Silent Films: pre-team 1921-1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1928 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1929 Laurel and Hardy sound films (alphabetical order): A-Haunting We Will Go Air Raid Wardens Another Fine Mess Any Old Port! Atoll K (aka Utopia) Babes In Toyland Beau Hunks Be Big! Below Zero Berth Marks The Big Noise Block-Heads Blotto The Bohemian Girl Bonnie Scotland Brats The Bullfighters Busy Bodies Chickens Come Home - The Chimp A Chump At Oxford Come Clean County Hospital The Dancing Masters The Devil's Brother aka Fra Diavolo Dirty Work The Fixer Uppers The Flying Deuces Fra Diavolo aka The Devil's Brother Going Bye-Bye! Great Guns Helpmates Hog Wild The Hoose-Gow Jitterbugs Laughing Gravy The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case The Live Ghost Me And My Pal Men O'War The Midnight Patrol The Music Box Night Owls Nothing But Trouble Oliver The Eighth One Good Turn Our Relations Our Wife Pack Up Your Troubles Pardon Us Perfect Day Saps At Sea Scram! Sons of the Desert Swiss Miss Their First Mistake Them Thar Hills They Go Boom! Thicker Than Water Tit For Tat Towed In A Hole Twice Two Unaccustomed As We Are Utopia (aka Atoll K) Way Out West Specials: Cameos Cartoons For Love Or Mummy Laurel and Hardy Memories "Stan"

The Bullfighters Year: 1945 Written by: W. Scott Darling Directed by: Mal St. Clair Duration: 58m Availability (VHS Only): Try sendit.com Viewpoint: "Remember your dignity!" The Bullfighters was the one that brought it all to a close. Contracted to make another four movies for Fox, Stan and Ollie finally decided they’d had enough, and jacked it all in to retire and go on a tour of Britain. Six years later they would finally be tempted out of that retirement to make the even more appalling Utopia, but for the purposes of their mindset when they made The Bullfighters, that was it – enough was enough. In truth, The Bullfighters is really not that much worse than any of their other Fox movies, and probably even better in some respects. There’s some old school business like a recreation of the egg smashing scene from Hollywood Party (ruined by having dire chicken sound effects dubbed over the top) and a water fight with an angry hotel guest. However, what causes this film to earn the lowest rating I can give it is the look of total despondency on the faces of the two stars. Although Stan was rumoured to have got to direct the two scenes described, for the rest of the film he’s got the look of a tired man who’s spent the last four years having his heart kicked out. None of the Fox writers really understood what made Laurel and Hardy work, and none of them were prepared to listen. The plot sees the duo as two quite useless detectives who get mixed up in a bullfight due to Stan's uncanny likeness to the Barcelona bullfighter Don Sebastian. (Simon Louvish's fine book The Roots of Comedy points out that the comedy The Kid From Spain had had someone impersonating a Don Sebastian II 12 years earlier). An example of how botched the humour can become is when the real Sebastian successfully fights a bull - a drunken Stan is hurled into the arena by Ollie. The bull looks on, confused, and, after having fought Sebastian (who Ollie thought was Stan) gets ready to resume the conflict. So you have over two minutes of Stan-as-Don fighting a bull, often made up of stock footage (are you following this?) and, after having sat through all that, you then have the pay-off of a drunk Stan getting hurled around by a bull… yet the crowd storms the arena and it never happens. So what's the point? It's like a comic set-up with the joke taken out, and fails to satisfy. The only remaining "gag" in the piece is that Ollie watches Sebastian and marvels at how good at bullfighting he is… because he thinks it’s Stan. Not really very inspiring, is it? Stuff like the bit on the bales of hay might have been funny when they were indestructible cartoon figures, too, but when they're vulnerable old men made up of backdrops and dummies it loses something in translation. People slate Fox for the way they treated Stan and Ollie, but in taking them on they were hardly getting a premier league partnership any more, either, it’s a shame to admit. For trivia, then the trick ending is gruesome albeit technically impressive, and was the clip used in the first season X-Files episode Tooms. The Bullfighters, then… the film that caused Stan and Ollie to call it a day.