other prison movies or other movies with the Dead End Kids.