Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pride

Stan Laurel's "Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde" is flat-out hilarious. It's a perfect combination of concept, gags, and performance to create good comedy. As a formerly lost film this also makes it a rare example of something sought-after and highly touted that lives up to (and probably exceeds) expectations.

This film was released five years after the John Barrymore version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which I watched the day before, but Stan Laurel interprets Barrymore's brilliant dramatic performance with a comic turn of equal quality. Presumably, though the direct source material was five years old, audiences would have been familiar enough with the Jekyll-and-Hyde story that there would not have been an actual need to have seen that particular version.

The gags are well-spaced and well-chosen here, getting laughs equally with the stylistic butchering of the Jekyll-Hyde story. What almost makes the film is the look of mischief of Mr Pryde's face as he scurries about the town committing trivial acts of wrongdoing. It's a few different executions of a similar joke, but I cracked up every time. The best moment of the short involves Stan's stealing a child's ice cream cone with a look of triumphant evil glee on his face.

"Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde" also boasts very funny title cards; there's a winning joke in virtually every one. In brief, I was laughing constantly through my viewing of this two-reeler, and I'm extremely glad it's been recovered and restored so we can enjoy it today.

Dr. Pyckle is a fine example of Stan Laurel's comedy prior to his lifelong teaming with Oliver Hardy. It demonstrates a comedic breadth and a range that was coming to the fore. It seems that it took Stan a bit longer to shed vaudeville's trappings. He had to learn to play for the camera and not for the 'house'. His comic timing and his invention in "Dr. Pyckle" (1925) are surpassed only by his antics in "The Sleuth" (also 1925). The timing of his sight gags takes on a cartoon-ish quality, but they work very well, and are enough to bring the viewer to convulsive laughter. This is--after all- comedy. And it is slapstick, though Laurel's ideas and gags are polished. It is clear that he is setting the stage for bigger and better expectations. It all comes about several years after these films, solidifying his place in comic history with the rotund Ollie. They dilly dally their way into the pages of cinema history. I strongly recommend viewing "Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pride" and "The Sleuth". They are very, very funny films.

Stan Laurel (pre-Hardy) appeared in several short comedies that were parodies of big-budget Hollywood dramas. Although most of these are quite funny, all (with one exception) are seriously weakened by extremely low budgets. 'Dr Pyckle and Mr Pryde' is the exception; not only is this movie hilarious, but it benefits from some elaborate exterior and interior sets evoking Victorian London. In the early 1980s, when I interviewed Joe Rock (this movie's producer), he recalled that he had obtained access to sets on the Universal Pictures lot, and costumes from Universal's wardrobe department.

By 1925, there had already been several film versions of 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', including the bootleg 'Der Januskopf' and at least one parody. Modern audiences, who know Jekyll and Hyde from films rather than from literature, usually miss an important point: in Stevenson's original novel, Mr Hyde is clearly much shorter and much younger than Dr Jekyll, making it truly a shock when we learn that they are the same man. In film adaptations, Jekyll is usually played as a comparatively youthful man, and nearly always portrayed by the same actor who also plays Hyde ... so we find it implausible that the other characters fail to guess they're the same person.

Although Stan Laurel is playing for comedy here, his performance as Mr Pryde is a revelation. Rather than wearing elaborate make-up, he merely puffs out his expressive face, dons a wig and hunches his head into his shoulders. There's also some extremely subtle padding under Laurel's coat, making Mr Pryde a slightly bulkier man than Dr Pyckle. At this point in his pre-Hardy career, Laurel was learning that he'd get bigger laughs by underplaying rather than by chewing the scenery. Here, though, he still has a couple of hand-to-brow moments ... acceptable because he's guying a serious story.

There's a dog here cried Pete the Pup, who may or mayn't be the same canine who appeared as Pete the Dog in some Our Gang comedies. I've never understood why it's allegedly so funny that a dog in the movies has a ring painted round one eye ... did any real dog ever have such a mark? Still, I was intrigued here to see a packet labelled 'Dog Cakes', a phrase one doesn't see very often these days.

I was delighted to spot the London-born Syd Crossley in this film, under Victorian side-whiskers. Two decades later, Crossley would be back in his native England and working with George Formby and Cicely Courtneidge. Joe Rock told me that Crossley had been his assistant in Los Angeles, and supplied entree to British film circles when he accompanied Rock to England in the 1930s.

'Dr Pyckle and Mr Pryde' is hilarious from start to finish. If all of Stan Laurel's early comedies had been this good, he would never have needed to team up with Oliver Hardy. I'm certainly glad it happened, though. My rating for this one: 9 out of 10. I wonder if this hilarious movie influenced the classic Two Ronnies sketch 'The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town'.

This time, as you can probably tell from the name, of Robert Louis Stevenson's DOCTOR JEKYLL & MR. HYDE. Long a favorite of straight adaptations (there was a famous version featuring John Barrymore a few years earlier, and Frederick March would win an Oscar for his portrayal a few more years down the road), this features Stan in alternating roles as a clumsy research scientist who, his bestial nature revealed by the potion he has accidentally mixed, turns into a capering practical joker. Not polished by any means, the films manages to hold together by means of having a plot.

I've only seen a few of Stan Laurel's pre-Ollie movies and, truth be told, the ones I've seen aren't that great so I wasn't expecting much going into this one. However, this parody of John Barrymore's 1920 turn as the famous Dr. Jeckyll is fairly amusing. Laurel actually does a good imitation of Barrymore in monster mode, and wrings plenty of laughs out of the fact that his 'evil' deeds mostly consist of childish pranks. Laurel seems to be a good example of a talented actor needing to find the single role that's right for him in order to be successful. He's good here, but he isn't particularly memorable as an actor or comedian in his own right. It's sobering to think that, had he not been teamed with Oliver Hardy, Laurel's name might have been consigned to cinema's forgotten history along with the likes of Larry Semon and John Bunny.