The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (1930)
Directed by James Parrott

Film Review

Presumably intended as a spoof of the popular silent horror film The Cat and the Canary (1927), The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case is far from being Laurel and Hardy's best film but it has a few moments of sublime comedy.  Everyone remembers the sequence in which a bat gets caught up in the bedsheets and goes flying after Stan and Ollie, who naturally mistake it for a ghostly apparition.  Less well known is that this is the first of their films in which Ollie delivers the line that was to become his frequently repeated (and often misquoted) catchphrase, 'Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.'  The film hardly does justice to its premise, which deserved a full length feature rather than a hurried three-reeler, but the sight of the world's two funniest men repeatedly falling down the stairs and being scared out of their wits by an assortment of bed linen and a butler who looks like Nosferatu's understudy can hardly fail to get a laugh.  Alas, the cop-out ending will have you grinding your teeth in disappointment...

Film Synopsis

Once more on their uppers, Stan and Ollie fish for their supper at a dockside.  After various mishaps, Ollie sees a notice in a newspaper inviting the relatives of the recently deceased Mr Ebeneezer Laurel to attend the reading of his will at his old mansion.  Stan is unsure whether he is related to the dead man but Ollie, convinced he is on to something, persuades his friend to go along and see if he can claim a share of the inheritance.  The will reading is no more than a pretext to lure all of the relatives of Ebeneezer Laurel to his house so that the police can determine who killed him.  Stan and Ollie arrive at the creepy old house on a stormy night and are invited to spend the night, in the room in which the old Mr Laurel died...