Laurel and Hardy - The Silent Years 1928

This 2-disc Blu-ray set makes for a truly wonderful tribute to everyone’s favourite two-man wrecking team: Laurel and Hardy! LAUREL & HARDY: THE SILENT YEARS (1928) contains ten silent shorts showcasing the much loved and still hugely popular comedy duo, with all the future trademark characteristics already evident.

The trademark characteristics… Fans of Stan and Ollie will know them only too well, from Stan Laurel’s head-scratching and sudden outbursts of crying to Oliver ‘Babe’ Hardy’s attempts of gallantry, which invariably backfired. Any endeavour involving the accident-prone duo usually ends in calamity and total disaster - a surefire recipe audiences the world over couldn’t (and still can’t) get enough of. While Stan is often portrayed as the dumber one of the two (with a mental age ranging from five to ten years old), Ollie - initially the brainier - often ends up looking even more stupid than Stan and although you’d think this trusted formula would have worn thin after a while, it did not. The formula may have been the same, but the gags always differed.

Disc 1 offers seven silent shorts from 1928 (produced at the Hal Roach Studios) which depicts the beginnings of what would ultimately become the most celebrated double act of all time - a success story that spanned several decades starting during the silent era and moving into the age of talkies. First up is ‘Leave ‘Em Laughing’ - a two reel silent film released by MGM. Here, Stan suffers sleepless nights due to a particularly nasty toothache and the intertitle holds a somewhat naff joke in store: ‘What is worse than a toothache during the night?’ Answer: ‘Two toothaches’! Well, one toothache is enough to drive poor Stan close to insanity and his room mate Ollie with it, for it is Ollie who, unsuccessfully of course, attempts various DIY remedies to help his buddy, only to create the usual chaos, which ultimately leads to an altercation with the landlord. With Ollie’s attempts of help in tatters, there is only one solution left, namely the way to the dentist. Unfortunately, Stan displays mortal fear at the very thought of it, not helped by the fact that in the dentist’s waiting room, one patient is carried out on a stretcher… Finally, it’s Stan’s turn to face the dental surgeon and of course, all courage leaves him. In order to encourage his friend, Ollie sits down in the dental chair as if to say ‘Look, there’s nothing to be afraid of’ when the dentist secretly turns up behind and administers laughing gas, before accidentally removing Ollie’s tooth in the belief he’s the patient. What follows next is one of the funniest scenes in any Laurel and Hardy sketch…

Another gem is ‘From Soup to Nuts’ in which Stan and Ollie are hired as - wait for it - waiters at an ultra posh, upper crust dinner party! Anita Garvin plays the nouveaux riches hostess Mrs. Culpepper, who desperately wants to impress her rich guests but doesn’t have much of a clue about high society herself. Suffice to say, things descend into complete mayhem from the start (or rather, from the moment the starter is served) what with Stan spilling soup all over Ollie and so forth, while Mrs. Culpepper is too distracted attempting to get a cherry on her dessert spoon while battling with her oversized tiara (which constantly slips down her face). When she orders our hapless pair to serve the salad undressed, Stan takes this literally and turns up in his Long Johns… Meanwhile, the family dog leaves a half-chewed banana skin on the carpet and it’s Ollie who slips on it while in the process of serving a huge cream cake. It’s not the only time he slips on the peel and numerous more cream cakes land on the carpet, with the final showdown taking place in the kitchen. Oh, what fun!

The other films on the first disc include ‘The Finishing Touch’ in which the duo fancy themselves as builders (just don’t expect the house is going to remain intact), ‘You’re ‘Darn Tootin’ (in which the duo play talentless musicians who enter the world of street busking after getting thrown out of their orchestra), ‘Their Purple Moment’, ‘Should Married Men go Home’ and ‘Early To Bed’, which sees Ollie coming into plenty of money thanks to an unexpected inheritance. Things go awry when he offers buddy Stan a job as his personal butler…

Disc 2 has considerably fewer films but the lack of shorts is balanced thanks to the feature length documentary ‘United We Fall’ by David Cairns and Fiona Watson, plus a ‘Robert Youngson tribute’ - a featurette about the producer/director by author Scott MacGillivray. The first short on the second disc is ‘Two Tars’ in which Stan and Ollie play two sailors on shore leave and decide to hire an automobile. Does it make any difference whether Stan or Ollie are in the driver’s seat? Of course not! After damaging a lamp post, the pair inadvertently get involved with two sassy dames as they struggle with a malfunctioning vending machine and before they know it, bubble gum is strewn all over the pavement. Of course, that’s a mere trifle compared with the soon-to-follow full throttle altercation involving numerous other motorists…

Equally hilarious is ‘Habeas Corpus’ (the film has a synchronised musical score and sound effects, though no dialogue). Here, a deranged scientist called Professor Padilla (Richard Carle) falls foul of the law due to his medical experiments involving corpses. Just as the sinister professor ponders over his theories concerning the human brain structure, two hapless down n’ outs (yes, Stan and Ollie) knock on the door begging for a slice of buttered toast. Instead of buttered toast, Professor Padilla offers the pair a whopping $500 if they are willing to dig up a cadaver (or two) from the nearby cemetery. Initially appalled, in the end Stan and Ollie eventually accept, unaware that Padilla’s butler is an undercover policeman… This is ghoulish fun and the graveyard scenes depicting Stan and Ollie scared witless are a riot. Final offerings are ‘We Faw Down’ (not their best effort, despite some solid gags) and the incomplete ‘Now I’ll Tell One’.

The films are 2K restored and the set is limited to 2000 copies only - presented in an O-Card slipcase and collector’s booklet. Additional bonus features include audio commentaries, rarely seen home movie footage from Stan Laurel’s home movie collection, plus trailer and stills gallery.