Laurel and Hardy Collection, Vol. 1 (Great Guns / Jitterbugs / The Big Noise)
by Malcolm St. Clair, Monty Banks
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Actor: Arthur Space, Doris Merrick, Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, Veda Ann BorgDirector: Malcolm St. Clair, Monty Banks
Brand: Laurel
Writer: Frank Fenton
Writer: Malcolm St. Clair
Writer: Henry Lehrman
Writer: Lou Breslow
Writer: Scott Darling
Writer: Snag Werris
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 221 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of Laurel and Hardy Collection, Vol. 1 (Great Guns / Jitterbugs / The Big Noise)
DVD Review: All the FOX movies are finally on DVD
Summary: 3 Stars
Just about any Laurel & Hardy biography or film book had the same opinion. "Blockheads" was the teams last great movie. Then the team was temporally split up with Laurel going off to produce B westerns and Hardy getting the lead role in "Zenobia". This was the dividing mark in their career. They re-teamed but the films their following films "A Chump At Oxford", "Flying Deuces" and "Saps At Sea" were all pretty weak. Then the Laurel and Hardy left Hal Roach for a contract at 20th Century Fox to make a series of movies and Fox executives sabotaged the team ( perhaps deliberately ) with bad movies that gradually grew worse until they hit rock bottom with "The Bullfighters". The boys also made a couple of movies for MGM studios but did no better as that studio had no idea how to make comedies. After a five year hiatus from movies the team returned to redeem themselves in the film "Atoll K" which was far superior to the Fox movies in plot but was hurt by Stan Laurels medical condition at the time of filming as well as the language barrier between cast members and crew. Another agreement was that "Jitterbugs" was the one good film to be made at the time but was nowhere as good at the teams weakest Roach movie, and another was that "The Big Bang" was the worst Laurel and Hardy movie ever made. Since the Fox and MGM movies were rarely shown on television and by the 90's had been out of circulation for decades there was no way for anyone other than film historians to make this evaluation. For the rest of us the only available Laurel & Hardy movies was "Flying Deuces" which was public domain and therefore shown many times on television, and "March of the Wooden Soldiers" which returned every year around Thanksgiving and/or near Christmas. Also about every five years Hal Roach would temporarily release several of his Laurel & Hardy movies to syndication and had allowed Blackhawk Films to release them to the home theater market. When VHS became a factor in the 80's Nostalgia Merchant, Video Treasures, and Cabin Fever videos released most of the Hal Roach sound movies while "Atoll K" which was public domain was released by just about every cheap home video company under it's American release title "Utopia". From what we saw "March Of The Wooden Soldiers" was a great film as the other Roach movies were of about equal quality, "Flying Deuces" was weak compared with those movies, and "Utopia" was weaker than "Flying Deuces" and disturbing. There seemed to be merit in the story that the Fox films were crap.
But then in 1992 MGM/UA decided to release the Laurel & Hardy movies they owned the rights to onto the home video sales market. Previously they had made "Bonnie Scotland" available to video rental shops or anyone else willing to pay $90 for a VHS tape. CBS/FOX had released "Great Guns" and "The Bull Fighters" to the rental shop market as well. The high price of these videos kept them out of most video retail stores and very few rental shops bought them for their nostalgia sections as "Flying Deuces" and "Utopia" were available for $10. With "Devil's Brother" and "Bonnie Scotland" now mass produced and available for under $20 MGM/UA had a hit on their hands and quickly dug into their vaults for any other Laurel and Hardy movies they owned the rights to. They came up with "Hollywood Party", "Pick A Star", and the Robert Youngson compilation "Laurel & Hardy's Laughing 20's". And then there was "Air Raid Wardens" and "Nothing But Trouble" which were released a year later. For the first time the mass public had the chance in decades to evaluate the Fox era movies for themselves. I myself a Laurel & Hardy fan bought them out of curiosity and was surprised to see that they were not the horrible train wrecks that they had been made out to be. Perhaps it was the Fox movies that were crap? But then in 1995 Fox released "The Big Noise" to the home market. That movie was reputed to be their worse, so imagine my surprise when I found many parts of the movie funny. The truth is that the post Roach movies are not bad at all. Sure they do not live up to the quality of the teams past movies, but they do stand up to almost anything Abbot and Costello or any other comedians were releasing at the same time. They were the style of comedies that were being made in the 1940's, a time when these movies were filled with gangsters and Nazi spies no matter what studio you worked for. It is what the audiences wanted at that time.
