The latest money making scheme of Leo Gorcey involves him and the gang with a telescope charging folks a fee for stargazing. In fact Huntz Hall is checking out one thoroughly heavenly body going down the Bowery. But when Hall points the telescope upward he and Leo Gorcey spot a murder in a window of a swank hotel blocks away. They report the crime to their old pal and gang member beat cop Gabriel Dell.Not finding any trace of any murder where John Ridgely is staying the guys keep on the case. Dell gets himself in a jackpot at his precinct for leaving his beat on a wild goose chase so it seems. But he does get to meet Helen Parrish the daughter of the deceased whose body was found in the Bronx. They might have a future.Two colorful character actors appear here as well. Fritz Feld playing the officious hotel manager who is driven to distraction by Leo Gorcey's grammar and colorful language and the eternal dumbness of Huntz Hall. There's also Lionel Stander recently released from jail who thinks that Hall is an old criminal associate with a recent bit of plastic surgery. As if anyone would want to make themselves look like Horace DeBussy Jones. The regulars and these guest stars make Trouble Makers worthwhile to watch.

**SPOILERS** The Bowery Boys get themselves involved in a murder by searching the night sky in search of new and uncharted planets in the solar system. Making a few bucks in having the public, for .05 a pop, use their super powerful telescope Sach together with Slip unwittingly peek into the 20th floor window of the swanky El Royal Hotel in midtown Manhattan and see a person being strangled to death!Slip & Sach having the local cop on the beat rookie patrolman and former Bowery Boy Gabe Mereno check out the room where the man was murdered in they find nothing as well as Gabe now in trouble of being suspended for leaving his post! It's only later that Sach and his pal Slip see in the local newspapers that the Dr. Frederick X Prescott, in a front page photo, was found murdered, strangled to death, in the Bronx that they put 2 and 2 together and realized that Dr. Prescott was the person they saw murdered at the El Royal Hotel! It turns out that Dr. Prescott was a major share holder in the El Royal who by him being murdered left the place under the ownership of his grieving daughter Ann!It also turned out that the late Dr. Prescott found out that gangster Silky Thomas was using his hotel to take illegal bets and do some loansharking on the side and was about to call the cops on him. This lead Silky to do in Dr. Prscott before he can kick him out of the place and have him arrested! We soon find out that the late Dr. Prescott was a major plastic surgeon who did a number of face-lifts on wanted and escaped hoodlum who the notorious Chopper McGee was one of! This was reviled by just released bank robber, from Sing Sing Prison, Hatchet Moran a guest at the hotel and good friend of Silky Thomas who mistakes Sach, now undercover and together with Slip working as a bellhop at the El Royal, for being the recently released for good behavior from the "Big House" the notorious Chopper McGee!It's when patrolman Mereno, with tips from the Bowery Boys, starts to put most of Silky Thomas' boys in the bookie and loansharking rackets out of commission that Silky and his top henchman Ben Feathers plan to set him up in Gabe leaving his post and be suspended for doing it in order to get him out of their hair as well as their illegal businesses. It's by Silky getting Gabe again suspended and possibly facing dismissal from the police force that gets the Bowery Boys into action in not only saving Gabe's job but putting and end to Silky's criminal enterprise!Sach who was mistaken by Hatchet Moran as his good pal and fellow prison cell-mate Chopper McGee is soon exposed, by Feathers, as the lame brain dope that he is. It's when Hatchet & Silky and a bunch of their hoodlum friend try to rub out Sach as well as Slip that they find out that they bit into a lot more then what they could chew! Not that Sach is that smart but luck, like in all the Bowery Boys films, alway seems to be on his side. Which is something that Silky & Co. will later find out the hard way!

As a kid watching the East Siders and the Bowery Boys I could never figure out why guys like Gabriel Dell and Bobby Jordan (not seen in this one) would often trade places as members of the gang, an outsider up to no good, or as in the case of Dell, an authority figure like he was in this flick. His character is Gabe Moran, up from the streets and making good as a local beat cop who still knows some of the toughs he grew up with, like Stinky Feathers (Frankie Darro). Come to think of it, I still wonder about those casting decisions, just not as much.As usual in these later pictures, Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall take the lead, with their generally silent partners, Billy Benedict, David Gorcey and Benny Bartlett confined to the background. Benedict had a line or two in this picture, but if the other guys did, I'd have to go back and listen for them.This time out, Slip (Gorcey) and Sach (Hall) witness a murder from a couple blocks away via a long range telescope ('Five cents a look, only a penny a peek'!), then convince Officer Gabe (Dell) to leave his beat to solve the mystery. You wouldn't have had to see many Bowery Boys flicks to know that Point B is never reached from Point A in a straight line. The trail to the killer is derailed by the murder victim showing up some fifteen miles away in the Bronx, so Slip and Sach have some fancy footwork to make things right. I think the story could have gotten a little more mileage out of the Sach/Chopper McGee connection, but that one went nowhere.That summary line I used came from hoodlum Silky Thomas (John Ridgely) eying up Ann Prescott (Helen Parrish), daughter of the murder victim where the story started. Political correctness and male chauvinism aside, you just don't hear clever lines like that in pictures anymore.

Plus Fritz Feld, Lionel Stander, Helen Parrish and the usual top-notch supporting cast of toughs and characters.Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) are in the sidewalk star-gazing business when they see a murder committed in a room at the El Royale Hotel, blocks away. In spite of the fussy-and-fidget objections of the hotel manager, Andre Schmidtlapp (Fritz Feld), the Bowery Boys (including Frankie Darro and Billy Benedict with lines and David Gorcey and Benny Bartlett looking on...as usual) and their friend Police Officer Gabe Moreno (Gabriel Dell)search the murder room and find nothing beyond learning that the room is occupied by "Silky" Thomas (John Ridgely.) Police Captain Madison (Cliff Clark)reprimands Gabe for leaving his beat on a false alarm, but later tips from Slip and Sach help Gabe lead raids on Silky's gambling operations.The latter sends Gabe's former friend "Feathers" (Frankie Darro)to Gabe with a bribe offer but Gabe refuses. The boys read about the killing of a Professor Prescott and identify him as the man they saw murdered. Slip and Sach tell the professor's daughter, Ann Prescott (Helen Parrish), they will find her father's killers, and they get jobs as bellhops at the hotel. "Hatchet" (Lionel Stander), one of the gangsters, thinks Sach is a former cellmate and this causes a complication or two along the way.