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"

Thicker Than Water Year: 1935 Directed by: James W. Horne Duration: 20m DVD Availability: Try sendit.com (region 2 only) Viewpoint: "Well here's another nice kettle of fish you've pickled me in." Just as I felt duty-bound to cover their first talkie, no Laurel and Hardy reviews site would be complete without a look at their final short. Apart from a cameo in a Charley Chase short (On The Wrong Trek) and the educational The Tree In A Test Tube, this would be the last work they would do that was under the half-hour mark. After this it was seven more Hal Roach pictures (plus the Pick A Star cameo), some of which were classic (Way Out West, Our Relations), other just mediocre (Swiss Miss, Saps At Sea). Three years after this and they'd make their first below-par non-Roach effort (The Flying Deuces) and then from 1941 onwards die a slow and painful cinematic death in atrocious dirges for MGM, Fox and Franco London. Back to happier times, and I do think that I found Thicker Than Water a much funnier experience because it's so rarely discussed. If it had been hyped up like The Music Box or County Hospital then maybe I'd find some of the dumber, more obvious moments of humour an annoyance. Yet seeing Stan eating flower stems for no reason whatsoever, or seeing the duo being so stupid they place a grandfather clock in the middle of a busy road had me in fits of laughter. Ollie's optimistic catchphrases, which always presage disaster, are particularly amusing here, injecting "Say, that's a good idea" and "now we're getting someplace" with aplomb. Just seeing him smash what obviously wouldn't really have been boiling hot plates shows what a tremendous comic actor Hardy was. And when the clock gets inevitably driven over less than two seconds after they put it down Ollie's frustrated lack of verbal expression works because we've seen him rage before. Here he's gone beyond rage and into embittered acceptance. There's a certain self-referencing in this film, with the KuKu theme being directly invoked, and, most bizarrely, three occasions of the leads being aware they're in a film and pulling in the next frame. Stan, desperate to escape the wrath of Ollie's wife, accidentally lets it go and runs back to grab it, aware that the only way he can leave the scene is to bring in the next one. Like many Laurel and Hardy films, the comic ideas aren't always developed as well as perhaps they might be, and so what could be an innovative post-modern gesture seems merely bunged into the mix of what is at heart an unfocussed film. The fact that the whole point of the title - a blood transfusion - isn't introduced until the last quarter shows that this is a short with no fixed purpose. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as while there is a linking theme - as usual, a dominant wife - it allows lots of mini sequences, such as the bidding scene. Is it funny though? God, yeah. Not laugh out loud hilarious all the way through, but plenty of smiles and chuckles throughout. Even just silly little things that you might overlook at first, such as Stan's returned greeting to a hospital staff member ("Good morning, Mr. Laurel" "Good morning, Mrs. Nurse") bring a wry grin. Also of note is the Freud-troubling thermometer scene, which is made worse by the poor acting of the dark-haired nurse. And so, the twist ending. I normally love twist endings, but this one falls somewhat short, largely because by their very nature they're more disturbing than amusing. Watching Laurel and Hardy movies again in fairly rapid succession I've been struck by the fact that Hardy is the better actor out of the two. Not a slight against Stan, who is excellent in his own right, but Oliver is magnificent. Strangely, this doesn't translate to the final scene, where Hardy seems unable to lip-synch half as well as his co-star, or imitate his mannerisms to the same extent. It's an okay end, a little lacklustre, but then what else would you expect for something that's nearly seventy years old?