Part of the reason why the later films get such a bad rap is because of the cult of Hal Roach. We are all lead to believe that Roach could do no wrong and if only Laurel and Hardy had stayed at that studio then they would have been making great comedies well into the 1950's. Leaving Roach was suppose to be their worst decision ever. This is far from true. Roach Studios did have an advantage over the other Hollywood studios during the 1920's and 30's as the comedians were given the freedom to craft their own movies. But that freedom began to erode towards the end of the 30's. Roach was phasing out shorts and was going into feature films. This meant more of an investment per picture and therefore Roach was increasingly taking a more hands on approach to each movie to protect his investments. "March Of The Wooden Soldiers" may have become an all time classic, but it was forced on Laurel & Hardy who would have rather been doing a different movie ate that time. More and more their movies were filled with romantic B plots with two other characters. "Blockheads" was just a fluke, a film that Roach had given Laurel full creative control over because it was only being made on the cheap to satisfy some contractual obligations that the studio had with Bank of America. The bank was giving Roach studios a loan, but since the papers were filled with rumors that Stan Laurel was ready to quit and break up the comedy team the bank refused to approve the loan unless they saw that another Laurel & hardy movie was in production and being filmed. Roach and Laurel had an agreement that the team start production on a movie immediately and once the bank approved the loan the movie would be abandoned and the team would go back to writing the pirate movie they were originally developing. Laurel ended up completing half of "Blockheads" and Roach decided to allow him to complete it and release it as a feature. Taking a look at the prior Laurel & Hardy movie "Swiss Miss" you can plainly see that the Roach movies were starting to go downhill with unnecessary musical numbers and romantic subplots. When Laurel returned to the studio in 1939 it was under the agreement that they would do streamliners which were 40 minute movies that were short enough to release as B features but long enough not to be shorts. Both movies were 20 minute plots padded out to 40 minutes, and Roach would later ask the boys to film 20 more minutes of footage for each movie so they could be lengthened to features. This explains their poor pacing compared to the previous movies. It is all possible that if Laurel had agreed to a team contract with Roach that they still would have made forced into making their own version of "Buck Privates" as they would later do at Fox. And lets not forget that Laurel always had the opportunity to resign with Roach to do any movies. The fact that he did not and continued doing movies for Fox and MGM indicated that he would no longer have the artistic freedom at that studio that Roach had given them in the past.
But most of the blame for the poor reputation the Fox era films got was from John McCabe. He was the teams personal biographer and had gotten the impression from comments made by Stan Laurel that the Fox moves were terrible and just got worse with each film. However, it is more likely that Stan was talking about working conditions and studio relations rather than film quality. When Everson released his filmography book "The Complete Films of Laurel & Hardy" he wrote as little as possible on the post Roach movies. The synopsis of each was reduced to as few sentences as possible and the commentary of each was no more than a paragraph which usually commented on how tragic it was that the quality was dropping off with each movie ( Everson's personal opinion ). This would continue in other books including Randy Skretvedt's "Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind The Movies" as well as being picked apart in Glenn Mitchell's "Laurel & Hardy Encyclopedia". In recent years film historians have begone to take a fresh look at the post Roach movies and are now realizing that they were still good efforts by Laurel and Hardy. For the most part they all had enough good moments to qualify them as comedies and compared to what has passed for comedies since the 1930's especially with current movies they all have more than enough laughs. No they do not have the wall to wall humor that the Roach films had but they are not the garbage that they have been made out to be. And for the most part the 1940's audiences loved these films and they did extremely well at the box office. In other words Laurel & Hardy did leave Hollywood as a success in the eyes of the public. Only the film historians who had access to all of their work, and in the 1950's could compare their 40's films with those from the 20's and 30's, only they knew that the later films were of less quality. For the general public the memory of "Blockheads" faded before "Flying Deuces" came out, and the memory of "Saps At Sea" faded before "Great Guns" came out. There was no television or home video. For all they knew each new Fox movie was as good as all the other Laurel and Hardy movies. Today's Laurel & Hardy fan has access to every one of their films with exception to "Rouges Song" and "Hats Off" and a complete version of "Battle Of The Century". Their DVD collection has every