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"

Fra Diavolo aka The Devil's Brother

Year: 1933
Written by: Jeanie MacPherson from Daniel Auber's 1830 comic opera
Directed by: Hal Roach and Charles Rogers
Duration: 89m
DVD Availability: Try amazon (region 1)/sendit.com (region 2)

Ollio complains about his noose being too tight Spived!

Viewpoint:
"You're Spivved!"

An unusual turn of phrase that isn't used that widely any more - if at all - it's Hardy's reaction to a drunken Stan in what is probably the film's highlight.

When Universal Pictures released a wonderfully chic boxset of all the Hal Roach Laurel and Hardy comedies, they sadly omitted this little-seen operatta (as well as Babes in Toyland and Bonnie Scotland), making the 21 disc set incomplete. That's "little seen" by Laurel and Hardy standards, incidentally, as to the best of my knowledge this one has never been aired on UK television, and is potentially even more obscure than the silent shorts or the post-Roach endeavours. Produced from February 4th - March 4th 1933, it had a reported 27 minutes of Roach-shot drama hacked out of it, with the Charles Rogers-helmed Laurel and Hardy sequences left untouched. It's due to this that the film is so watchable, as Stan and Ollie - or Stanlio and Ollio as their 18th century counterparts are known here, the first time they'd played non-contempraneous roles "in character" - are on screen virtually throughout. It has to be said that their performance isn't exactly vintage L & H, but often that's just due to overfamilarity with the rest of their canon. In the following year's short, Oliver The Eighth, Stan would garble his train of thought, an hysterical development. Here the far less well-known Devil's Brother has him do it early, with "If we became rich, and we robbed the poor and we gave them to the bandits... we could start at the top and we could get to the bottom without working hard any more. We can't go wrong. It's the law of conversation." Unfortunately, to anyone without a filmography to hand, it looks as if The Devil's Brother has merely reprised the short, rather than the other way round.

There are some inspired moments, including two or three laugh-out-loud bits towards the end, and Kneesie Earsie Nosey really is a difficult thing to do. The film is also surprisingly high in sexual allusion and threatened knife mutilation. While earlier I slated the dreadful Utopia for having jokes about hanging, here it works brilliantly, with Ollio complaining to Stanio about his tying his noose (under duress) too tight.

Based on the 1830 operatta Fra Diavolo, this was the boy's third full-length feature (discounting their bulked-up cameos in The Rogue Song) and is more often known under the title of The Devil's Brother. Other titles have emerged, such as Bogus Bandits and several when it has been reworked for compilations. A first attempt to try something different, I get the feeling that Fra Diavolo rewards repeat viewings...




Post-script: Watching this film for just the second time in July 2007, I pretty much concur with what I originally wrote. While this is apparently the joint favourite of the two stars, it's not them at their best, but then neither is it awful. The boys appear for just under an hour in the runtime (yeah, I was sad enough to count) and some of the routines feel a little contrived and forced. However, any scene they feature in with Dennis King is gold, and the scene where Stan(lio) pulls the ladder away from Hardy is hilarious. The drunk scene is okay, but not as good as they'd done before or after, though as referenced the number of risque sexual allusions in the film or the morbid references to death are striking. In particular, a scene where Ollio tells a stalling Stan that he's "wasting my time" while he's about to be hanged is a perverse delight. A pretty average film, but not a bad one, even if James Finlayson is wasted.


Asleep on the job... Tears before their execution...