Block-Heads (1938)

Considered by Most Fans of the Team, possibly the Best of Stan and Ollie's Feature Films. Running just under an Hour, Doubling the Length of Their Shorts, it isn't beyond the Boy's Ability to make it work just fine.It's One Sight Gag after another with the Added Pleasure of Wordplay and Subtle Surrealism. Laurel and Hardy always seem to be Loving and Accepting Friends on the Screen and that is Part of Their Charm. Stan could get Ollie into a Another Fine Mess but Hardy always was Forgiving and ready for another Adventure.Sadly, there wouldn't be many Adventures Remaining, but the Great Body of Work the Team Created are Considered Comedic Genius for the most part. This is a Good Example of Their Routines and is one worth checking out for Anyone Unfamiliar and wanting to see what all the Fuss is About.If You Enjoy this one, there are Two Decades worth of Gold for the Discovery. The Highlights Here are Many…Stan Smoking His Pipe...Drinking a Glass of Water (with ice), a Football, a Car (of course) and a Garage...Bed Springs...a Chair...a Thick Steak...Cans and Cans of Beans...13 Flights of Stairs..."There's going to be a fight."...and Many Many More.Have Fun.

I just watched Block-Heads as part of the newly-released "Essentials" DVD collection, and thought it was very enjoyable. Although it was one of the boys later efforts for Hal Roach, the energy and slapstick were still to be seen in full force. I have scanned the user reviews for Block-Heads on IMDb, and did not see any reference to something that I believe slipped by the censors, and obviously most viewers. I was a bit startled to notice that at the 54:50 mark of the film, as Mrs. Hardy slams the non-working phone down, she seems to utter the s-word! Check it out, and see if you hear what I hear. This curse word seems to be quite audible, more so than Edgar Kennedy's s-word slip in "Perfect Day." Minna Gombell, playing Mrs. Hardy, had obviously worked herself up into such a state of agitation, that this word just seemed to slip out, and strangely, no one seemed to notice!

There's nothing rough-edged about this feature film. By this stage of their careers, Laurel and Hardy knew pretty much exactly what they were doing, and it works as well here as anywhere else.It's 1917, World War I, and Hardy and the rest go over the top while Laurel is left behind in the trench to guard his post until relieved. Laurel is forgotten by the Army.Twenty years pass and Laurel sticks to his daily routine, marching back and forth in the trench, throwing his empty bean can on a mountain of empty cans. Finally he's discovered and taken to an Army hospital in Los Angeles, where he winds up squirming into an amputees wheelchair so that it appears that he has lost a leg.Hardy sees Laurel's photo in the newspaper and rushes to the hospital. Seeing Laurel with only one leg, Hardy offers to carry him home and give him a good meal. In the movie's funniest scene, Hardy is hefting the compliant but stupid Laurel along the sidewalk. At one point Hardy drops his hat, falls down trying to retrieve it. Laurel gets to his feet, helps Hardy up, hops back into Hardy's arms, and the trek continues all the way to the car before Hardy realizes what's up.Back at the apartment, the Army theme is dropped and it becomes a familiar tale of Hardy getting mixed up with his own wife and a pretty next-door neighbor who is married to a blustering big game hunter. "I don't bring 'em back alive. I bring 'em back dead. I come back alive!" It's certainly one of their better features.

Producer Hal Roach was reportedly disturbed at the increasingly bizarre endings Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy proposed for their MGM-released features of the mid/late-30s but the comedic results here more than warrant it. The feature begins making you think it will be merely a spoof of a slightly-musty WWI 'returning veteran' melodrama, then enters a strange, deceptive 'midground' number of scenes where the two are supposedly happily reunited yet must almost literally battle each other in an undercurrent of mindslips, oddball personas, switched anonymity, and a willfully ignorant understanding of lethal technology (Stan attempts to back up a loaded dump truck to help Ollie leave a parking space and instead spills a ton of dirt and refuse right on Ollie's head. The results aren't much better when Ollie--unexplainedly--soon allows him to drive the car into his home parking garage.) The film's mise en scene finally settles at the resplendent, multi-leveled apartment complex where Ollie tries to get his previously sweet and accommodating wife to fix a steak "this thick" (Ollie holds his fingers apart several inches to indicate the due process and wealth both men are implicitly entitled to) for them. But once Ollie inadvertently destroys the complex's only elevator and the two begin to create total havoc not only with several other residents but with Oliver's own wife the film is a textbook example of brilliantly refined movie comedic targeting: sweetly gentle optical fades from debris-ridden visual punch lines, well-timed and properly attenuated sound effects (the 'hiss' from Oliver's kitchen gas stove when Stan dimly attempts to try to light it is particularly dangerous sounding), public revealment of the often unglamorous politics of marriage and neighborliness, supposedly innocent bystanders turned cheerleaders of outright societal collapse and hungry for more (this IMDBer was on the floor by the time a totally innocent married woman from across the hall had been stripped of her normal clothes & wearing Ollie's pajamas had to escape her own husband by masquerading as a chair while Stan kept trying to sit on her.) Say what you will about the increasingly poisonous business relationship between Stan and Hal Roach, the film is polished looking, employs several old timers from their silent years, and I found the portrayal of the women understanding and believable, not as quaint (Marx Brothers) or bellicose (W.C. Fields) as some of the competing comedy works of that era. Hadn't seen this one in years but it proves the boys were capable of many more years of contribution with the right administrative and technical support.