The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case

***SPOILERS FOR EMILY***

This is one of Laurel & Hardy's weaker short film entries from Hal Roach Studios. It suffers from a repetitive script and an ending that feels so tacked-on that I can't help but wonder if the crew realized they were filming a mess with no good resolution.

The byplay between Stan and Oliver is the bright spot, though some of the gags in the bedroom scene are a little too hokey to get much of a laugh - that has to be the fakiest fake bat I've EVER seen in a movie.

The opening scene, with the Boys fishing off the pier, contains most of the movie's funniest material. You can always find something good about even the weakest Laurel & Hardy film.

The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (1930)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Laurel and Hardy have been out of work for nearly a decade when they read the paper and see that their luck might have changed. The relative of Laurel's has died and is leaving his estate of three million dollars. The two dimwits find themselves at the will reading and learn that the relative was actually murdered and they're going to have to spend the night.

THE LAUREL-HARDY MURDER CASE is really a spoof of those "old dark house" movies that were so popular during the silent era and would remain popular throughout the 1930's. This really is a terrific spoof as the two comic legends are in fine form and the screenplay perfectly pokes fun at some clichés like the creepy butler and the fainting woman. The first fifteen minutes mainly has dialogue jokes and some pretty good ones but it's the second half of the film that really comes to life as we get some terrific physical gags including a hilarious one dealing with Laurel sneaking back under the covers. Best dialogue:

Hardy: Is your uncle alive?

Laurel: Nope, he died of a broken neck. Fell through a trap door.

Hardy: Was he building a house?

Laurel: No, they were hanging him.

A little longer and more slow-paced than most of their short features, "The Laurel & Hardy Murder Case" combines the duo's usual comedy gags with some old-fashioned gloomy-old-house atmosphere. When Stanley reads in the paper about the death of a rich man named Laurel, he and Ollie head to the house for the reading of the will, hoping that Stanley will inherit something. Instead, they are soon caught up in a murder mystery and a series of spooky/comic events. The attention paid to the ominous house and occupants slows things down, and makes this a lot less frantic than their best comedies, but it is still entertaining, and has a couple of hilarious sequences.

It seems like manna from heaven when Stan and Ollie are sitting by the river with Laurel dropping in a line for some dinner and Ollie messing it up for a change. Then Ollie finds a stray newspaper with an advertisement for the relatives of the late Ebenezer Laurel to meet at the usual grim old mansion.

But it ain't for a will reading it's the police wanting to sort through the relatives over who might have murdered the old guy for his loot.

After that it's a series of haunted house gags that the boys go through, the highlight being a bat in a bedsheet that everyone thinks is a ghost. Laurel is even willing to give up his possible riches.

In the end the boys find it all really doesn't matter.

This is another L & H short that deviates in some way from the general pattern of them; but this time, the central tennet is drastically different: the boys are implicated in a frankly absurd murder case. Dell Henderson's wonderfully creaking, slow turn, is a comic parody of horror movie 'housekeepers' and butlers before Universal horror really took off. I like the way an authority figure is sent up (as often in L & H); this time a bumbling, melodramatic detective, the actor hamming it up for all it was worth. There's barely a bone in this film's skeleton that isn't light and giddily brittle; only the early scene of Ollie musing on his friendship with Stan, the two of them sitting by the waterside, really seems like a typically L & H scene. And beautifully played and written it is too. It has that comic pathos that is entirely relinquished by the film from then on.

The remainder of this picture spirals off into the most obvious, overplayed silliness; but I loved it. Laurel and Hardy in a creaking, almost chuckling set, standing in for a haunted house; absurd, devilish do propagated by a leering, comatose housekeeper; predictable gags; a bat or two. Just bring it all to mind, and smile... give it a viewing some day, and I'm sure you'll be amused. "The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case" is a wonderfully enjoyable short; and a refreshing variant within their very consistent, fine work during this pre-feature length era.

Rating:- ****/*****