Customer Reviews

The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy: The Complete Collection, Vol. 8

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This DVD includes several classic Laurel and Hardy silent shorts. The first is "Two Tars" which many consider to be one of theire greatest works. It has Laurel and Hardy as sailors on leave who pick up two girls and go for a drive....with disaterous results.The next is "The Second Hundred Years" which finds the boys as convicts who try to break out of prison. The third films is "Slipping Wives" which is one of the earliest appearances of Laurel and Hardy together at hal Roach studios. Ollie is a butler and Stan is a paint salesman who is hired by Pricilla Dean (Who co-stared with Lon Chaney in "Outside the Law") to act as a great writer of fairy tales and make her neglectful husband jealous. Film highlights include Stan's pantomine of the story of Samson and Delialah and the final frantic chase.This films basic storyline was used several years later in one of Laurel and Hardys' last short films, "The Fixer-Uppers" Also included on the DVD is "From Soup to Nuts" in which Laurel and Hardy are hired to act as butlers for a swanky dinner party given by Anita Garvin (Who fans will remember from her performances as Mrs. Laurel in the sound films "Blotto" and "Be Big!") Ms Garvin is a great actress and is a welcome addition to any Laurel and Hardy film. In addition to these Laurel and Hardy teamed films there are also two additional shorts, "Scorching Sands", and "Should Tall Men Marry?" This DVD is a showcase of some of the best works of Laurel and Hardy during their silent film days and is highly recommended for any Laurel and Hardy fan.

Volume 8 in this fine series starts off with one of the greatest silent comedies of all time, TWO TARS. I've loved this film ever since I was a teenager in the 1960s and owned an 8 mm. print. Fortunately, this film comes down to us in excellent condition. Another big hit, FROM SOUP TO NUTS, is on this DVD. A hilarious film, SOUP is more "Low Brow" humor of rather predictable gags at a dinner party. However, I've seen this film in theater audiences and almost had to call for paramedics because some people were laughing so hard. (Incidently, if you've never seen an L&H film with an audience, you haven't really seen it. An audience transforms these films).

THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS and SLIPPING WIVES show us the boys' early work as a team when producer Hal Roach was still trying to promote Jimmy Finlayson as a star. Fin would find his niche on the Roach lot, but as a supporting player in L&H films.

Two of Stan's earlier solo films without Hardy, SHOULD TALL MEN MARRY? - his final solo work - and SCORCHING SANDS, a spoof of the adventure film, Under Two Flags (this spoof is also known as UNDER TWO JAGS) show Stan as a comedian badly in need of a character. He does funny things but without much logic. SANDS is interesting because it also stars his then-wife, Mae Laurel, who was so tempermental, nobody wanted to employ Stan as a result of his association with her. His career took off when she went back to Australia.

Personally, I believe that L&H did their best work in their silent films so this series is a treasure trove. Highly recommended.

I will not go into a synopsis of the material as that is readily available but will comment on the series itself having viewed them all.

This is a stunning collection of the early work of the `boys` and is presented from restored 35mm material much of which is taken from the original surviving negatives. Several of the titles in the series, have until fairly recently, been considered lost forever.

Each disc has detailed information on the titles and every film is presented with either the original vitaphone sound on disc (again recently discovered) synchronised with the picture or with a composite vitaphone soundtrack.

Even for those who don`t normally view `silent` movies these are astounding prints of what is now the historic formation of one the most inventive and forever lasting comedy teams ever to grace the silver screen.

Each disc deserves five stars for content, quality and value.

