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"

Oliver The Eighth Year: 1934 Directed by: Lloyd French Duration: 26m DVD Availability: Try sendit.com (region 2 only) Viewpoint: "She fell for me like a ton of bricks." With its attempts at the macabre and book-ending dream sequence, Oliver the Eighth is almost a reworking of The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case from four years previously. This is better though. For one thing, even though it's only three minutes shorter, it feels much tighter and constructed. Plus, Lloyd French's direction is more assured and the whole thing has a genuinely unsettling undertone. In fact, with five shorts under his belt, including The Midnight Patrol and Busy Bodies, there's a case to be had that French was the most adept with the format. The nonsense wordplay normally given entirely to Stan is here in evidence, with Jack Barty as a deceptively insane butler. However, "nice weather we had tomorrow" acts more as a sinister threat than surrealist absurdity in this context. Yet while nominally a very straight and creepy movie with Ollie as the central figure, there's still plenty of great work from Stan, who helps to provide the film's lighter touches. If it's laughs you're after, then this isn't the most traditionally humorous Stan and Ollie vehicle, yet Stan's garbled response to "tell me that again" is a delight. The idiocy of a man who goes down the street for a shave when he owns his own barbershop is a joke subtly slipped in to the narrative, while the revelation of the shop sale is hilarious. "Well," says Stan, holding what is very obviously a house brick wrapped up, "I didn't exactly sell it, I swapped it." He then goes on, with perfect timing, to unwrap it, the brick being appropriately painted and a sticker on the side reading "solid gold." He then goes on to produce some nuts which he was given "for good measure". Ollie's six seconds worth of double-takes throughout seem like an eternity as his eyes burn through the screen. My housemate told me they could actually hear my laughter all the way through the house at this point, a classic exchange. There's some intelligent ideas at work, too: Ollie constructs Stan his very own Sword of Damocles (with a candle and the aforementioned brick!) while Stan debates the logic of dreams within dreams, cleverly presaging the film's own closing theme. It's also quite terrifying for youngsters, with a kitchen knife actually being pressed against Ollie's throat. If we really want to read into this, we can argue that the sharpening of two knives is a symbol for wishing to castrate, not garrotte, Hardy, both stars having divorces and alimony behind them at this stage. Their attempted salvation by joining each other in bed is yet more fuel for the homosexual theorists. Like Below Zero or, to a lesser extent, Our Relations, Oliver the Eighth is a work that tries to be more than a typical L & H vehicle and has higher standards of artistry. Though not without its own humour or charm, this is a genuinely chilling entry that acts a perfect complement to their more obviously funny pieces...