Well, I have watched the whole 21 discs of Laurel and Hardy.
What an enjoyable experience!!
I very much enjoyed all the features for the most part. Obviously SONS OF THE DESERT is a classic as are WAY OUT WEST and CHUMP AT OXFORD. In the latter, I love it when Stanley becomes an egghead snob. Great acting job by Mr. Laurel.
I have also watched the Kino version of FLYING DEUCES. This was a title that I could never warm up to and I still feel it is one of the lesser ‘30s titles. I had figured watching it in a good print would help, but it still doesn’t catch on with me. I didn’t like the similar themed BEAU HUNKS either.
I am now 2 films into the Fox films and when one knows that Stanley was not allowed to put his 2 cents in and that Fox wanted to make Abbott and Costello films with the boys, they play a little better.
But nothing can help A HAUNTING WE WILL GO which is possibly the worst feature of all.
Being a fan of vintage horror as we all are here, with that title we would expect at least something spooky going on, but there is nothing but a well-lit magician act that has any kind of atmosphere. L&H seem to be just tacked on to a complicated and boring weak mystery story. I still can’t figure who killed the guy in the coffin and why that particular character is there. Maybe they don’t even explain it. I am usually sleeping by time this film ends.
By the way the book FROM THE ‘40S FORWARD (2nd Edition) is possibly the best L&H book yet. The author has dug up lots of new facts not in any of the other books and writes with a style that is a joy to read. I would greatly welcome Scott MacGillivray writing a book called L&H FROM THE ‘20s TO THE ‘40s.
It is interesting that his Audio Commentary on A HAUNTING WE WILL GO does not get very negative about the film and there are lots of long passages of no talk at all. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he was heavily edited. This has happened to Tom Weaver lots of times.
The chapter on this film in the book has 3x the info in comparison to the audio commentary and really makes it clear what happened and why this film is so bad.
By the way, when my buddies ask me (and they always do), this dumb question:
“Who’s better: Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello?” I always answer back with another question.
“Do you mean in the ’30 or ‘40s?”
Actually, when you think of films that could be considered classics in the sound era, I think that Laurel and Hardy made more unarguable classics than anyone.