This might be the eighth volume of lost films from the great comedy team of Laurel & Hardy, but these silent shorts represent some of the earliest work by the boys. In "Two Tars," Laurel & Hardy are a couple of sailors on leave who rent a car and pick up a couple of girls for a pleasant ride in the country in one of the absolute best silent comedies by the delightful duo. The boys and girls head off for a relaxing day only to end up in a massive traffic jam because of roadwork. With tempers already frayed, Stan and Ollie precipitate a riot amongst the motorists in general and Edgar Kennedy in particular before being chased into a train tunnel. Originally three reels and called "Two Tough Tars," this 1928 comedy directed by James Parrott was pared down to two reels and became this comedy classic. "The Second Hundred Years" finds Laurel & Hardy as convicts who escape from prison disguised as painters only to end up right back where they started when they are mistaken for a pair of French prison officials making an inspection tour. This 1927 film directed by Fred Guiol from a story by Leo McCarey, has the distinction of being the first "official" Laurel & Hardy film.

"Slipping Wives" stars Priscilla Dean who is trying to make husband Herbert Rawlinson jealous by flirting with handyman Stan Laurel. Hardy plays the family butler (without a moustache), who has a comic encounter with Laurel. This 1927 two-reeler directed by Guiol is one of the earliest film in which the boys appeared, however they are not a team at this point. "From Soup to Nuts" stars Laurel & Hardy as inexperienced waiters sent by an employment agency to help newly-rich Anita Garvin impress her new friends. This 1928 two-reeler, directed by foil E. Livingston Kennedy (better known as the famous comic foil Edgar Kennedy), is the first film in which the boys receive star billing. Also included in this volume are a couple of solo shorts starring Stan Laurel, 1923's "Scorching Sands" and a color tinted version of 1927's rather lame "Should Tall Men Marry?"

A trio of classic Laurel and Hardy two-reelers highlight Volume 8 in "The Lost Films" series. "Two Tars" (1928), "The Second Hundred Years" (1927) and "From Soup to Nuts" (1928) represent masterful displays of comic invention. Overall, the 35mm prints are very good, but the public-domain musical accompaniment becomes repetitive. The remaining shorts in this collection - the embryonic "Slipping Wives" (1926) and two Laurel solo efforts, "Scorching Sands" (1923) and "Should Tall Men Marry?" (1927) - are worth seeing only from an academic standpoint. Hopefully, this series will be reissued with stronger music tracks while focusing solely on L&H films.

This volume is one of the best of the "lost silent films" collection, comprised of three solid performances from 1928 that illustrate the diversity and sophistication of Laurel and Hardy's comic style. Two Tars implements the vintage L&H formula of orchestrated chaos (repeated in Your Darn Tootin, Big Business, and many other films) to perfection. Two Tars has an appealing breeziness that results from the story's premise: the boys are seamen on leave egged on to perform "senseless acts of violence" by two delectable flappers, inflicted on cars stranded in a traffic jam. The wave of destruction builds to a crescendo of twisted metal until the boys are exposed as the perpetrators, and a short chase ends the film.

The Second Hundred Years, by contrast, has a comic formula that explores fertile new ground for the duo's humor. They are prisoners (shaved heads and all) who through their incompetence can't quite adjust to prison routine. They pull off not one but two disguises, one as painters in order to escape prison, the other as French officials inspecting the very prison they have recently escaped from! The best scene is their attempt to convince a suspicious cop that they are real painters by literally "painting the town" -- including cars, street lamps, and a flapper's derriere. The ballet-like grace with which Oliver Hardy, especially, tries unsuccessfully to imitate a professional painter is priceless. Rotund Hardy has clearly learned from Fatty Arbuckle's ability to mine comic moments from being dexterous in spite of his girth. One leaves this film with the sense that the rich comic situations here could have been developed further, and indeed the basic structure of the film was repeated later in Pardon Us (1931) expanded into a feature length film.

From Soup to Nuts is the weakest of the three, but still entertaining, as the boys are hired by a "nouveau riche" family to serve dinner to a collection of distinguished friends. Most of the happenings are funny because of their predictability -- laws of nature dictate that when Hardy carries a large cake to a dining room, he must somehow fall into it, and the laws of nature are confirmed repeatedly here. The film also contains the popular and voluptuous L&H supporting case member Anita Garvin who performs the same gag with an uncooperative cherry that Laurel does in Second Hundred years.

