Die Klotzköpfe

BLOCK-HEADS is set up with an idea which must have seemed totally ridiculous in 1938 but when you stop to consider that Japanese soldiers were being found on remote Pacific islands 30 years after the second world war ended the idea stops being ridiculous and becomes shockingly prophetic

This is possibly the last of the great L&H movies ( FLYING DUECES being the only other contender ) , after this the comedy duo started appearing in studio features that didn't seem to show much respect to their genius , made them slightly off centre and stretched stories out for almost 90 minutes when a 60 page script would have worked much better

This means that BLOCK-HEADS suffers from the mild irritation of so many other Stan and Ollie star vehicles - It's rather episodic . But seeing as it's so funny what have we got to complain about ? Listen out for Stan's tagline " Is there gonna be a fight ? " which is repeated several times and the surreal sequence of closing the blinds on the stairway . Strange when people discuss the films of these two comedy gods they always think of slapstick but forget they were also masters of surrealist visualism too . The funniest moment is probably the final scene in Ollie's apartment involving the married couple from next door

I still think THE LAUREL AND MURDER HARDY CASE is the best of their vehicles but BLOCK-HEADS deserves its own mention as being one of the very last superb Stan and Ollie comedies

Do you have the feeling that the folks in the army deliberately forgot to tell Stan that World War I was over? Maybe they just didn't want the troop ship to sink on the way back from France.

If that was the case Ollie made the mistake of his life when he decided to invite his long lost buddy Stan over to meet the wife and have a good home cooked meal. Ollie's happily married now to Minna Gombell and when we first meet them he seems to be one happy well adjusted man.

Blockheads really starts when Stan is reunited with Ollie at the old soldier's home. I guess a grateful government is giving Stan free room and board for being the last man discharged from World War I. Still there's nothing like home cooking.

I think Blockheads offers us the proposition that Ollie can be a well adjusted if somewhat fatuous individual by himself. It's only apparently when he interacts with Stan that things just seem to happen.

And in fact that's what Blockheads is, a series of gags from the time that Ollie meets Stan at the home and just assumes he's an amputee because he's decided to sit a wheelchair rigged up for one. Right up to the point where big game hunter Billy Gilbert, the Hardy's next door neighbor chases the both of them out of the house because he catches Mrs. Gilbert in Ollie's pajamas. How she got in them? You have to see Blockheads to find out.

Best gag I thought was Stan dealing with an obnoxious neighbor who has just bullied Ollie into fetching the neighbor kid's football. Very priceless bit of comeuppance.

To see how in the space of an hour Laurel manages to literally become a home wrecker, catch Blockheads.

Two War buddies - BLOCK-HEADS both - create complete chaos in & around a fancy apartment building.

Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy are once again up to their usual high jinks, dealing with frightful wives, dangerous neighbors and the homicidal tendencies of nearly every inanimate object with which they come into contact. At this point in their partnership the Boys' were firmly established as screen legends; they worked together like well-oiled machinery, producing one laugh after another.

Billy Gilbert & James Finlayson - the Boys' greatest nemesis - are on hand and in very fine form as Ollie's highly belligerent neighbors. Gilbert's Great White Hunter (`I don't bring ‘em back alive. I bring ‘em back dead. I come back alive.') is especially funny. Patricia Ellis as Mrs. Gilbert & Minna Gombell as Mrs. Hardy add to the merriment.

Movie mavens will recognize OUR GANGer Tommy Bond as the mean kid with the football.

The film's opening sequence, with newsreel footage of World War One battles, is unexpectedly grim for a comedy. Fortunately, the laughs start quickly. Best bit - Ollie, thinking Stan has lost his right leg, insists on carrying him everywhere. Stan lets him.

"Block-Heads" begins in WWI, where Stan and Ollie are in a platoon fighting in Europe. While Ollie and the rest of the group go into battle, Stan has to guard the post. You can tell that he's doing his job, because he continues doing it for twenty years after the war ends. After he returns to America, he and Ollie meet up again, and from there, they do their usual stuff. Probably the best scene was the football scene (I won't spoil it). But the wheelchair, temptress, garage door and kitchen all provide some laughs. They may play blockheads in the movie, but believe you me, Laurel and Hardy were comic geniuses. Gilligan and the Skipper were sort of a later version of them, and Chris Farley and David Spade were an even later version.

Relations with producer Hal Roach were strained when the boys made this short feature (or long short) and it wouldn't be long before they made the fateful decision to throw in their lot with 20th Century Fox, a move that would mark a slow, painful and irreversible decline. This is one of the last of the films that shows them almost consistently at the top of their game - although even here the cracks are beginning to show. When comedians start relying on re-working their own material from nearly a decade before - as Stan and Ollie do here in the final reel which is a virtual scene for scene remake of their first talkie Unaccustomed as We Are - you know something isn't right.

This one's probably best remembered for the opening sequence which sees Stan still guarding his company's trench twenty years after the end of the Great War. It's a funny idea, and the boys get a huge amount of mileage out of it. When Ollie reads about his old friend's remarkable return from the dead he naturally wants to see him again. Big mistake. Within hours of meeting up again Stan has managed to bury Ollie's car in builder's sand, drive it into his garage door, blow up his kitchen, get him into a fight with James Finlayson and send his wife packing. Added to all the usual slapstick and pratfalls are some truly surreal moments such as when Stan pulls down the shadow blinds and when he smokes a pipe made out of his thumb. Definitely one of the boy's films that can be watched over and over again.