Old Spanish Customers

A 1932 British farce is bound to have lots of childish overacting. If you can put up with that you may find some seriously funny bits: some crazily overdone Spanish dancing, and best of all if you (like me) find pantomime horses amusing, then this pantomime bull will crease you.

Drusilla Wills wins second prize in a whist competition. It's a continental holiday, all expenses paid. She and husband Leslie Fuller take the train to Spain, where he gets into a fight with toreador Ernest Sefton, and winds up stealing the Spaniards clothes. On arrival, Fuller is acclaimed as the famed bull fighter, and vamped by senorita Binnie Barnes in the funniest sequence in the movie. Of course he will have to fight a bull.....

Although Fuller's earlier vehicles for British International were mostly directed by Monty Banks, this one has Lupino Lane at the helm. I thought it was largely a stage show performed on movie sets, which would explain why the fierce beast Fuller faces is a pantomime bull. It's also largely why I did not find it as amusing as other reviewers. Although Lane puts in some good visual comedy (including shots that show off Fuller's sizable rear end, and a comedy song), Fuller's comedy is largely verbal here, and his character is poorly defined. I found it erratically amusing rather than consistently funny. With Wallace Lupino and an uncredited bit by future writer-director Val Guest as a reporter.

What's wrong with Leslie Fuller? He's not really terrible, but he seems to think he's hilarious by puckering up his face, squinting his eyes tightly and arching his shoulders a lot. A ten-year old girl doing this is cute, but not a large, middle aged man. He is good at quick comebacks like all good music hall and radio comedians could, and he can do some good physical comedy too. He also, as seen here, is an impressive comic adagio dancer.

As for the film, it's well made, the direction and editing move it along at a nice pace. Lupino Lane was a good man to helm light, semi-slapstick projects like this. But the main problem I have with it is they palmed off this weary old bullfight story. i.e.: a non-bullfighter pretends to be one, and to insure his safety, friends replace el Toro, donning a bull skin one might see in a kiddie's pantomime. I can think of other times this happens, for instance, Sid Smith in "Bull And Sand" (1924), Porky Pig in "Picador Porky" (1937), and Three Stooges in "What's The Matador?" (1942). One could let this ride, but they show the two in the Bull costume getting on a bicycle built for two to escape an angry mob. Wow, Laural & Hardy's "Another Fine Mess" wasn't even two years old, and this gag from it is shamelessly appropriated. It couldn't be that audiences in the UK, or most of the world, for that matter, wouldn't notice. It would seem they didn't care.