silent short, every Roach sound film ( from overseas unfortunately as Hallmark has not yet released a proper DVD collection in the United States ) and now can own all their 1940's films as both Fox and Warner Brothers are releasing them on DVD. ( they may have to fill their collection with some old and likely used VHS releases, but you get the picture. ) For the first tie we all can watch any Laurel and Hardy film at any time we want, and have the ability to compare for ourselves. In my opinion the later films are weaker than the Roach sound films, but that is like saying that I am weaker than the current Olympic heavy weight lifting champion. Generally I am not a weakling, but I and nearly everyone else reading it could never lift 500 pounds. Similarly the Fox and MGM movies cold never compare to most of the Roach movies. But is it fair to even judge them by comparison? Laurel and Hardy did perform well in their later movies. I would say they make a good introduction to the team for new viewers leading into their masterpieces at Roach a little later ( why not save the best for last? ). Newbies to the team will enjoy most of these movies and then will be in for a complete surprise when they see the earlier films. As for the rest of us who know better, this completes our video collection and despite what any of you may think about the later films they can still make you smile and occasionally break out in laughter, and that is still worth something.
For Fox's first box set they decided to start with the post Hal Roach movie with the reputation of being the best ( or closest to the quality of their past movies ) and combine it with what had the reputation of being the worst. "THE BIG NOISE" even has the dubious honor of turning up on many all time worst movie lists along with "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "Robot Monster", "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes", and "Terror Of Tiny Town" among others. However in recent years with Fox releasing the movie on VHS and being made widely available for the first time in decades the film has picked up a reputation of being a lost classic and nearly equal to the teams work at Roach Studios. After viewing the film both during it's original VHS release and this recent DVD release I can say that it's bad reputation is unjustified. While not as well crafted as the Roach comedies it never the less has plenty of funny scenes including one that is a reworking of their short "Berth Marks" that actually improves with a better angle and the addition of a drunk who winds up sharing the berth. One gets the feeling that all the Fox and MGM movies were lumped together and one was randomly picked out as the worst. Perhaps it was the movies title that had it picked out over the others. The plot itself is pretty sound. A scientist has invented a bomb capable of destroying an entire city and worried that spies will try to steal it calls a detective agency asking for men to guard it. But janitors Laurel and Hardy are the only ones at the agency and decide to take the case themselves. As it turns out there is a gang of burglars living next door looking to steal valuables from the scientist and overhearing that he has the bomb decide to steal that instead. Laurel & Hardy manage to foil their plans and then lead the crooks on a cross country chase as the boys try to bring the bomb to the secretary of defense in Washington DC. The only true bad joke is when for no exact reason the matriarch of the home the boys are guarding tells Hardy that he reminds her of Romeo and for a few seconds we fade in to see Hardy in a Romeo costume. This joke is brief and fortunately most of the rest were lifted from past Laurel & Hardy movies. This is perhaps the only real complaint anyone could have about this movie; how most if not all the gags were directly lifted from past Laurel & Hardy films including "Do Detectives Think", "Habeas Corpus", "Berth Marks", "Oliver the 8th", and even a little "Flying Deuces". But on the plus side the romantic subplot is barely existent. In fact the scientist and the girl he has fallen for are abandoned a good half hour before the movie's end. The DVD's extras include commentary by Randy Skretvedt, interesting as in the past he has had nothing good to say about the Fox movies, but by the time this box set had been released had a change of heart and was admitting that the Fox films were worth watching. My only complaint is that Mr. Skretvedt spends way too much time in his commentaries giving the resumes of every actor and crew member involved with the movie instead of commenting on what is taking place on the screen. One example happens on the "Great Guns" disk where he does not get around to pointing out why Laurel and Hardy have entered a room disheveled because he is too busy commenting on the film career of one of the bit actors in the same scene. All the discs also include photo galleries which have very few production photos and lots of newspaper ads. The other extras on this disc included the trailer for the movie and the documentary "Revenge Of The Sons Of The Desert" which has nothing to do with this movie or Fox studios, and is an odd addition considering that at the time this documentary was made the Sons Of The Desert were almost unanimous in the belief that Laurel & hardy should have never made the Fox films to begin with.
