Block-Heads (1938) - film review

During WWI, Stan and Ollie bid a fond farewell just before Ollie goes over the top, leaving his friend to guard the trench.  Twenty years later, Stan is still there, mechanically patrolling the trench, completely oblivious to the changes that have happened in the outside world.   After he tries unsuccessfully to shoot down a passing aeroplane, Stan receives a visit from an irate pilot, who informs him that the war has been over for years.  In the meantime, Ollie has married and settled down in America.  He can hardly believe his eyes when he sees Stan’s photograph in the newspaper, with an account of his fantastic story.  He wastes not a second and is soon enjoying a happy reunion with his old friend at a home for old soldiers.  Mistakenly believing that Stan lost one of his legs in the war, Ollie insists that he comes back to his apartment for a slap-up meal.  When they finally get back home, the two men receives a frosty reception from Ollie’s wife, who chooses this moment to leave her husband.  Ollie insists that he can cook a meal to rival his wife’s culinary talents.   Oh dear...

Considered by many to be the most entertaining of Laurel and Hardy’s feature-length films, Block-Heads sees the legendary duo at their comedic best as they enact one brilliantly orchestrated slapstick routine after another in a relentlessly funny tour de force.  The gags are predictable and very familiar to ardent L&H fans, owing to the fact that many of them have been recycled from previous films, but none fails to get that seismic belly laugh.  Way Out West (1937) may have the edge from the point of view of plot and production values, but Block-Heads is funnier and, with its exploding kitchen, bitching wife and seemingly endless staircase gag, is more typical of Stan and Ollie’s style of comedy.

And this could have been the last film the duo made.  Producer Hal Roach was about to end his contract with MGM and sign a new deal with United Artists.  Laurel and Hardy were coming to the end of their contract with Roach and had fallen out, their personal antagonism compounded by the breakdown of Stan Laurel’s marriage to his third wife.  As the team began working on Block-Heads, without much in the way of enthusiasm, it was widely believed that this would be the very last Laurel and Hardy film.  Fortunately, it wasn’t.  Stan and Ollie managed to patch up their differences and Hal Roach continued to employ them, albeit with increasing reluctance.  Their best work may have been behind them, but Laurel and Hardy were sill making films and entertaining audiences for another decade.

© Brian Evans 2010

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