Customer Reviews

Laurel & Hardy: Bohemian Girl / Below Zero [VHS]

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This is one of the best Laurel & Hardy features i've seen. I haven't seen them all but i've seen most of them and so far only "Way Out West" and maye "Sons Of The Desert" are better then this one. It's definitly one of the top 5 movies they made. Incredibly funny with an amusing story behind it. Some needless musical numbers but overall a fantastic film. Apparently there is another story behind this film...actress Thelma Todd's last film as she died later in the year from "accidental carbon minoxide poisoining"...and apparently because of that was left out of a big chunk of the movie. Neverthess...a fantastic movie and keep an eye out for possibly the funniest scene in Laurel & Hardy cinema history when Stanley gets himself drunk trying to fill beer bottles!

Though "Swiss Miss" was among Laurel and Hardy's weaker features, it contained several vintage sequences. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about "The Bohemian Girl" (1936) - a dour comic opera with few highlights. What worked so beautifully in "Fra Diavolo" falls flat this time around. The Stan and Ollie characters remain submerged in the operetta's unrelenting heaviness. After her mysterious death, Thelma Todd's final screen role was severely truncated in post-production, which didn't help matters.

"The Bohemian Girl" is the last in the series of fairly popular Laurel & Hardy features based on an operetta, in this case one by Balfe (no, never heard of him before either). Once upon a time there were gypsies who were offended by a noble and kidnapped his only child to raise the girl as one of their own. Years later the gypsies return to the area where the girl, now grown up and in love, has no clue about her true identity. Of course, in the end, the truth will come out. This film remains surprisingly faithful to the operetta, but then eliminates most of the music without really beefing up the comedy routines by Laurel & Hardy. This is why "The Bohemian Girl" is considered the weakest of the boys' operetta take offs. There comedy routines are certainly up to par, especially the torture chamber sequence, but there should be more of them. You might even think this would have been a stronger film without them, instead of just wedging them in here and there.