"GREAT GUNS" was the first movie the team made at Fox and in effect was the studio's attempt to do their own version of Abbot & Costello's "Buck Privates". Laurel and Hardy are the servants of the films romantic lead. When he is drafted Laurel & Hardy decide to enlist themselves in order to watch over him. Just as in "Buck Privates" the movie concludes with a war game. Out of all the post Roach movies this has to be the most inappropriate when it comes to the Laurel and Hardy characters. Not only has screenwriter Lou Breslow failed to capture the screen characters of Laurel & Hardy but has also failed to capture the screen characters of Abbot & Costello which was the whole point of this picture. Instead we get Laurel & Hardy acting more stupid than any character had before in motion picture history ( with possible exception to The Three Stooges ). One example being where it takes both of them a couple of minutes to figure out that they are being shot at while lying behind a target. In past films Hardy would have figured this out after a few seconds while Laurel would have taken a few seconds more. They certainly would have not spent a couple of minutes wondering what kind of woodpecker the machine gun sound was coming from. Fortunately Laurel was able to shoehorn in a few of his own original jokes such as a white magic routine where he unscrews a light bulb and keeps it lit. And the movie does manage to have a few legitimate laugh out loud gags which I will not mention here as they would only act as spoilers. The extras on this disc include another commentary track by Randy Skretvedt, the film's trailer, a photo gallery, and a Fox Newsreel of the opening of the Freemont Theater which laurel & Hardy attended.
"JITTERBUGS" has the reputation of being the only good post Hal Roach movie with Laurel & Hardy. The reason for this opinion started in 1943. After two movies that were direct rip offs of Abbot & Costello films Fox was finally giving the boys something original. Furthermore since the movie was also going to be a showcase to introduce their new star Vivian Blaine the studio gave the movie a huge budget. At the time reviewers were not fond of Laurel & Hardy so they would be judging their movies on originality and production values. "Jitterbugs" would have garnered better reviews than usual. In addition to this Oliver Hardy had fond memories of this movie and told biographer John McCabe that it was one of his best. This was probably due to the fact that it was one of the few movies that gave Hardy a chance to act outside his Ollie character. A combinations of better than usual reviews and Oliver Hardy's endorsement convinced McCabe that "Jitterbugs" was the only decent post Roach movies the duo made, and it soon became lore in their official biography. The film further gained importance three decades later when it began to be compared to "The Sting". The plot of the movie has Laurel & Hardy hooking up with a conman selling fake gas pills. The conman falls for Vivian Blaine and finding out that she herself was a victim of another conman decides to help get her money back. The plan is to enlist the aid of Laurel and Hardy and con the con men who took Blaine's money. While this is a good movie, it is not exactly a proper Laurel and Hardy film. While the first ten minutes seem more like their classic movies, the rest has them impersonating other characters with only a few moments where they revert back to their screen characters. ( I like to compare this movie to the holiday special "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol" where Magoo is only in character for the first five minutes and as Ebenezer Scrooge for the rest of the show. ) And as for comparing this movie to "The Sting", without giving much away, there are two consecutive cons pulled of in this movie and in both instances the marks figure the con out almost immediately, unlike in "The Sting" where everyone including the audience do not realize the con has taken place. This is a good film and Laurel and Hardy are good in it, but it is hardly a Laurel and Hardy movie, and in my opinion it is definitely not the best of the Fox films. Extras include commentary by Randy Sketvedt, a photo gallery, the film's trailer, and an odd piece of footage of Laurel and Hardy at a ribbon cutting ceremony of a railroad, odd because it is the raw footage without the music or voice overs added yet for the newsreel.
More Laurel and Hardy Collection, Vol. 1 (Great Guns / Jitterbugs / The Big Noise) reviews:
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Description of Laurel and Hardy Collection, Vol. 1 (Great Guns / Jitterbugs / The Big Noise)
Includes: great guns jitterbugs big noise Studio: Tcfhe Release Date: 04/11/2006 Starring: Oliver Hardy Rating: NrBestsellers in DVD
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