Each volume in the series contains additional short films either by Laurel or Hardy alone, or by other comics in the Hal Roach factory, and this volume is no exception. These films tend to be at best of purely of historical interest to L&H fans, and at worst, worthless filler. But overall this volume in the series is one of the best.

We love them. The films are hilarious and quality historic entertainment that I share with my family and friends. New doesn't always mean better.

The above-average Volume Eight of THE LOST [SILENT] FILMS OF LAUREL AND HARDY has two of the funniest shorts the men ever made, TWO TARS and FROM SOUP TO NUTS (both 1928). In TWO TARS, they play two sailors out for a Sunday drive with two pretty women. They get involved in the greatest and funniest traffic jam in movie history, with everyone tearing apart pieces of everyone else's car. And FROM SOUP TO NUTS has Laurel and Hardy as klutzy waiters for a fancy mansion dinner, with hilarious results. Watch Stan serve lettuce in woolen underwear when told to serve the salad undressed. And watch how many times Ollie can trip, fall face first into a cake, and still make it funny. Both of these incomparable comedies have been mastered from the original nitrate camera negative from Hal Roach Studios.

I wish the other four shorts on Volume Eight were this stupendous; they are enjoyable and at least look great, masterered from 35mm camera negatives and with wonderful Jazz Age scores. In THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS (1927), Stan and Ollie are convicts who escape from prison masquerading as painters who somehow end up pretending to be high society servants--before their French police hosts want to see the prison the boys have escaped from!

SLIPPED WIVES (also 1927) stars long-forgotten Priscilla Dean as a bored rich woman who hires Stan to make love to her to make her bored husband jealous. Hardy is a butler.

SCORCHING SANDS (1923), the weakest short in this set, is a one reel comedy with Laurel alone doing a parody of French Foreign Legion adventures. It somehow is not as funny for me as it should be. Maybe if I saw it with an audience.

Same with SHOULD TALL MEN MARRY (again 1927). The tinted archive print could not be more beautiful and the music score is wonderful. But the writing is lacking. In his last solo outing without Hardy, Laurel is working on a ranch with Jimmy Finlayson, his daughter Martha Sleeper, and a stubborn mule. Bad guys steal the daughter; Laurel and Finlayson rescue her. The movie is important because from now on every single film Stan made would have him starring as a team with "Babe" Hardy. But it isn't a very good movie for me. Again, maybe an art theatre audience would make it come alive.

The total running time for this volume is 119 minutes.

Every piece of those two guys work is only pleasure. I discovered them when I was 5 and now, more than 50 years later, they still make me laugh like a child.

This disc showcases some of Laurel and Hardy's funniest and best silent shorts, and I also found there was more variety in the backing music than in some of the other discs in this series. 'From Soup to Nuts' is hands-down the best and funniest one on here, their funniest silent short I've seen so far. Part of what makes their sound shorts so funny is the fact that their voices just totally matched their personalities and physical appearance, adding to already funny situations, but in 'From Soup to Nuts' the gags and situations are so hilarious they don't even need speech to add to the hilarity. 'Two Tars' and 'The Second Hundred Years' are also hilarious and classic, very strong material. The fourth L&H short on here, 'Slipping Wives,' features them together but not really a proper team, though they have more interaction here than in some of their other shorts where they appeared together before being officially teamed. That one is also very strong and funny. Of the two Stan solo shorts featured, 'Under Two Jags' (which admittedly might be a mislabeling of a different film, 'Scorching Sands') is the stronger and funnier, despite the fact that there's not a single intertitle besides the introductory one. In my opinion the weakest one is Stan's final solo short, 'Should Tall Men Marry?' It's well-written and well-acted enough, but just not as interesting, funny, or solid as the other five.