For a few months of my time in the third grade I lived in Tucumcari, New Mexico. It is the only time I have even visited the deserts of the southwest, and my memories of that brief time are so strange as to make it feel as if I am somehow recalling somebody else’s memories. One thing I vividly remember is playing with the neighborhood kids in an abandoned cattle trailer, a tetanus case just waiting to happen.
The rubble of bombed buildings in post-WWII London must have made for a similarly interesting playground. 1947’s Hue and Cry is just one of several films I have seen in such locales. As if those sites weren’t dangerous enough, the kids playing in them do things like throw rocks at each other. I cannot judge, as I recall having scissor fights with the other third graders in Tucumcari. We would hold them wide open like switchblades, the edge inside the palm as much of a danger to the holder as the opposite end was for the opponent. Kids sure are stupid.
The ones in this picture seem hellbent on getting killed by some mobsters. Though lethal, the adult hoodlums they pit themselves against are little more than overgrown children themselves, incorporating directions for their operatives into the serial adventures stories penned by Alastair Sim right before these go to print.
Harry Fowler is the boy who stumbles upon this scheme, as he realizes the license number of a truck parked outside a furrier is the same as that of the villain in the most recent installment of Sim’s story. In that story, crates being moved from the vehicle contained dead bodies. The crates Fowler sees being moved don’t contain human remains, just the skins of formerly-living cute animals.
Fowler discovers this when he inspects the crates after breaking into the store. The proprietor is suspiciously reluctant to press charges after an inspector played by Jack Warner informs him he’ll have to come down to the station to make a statement. Warner also questions Fowler’s story, saying there are no license plates beginning with “GZ”, such as the one he identified. Fowler confirms with a kid who collects license plate numbers that one isn’t in his collection. Life in the UK must be pretty dull if anybody has a hobby like trainspotting or collecting car license numbers.
Crimes keep occurring and continue to have elements which seem to be taken from Sims’s stories. And so, Fowler and a friend track down the author. There’s a great bit where the lads carefully ascend a staircase while the voice of Sims bellows from an open doorway above, seemingly issuing threats to the approaching lads. It is revealed he is listening to a playback of the latest installment of his series, as recorded on a Dictaphone. The author himself is quite thrilled to meet a couple of fans. It is revealed he has never seen the final form of his stories in print and is shocked a real street is in one instead of the fake ones he always uses. There is also, heaven forbid, a split infinitive.
Sims worries that, if they go to the authorities, the crooks will seek revenge on him. With that, it is up to this ragtag bunch of low-income, rough-and-tumble kids to save the day. Among the most interesting of their number is one who spends all his time perfecting his ability to lasso objects. There’s also a kid whose only vocalizations are imitating various machinery, similar to Michael Winslow in the Police Academy series.
Although this is ostensibly a kids adventure movie, the stakes often feel quite high. That much of the action takes place in the real rubble of the city of the time adds to the feeling of real potential danger. One bit has our band of heroes in the sewers. It is likely a set, though somebody went to some remarkable extents to make it realistic. Or maybe it actually is the sewers and, in that case, ewww… All of this is shot in what would be solid noir photography if this picture was of that genre, which it is not.
Also, the kids themselves look to be genuine hooligans for the most part, and some scenes where they are ostensibly the heroes scan like a horror movie. When taken out of context, one scene essentially has them committing a home invasion. That a grown woman is lassoed and bound to a chair is particularly uneasy. Then there’s a bit where a group of kids are sneaking up in masse on unsuspecting crooks, appearing in glimpses and then disappearing again. I found this so unnerving that I forgot the young ones are supposed to be the heroes. At one point, they are chasing through a construction site a woman who looks like Madeleine Kahn in the wide shots, making for a surreal visual. A solid laugh at the end of that scene has them trying to act nonchalant by looking intensely into a shop window. The old woman sewing behind the glass looks up at them and makes a face.
Still, I greatly enjoyed Hue and Cry. The only real grievance I have is Sim has little more than a glorified cameo, in two brief scenes which were probably filmed in a single day. Despite this, the kids in the cast are quirky and likeable; that is, when they aren’t descending en masse to wreak havoc and terror on unsuspecting adults. Not that Sim, even when he’s on their side, is that amused: “Oh how I loathe adventurous-minded boys.” Hopefully, viewers of this will largely think otherwise as, whether in the ruins of London or the abandoned cattle trailers of New Mexico, the kids will largely turn out alright.
Dir: Charles Crichton
Starring Alastair Sim, Harry Fowler, Jack Warner
Watched as part of the Film Movement blu-ray box set Alastair Sim’s School for Laughter: 4 Classic Comedies