Horace Debussy 'Sach' Jones (Huntz Hall) and Stanislaus 'Duke' Coveleskie (Stanley Clements) along with the rest of the gang, Chuck (David Gorcey), Myron (Jimmy Murphy) and Blinky (Eddie LeRoy) are hanging out at the local diner owned by Mike Clancy (Percy Helton). Mike’s doctor, Dr. Moss (Pierre Watkin), having been stood up by Mike, makes a house call. He examines Mike and tells him that he is stressed out and needs to take a vacation. He says a nice rest in the mountains would be good for him.
In the café are Harry Shelby (William Henry) and his girlfriend/assistant Dolly Owens (Darlene Fields). Harry is a real estate agent looking to get rid of a dumpy house he has been trying to sell. Harry knows a pigeon when he sees one and convinces Mike that this is the ideal place to buy.
When the guys get to the house, they find it is falling apart. With high hopes they intend on fixing it up. The house turns out to have been owned by the widow of a mobster. Sach accidentally finds part of the mobster’s stash that he hid in the house. The guys are excited and think that maybe there is more money hidden somewhere. They decide to pay off the mortgage with the mobster’s money and search for the remaining loot.
Snaps Sizzolo (Peter Mamakos) was the partner of the former owner of the house and is also a mobster. He knows that there is more money hidden in the crumbling building. Going through Harry’s agency he tries to buy the house back, but Mike and the guys are not selling. Snaps decides to launch his own plan on how to get rid of the guys so he can search the place.
Harry is now suspicious as to why Snaps wants the house. He has Dolly seduce Sach to find out where the money came from to pay off the mortgage. Harry and Dolly decide to do some of their own snooping hoping to be the ones to find the rest of the hidden money. Harry wants the boys to think that the house is haunted so they will leave.
“Spook Chasers” was released in 1957 and was directed by George Blair. It is an American low budget crime comedy, with horror aspects, featuring the comedy group “The Bowery Boys”. It is the forty-fifth film in the series of forty-eight films that featured “The Bowery Boys”.
The movie is a bunch of tiny skits strung together to form a loose plot. There is a lot of slapstick and bad jokes. For those, such as I, who are familiar with the Bowery Boys, this is typical of the humor of this little sub-genre. A little leggy perhaps, but still enjoyable enough.
Over the years the cast of the Bowery Boys have changed. Leo Gorcey was replaced by Stanley Clements as the semi voice of reason and quasi leader of the gang. The group started out as The Dead End Kids in 1935. Eventually they were changed to the East Side Kids and finally The Bowery Boys. Over the years other actors in the gang would come and go. As far as The Bowery Boys are concerned, the only ones who stayed throughout the run of this incarnation of the group were Huntz Hall as Sach and David Gorcey as Chuck.