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"

Way Out West Year: 1937 Story by: Charles Rogers and Jack Jevne Written by: Charles Rogers, Felix Adler, James Parrott, James W. Horne (uncredited) and Arthur V. Jones (uncredited) Directed by: James W. Horne Duration: 62m DVD Availability: Try sendit.com (region 2 only) Viewpoint: "Tell me about my dear, dear Daddy. Is it true that he's dead?" "Well, we hope he is. They buried him." Way Out West is, in many ways, the archetypal Laurel & Hardy film, certainly one of the most famous. Yet in many senses it's hardly typical at all. Produced at a time when they were considered past their zenith, if not past their prime, it was the first year they'd only been involved in one production. With Pick A Star featuring just a cameo, and the generally superior shorts discarded for good in 1935 (again, pending a cameo in a '36 Charley Chase short), this was all they had as their product in 1937. What's also unusual is that, while many look on this as the classic image of the duo, it's one of just a handful of occasions where they play non-contemporaneous roles. While I largely prefer the shorts, for the feature-length movies then this one towers above them all. Okay, the Bard-referencing ingenuity of Our Relations runs a close second, but generally speaking this is the only time a full-length Stan and Ollie excursion really clicked, and didn't make you think it would have worked better as a two-reeler. Earlier long entries such as Pardon Us and Pack Up Your Troubles are fun but unexceptional, and cling too rigidly to the silent era. Sons of the Desert, despite giving the appreciation society its name, is average at best and phenomenally overrated. While The Bohemian Girl (actually being made a year before this, and so not, as I suggested in my review of said movie, a throwback to Way Out West - there's research for you!) struggles with the musical numbers that are not only seamlessly incorporated, but actual highlights here. And, of course, the less said about the post-Hal Roach movies the better. While this one succeeds over other L & H musicals by making its five musical numbers part of the narrative, the same cannot be said about Marvin Hatley's incidental music, which offers hard sell on the boys' comic personas. In fact, pound for pound this isn't their funniest film by any means, though is their most iconographic. Unusually, it's left to James Finlayson to carry the opening of the film alone, with the stars not emerging on screen until over five minutes in. Yet this is a film sophisticated enough to set up jokes without the need for immediate resolution: it's over ten minutes before we get the pay-off of Stan's steak shoe. There's some great bits of nonsense humour too, such as the "stretchy body parts" gag from Bohemian Girl, repeated twice here, most impressively with the stretching neck. Also a major delight is the rendition of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Infamously a top three hit in the UK nearly forty years later). Only with their superb timing can they make gags as outrageously silly as the bass/female voices for Stan work. In lesser hands it would be puerile - in the hands of Stan and Ollie it's comic genius. There is the slight nagging feeling that the second half isn't as good as the first, and like I said, it isn't their consistently funniest movie. But for being more than the sum of its parts, this is the Stan and Ollie film that more than any other truly earns a classic rating: