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"

Hog Wild Year: 1930 Directed by: James Parrott Duration: 18m DVD Availability: Try sendit.com (region 2 only) Viewpoint: "Do you mind if I help you?" "I don't mind... that is, if you'll help me" One of the most well received Laurel and Hardy films, I’ve never really been a huge fan of Hog Wild. As always, this site is just my own opinions on the films, so you might want to take this review with a pinch of salt and add two extra bowler hat stars to the final score. But if giving my personal opinion is what it’s about, then there’s something slightly too staged about this one, probably down to Parrott’s direction. His 22 Stan and Ollie pictures (not counting their foreign language versions) probably produced more misses than hits, though if only for Two Tars should he be always lauded. This one though seems to lack the free-flowing spontaneity that the others appear to have. A decent enough short, though personally I don’t really get off on the pure, 100% slapstick films, other than Busy Bodies. I probably loved this one as a youngster, but now I’m older I go more for the unusual or character-heavy ones. If slapstick is used, I like it to back up the situation, rather than be the situation. Characterisation is also slightly different than usual – Ollie is more aggressive, his wife gets to share in his long looks to camera and Stan’s first mishap is caused when he tries to look up a girl’s skirt. (Shades of Putting Pants On Phillip?) It IS funny stuff though, the repetition of themes and clear telegraphing of jokes increasing their value. With all the various “handymen” shorts Laurel and Hardy did, it always amazes me that they never tackled the subject of painting and decorating. Granted, Busy Bodies contains a bit of brush work, but Stan trying to put up wallpaper is something that I feel sure I’ve seen, but doesn’t actually exist. For an example of just how good the Hal Roach productions could be, look at the acrophobia-inducing rooftop struggles, or the final dash through the city streets with Ollie on the top of a car-propelled ladder. In the Fox features (and, to be fair, County Hospital), crass back projection would have done the job, but not so here. Special mention must also be made of the dog that inexplicably runs into shot in the background of the final scene. One interesting point about Hog Wild is that most of the early sound shorts were originally unpunctuated by music, and only got the music most now contain on rereleases. Blotto was the first to get a specially-composed score, with Hog Wild just ascribed stock musical numbers. As Hog Wild (released in Britain as Aerial Antics) was never re-released, it’s a film that can still be watched with its original soundtrack. This isn’t necessarily a good thing in this case, as the four incongruous jazz numbers are actually fairly distracting rather than enhancing the mood. If you’re interested in the musical scores that went behind Laurel and Hardy films, then there’s a detailed write-up about them at the wonderful Laurel and Hardy Central. One notable element about Hog Wild in terms of the sequence of Laurel and Hardy shorts is that while it followed a run of four extremely good shorts on release in 1930 (including the classic – in this site’s opinion - Blotto) the rest of the year’s output, punctuated by a sadness in Stan’s personal life, was distinctly below par. In fact, the rest of the year’s releases - The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, Another Fine Mess and Be Big! - are three of just eight sound shorts to receive a below-average rating on this site. While this does mean that An Online Mess… regards 80% of the sound shorts as average or above, an extremely good hit rate, it does also mean, sadly, that 1930’s releases from September onwards were pretty disastrous…