LOOSE IN LONDON: it's the cure for what ails you

If you've ever dreamed of discovering a device which would delay the imminent arrival of something particularly unpleasant - such as a tax bill, major surgery, a weekend with the in-laws or death - I have the answer to your dreams.

62 minutes has never passed as slowly as it did watching this 1953 abomination from the Bowery Boys. It literally refused to reach the end, and checking the on-screen timer (as I did on several occasions just to ensure I wasn't going mad) only seemed to further retard forward motion.
I wasn't expecting great art. This is, after all, a poverty row production made on a threadbare shoestring by 'talents' well past their prime but I was still struck by just how awful and pointless this film is. It's difficult to discern the rationale for its existence, since it is neither entertaining nor interesting and is not trashy enough to be enjoyable as camp or kitsch.
The Bowery Boys had started their cinematic life some 16 years earlier as The Dead End Kids in the 1937 crime drama 'Dead End' starring Humphrey Bogart, Sylvia Sidney and Joel McCrea. They were a bunch of tough, cocky slum kids with a healthy disrespect for authority and an unhealthy admiration for criminals. The Dead End Kids made 7 films in the late 1930s, and a further 21 as the East Side Kids in the mid 1940s. By 1946 with the cast rapidly approaching thirty they wisely chose to rename themselves as the more age appropriate The Bowery Boys, under which moniker they churned out a further 41 increasingly cheap films over the next ten years.
What truly amazed me is that LOOSE IN LONDON was not the movie that finally brought down the curtain on their cinematic career. Despite its terribleness someone ponied up the cash to make a further 10 of these 'adventures' before calling it a day!
By 1953 only Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall remained from the gang of teenage toughs who'd made such a positive impression in 'Dead  End' so two other nameless, faceless actors were drafted in to give the impression of a gang. It was a thankless task as their sole purpose was to stand mute in every scene, looking stupid while Gorcey and Hall hogged the limelight with painfully unfunny comedy routines reminiscent of a really bad Three Stooges short.
The film is an embarrassment to everyone involved. The acting, script and direction are uniformly dreadful and the stock footage of London inserted to give the impression the Boys have actually crossed the Atlantic is 20 years out of date. It may be 1953 in New York but in England the clock stopped in 1933 according to this film.
Maybe that explains why LOOSE IN LONDON seemed to never want to end. But on the bright side, after 62 minutes of this, death, taxes and major surgery don't appear so bad after all.