Watch Hold That Line For Free

Just perfect...

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

For once in the long running comedy series, the Bowery Boys get original opening credits, not the standard opening they had for their 11 year run (longer if you count their previous series). What follows is a consistently funny farce where Slip, Sach and the gang get college scholarships and Sach discovers that he's got athletic abilities he was unaware of. That mincing personality may not make him seem like an Ivy league athlete, but it does get him and the gang forced to dress in drag and visit Louie's ice cream parlor with hysterical results.Sometimes silliness can be a drag, but this puts Sach at the forefront as jealous athletes set him up to be thrown off the team. Tough girl Veda Ann Borg (in a hideous wig that June Allyson and Doris Day would toss aside like road kill) sets Sach up to miss a game, which threatens the school's future.Football comedy's are a dine a dozen, and while this ain't no "Horse Feathers", it is still very amusing. It's obvious that Sleep, Sach and the others are way past the age of college football heroism. It's not just in the locker room where everything that can go wrong will go wrong. But the audience comes out of it funny entertained, with a conclusion straight out of Laurel and Hardy.

It's a pity that How To Succeed In Business was a decade away from its creation. The song Grand Old Ivy would have made a perfect theme for this Bowery Boys comedy as the boys sample a bit of higher education in Ivy College. They probably could have used a bit of lower education before sampling Ivy.Slip and Sach and the rest go to school on a bet by two older alumni of Ivy as to whether a bit of learning smooth the edges out in the roughest kind of material. Well they certainly picked the roughest material out there.While there Huntz Hall plays around in the chemistry lab and discovers a formula that makes him super strong. Where else to use this new found ability but the gridiron.I think you can figure the rest. This is Bowery Boy hijinks as usual but also with the added attraction of Veda Ann Borg as the gambler's moll trying to seduce Sach. No film with her should ever be missed.It might have been interesting if Leo Gorcey had ever learned in college the real meanings of the words he mangles in every picture. But if he did half the comedy of the Bowery Boys would be gone.

The Bowery Boys made an average of four movies per year for 12 years. So it was that Hold That Line was the 25th in the long-running series. Perhaps borrowing from an old Three Stooges short, the story line involves two old time alumni of Ivy University, who bet pro and con whether uneducated social misfits could succeed as well as "blue bloods" at college. Stopping by Louie's Sweet Shop, the two alumni see and choose the Bowery Boys, even though they are by now in their mid-thirties. The boys consist of Slip, Sach, and three others, but minus Gabe and Whitey, who are long gone from the series. They are all enrolled for one semester (or "siesta"). The boys commit their usual shenanigans in their various classrooms, and do provide a few howls. Sach prepares a TNT formula in Chemistry lab, and nearly blows up the class. But he also concocts a vitamin formula that temporarily strengthens him, and allows him to become a hit at football practice. He even surpasses local football hero, Biff Wallace. Meanwhile the boys join a fraternity, and for their initiation must dress like girls.The football season begins unusually well, and Ivy U. wins games by scores of 52-0 and 63-0, with Sach (now "Hurricane Jones") standing out. But, it all comes down to the annual game with State U. Of course big time gamblers are involved, and on the day of the big game, an attractive lady (Candy) lures Sach away from the playing field. He is held in the gamblers' apartment, and the game goes on without Sach. Biff has to leave the game because of an injury, and State has a 13-7 lead with time running out. Meanwhile there is a confession and the hideout is discovered; Sach, drugged, is picked up and rushed into the game. Slip tries unsuccessfully to make up a fresh batch of vitamins for Sach. So it is Slip who must become the hero and save the game for Ivy U.The Bowery Boys films, which do not age well, evoke the witticisms and pretensions of a bygone era. Watching them today is like comparing Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh! (1917) with Satisfaction (1965). In Hold That Line the aging boys still hang out at an ice cream parlor (!), while some of the jokes are old and are suggestive of Harold Lloyd (see one of his truly great films: The Freshman, 1925). Take a look at the outfits the boys wear during their first days at college. See those Bowery boys' football uniforms, which are reminiscent of the 1920s: leather helmets without face masks, light shoulder padding, a sweater. And yet, even though the boys here may be getting old, along with their gags, they still have some appeal. Slip's malapropisms abound. So, for film buffs, the younger set, and for those who remember how it was in the old days, the movie is worth checking out.

Hold That Line (1952) ** (out of 4) A couple rich snobs make a bet that they can take any group of idiots off the street, send them to Ivy school and make them smart. Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall) and the boys are selected but their dumbness follows them to college but Sach ends up making some "vitamins" that allow him to become a huge football star. As you can tell by the story, this was TRADING PLACES thirty-one years earlier than that classic 1983 film but don't expect the same quality. Yet again we've given a fairly weak story and not too much is done with it. Once again we have a plot where the boys get mixed up with gangsters who eventually kidnap Sach so that they can place bets on a big game. Other stuff in the film includes the boys of course mixing it up with the star football player, dealing with various college exams and we even get to see some football action. The football scenes are all filmed rather poorly and nothing else really works here either. The entire film has a very cheap look to it and it's clear that Beaudine is on auto-pilot as the scenes never really add up to much and the entire thing just feels rushed. There's one saving grace in the film and that's a sequence where the boys get hazed and must go into their old neighborhood in drag. The scene inside Louie's diner is very funny and seeing Louie in drag was well worth sitting through the film. Gorcey once again takes a backseat as his character really doesn't have too much to do. Hull takes over the lead and manages to be OK here and thankfully his character isn't as big a dope as some of the previous films. I'm sure fans of the series will want to check this one out but those new will certainly want to start somewhere else.