The Pest

This film was included in the three DVD set "Saved From the Flames"--a collection of mostly ephemeral movies that have managed to avoid turning to powder, catching fire or melting--something that usually happened with the nitrate film stock used up through the 1950s.

This is a comedy starring Stan Laurel and it amply demonstrates that his career as a solo comedian were not as good as when he was paired with Oliver Hardy! While there a few instances where solo Laurel did a great film (such as "Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde"), most of his films were not nearly as funny as his later output. Here with "The Pest", while it's got some great moments, it also has some terrible ones--making it one of his most uneven outings.

The film begins with Stan as a door-to-door salesman. Through coincidences, he keeps coming in contact with the same annoying old biddy. One of these times appeared to be at a California location that was later used in "The Music Box" (that huge set of steps) but the landscaping looked a bit different. Maybe this is due to a decade of time or perhaps it just looks like the other place. Regardless, these meetings are mildly funny and nothing more.

A bit later, he meets a young lady who is being forced to marry a cad unless she can pay her mortgage. Stan promises to help--and then promptly forgets until the end of the movie. In between are some clever AND lame bits (such as him dressing up in a dog-skin run--WHO has such a rug just lying around their house?!). And, there are some cheap politically incorrect jokes and a reference to Brazil nuts that are pretty typical of the day...but also a bit sad. All in all, it's got moments...but that's about all.

Although Stan did not really find his character and timing until about 1925 when he was working for Joe Rock, this comedy he starred in three years earlier, when he was alternating between random gags in one-reelers like THE NOON WHISTLE and good but standard travesties like MUD AND SAND is a bit of a revelation. His gag construction runs down a bit at the end, but some of them are novel and beautifully performed, and the extended sequence where he cannot go out to rescue the heroine because her dog has him trapped in her house is well set up, performed and edited. Nor is his character the simpleton he plays elsewhere. Although the pace of gags causes failures, he is a young man with the occasional spark of inventiveness who is overwhelmed by a random world, until that random world turns around and rewards him -- a bit of a cross between Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton that might have turned out well. But chance and circumstances led him elsewhere, and we have nothing to complain about in the end, nor in this movie.

Of note is the fact that one of the settings is the same stairs in the Silverlake district that he would climb with Oliver Hardy in the lost HATS OFF and in the Academy-Award-winning THE MUSIC BOX. It's a brief throwaway, but sometimes these ideas need development....

The 32 year old Stan Laurel uses his comedy equipment to tell a human story in this short film. He worked overtime to get it right, in spite of the fact that there were no story conferences. He was financially destitute by this stage, so you could see shades of desperation in his portrayal.

Despite being the star of this pre-teaming with Oliver Hardy short, Stan Laurel is not the title character. That happens to be a woman played by Joy Winthrop who follows Stan as he tries to sell a book about Napoleon. I found this rarity on the "Saved from the Flames" DVD collection. There's three gags that I found really funny: The time a dog that Stan's trying to get away from jumps high enough to his window to bite him in the neck, Laurel's inadvertently punching a judge because of his tripping on the floor, and a stop motion scene of Stan getting away from that lady I mentioned by immediately sliding down the banister of a large set of steps that looks similar to the one he and Ollie pushed a piano (and fell with it) on in The Music Box. Not everything works, for instance, Stan's tiger disguise leads to an unconvincing chase between police and dogcatchers not to mention a tasteless racist gag involving a chauffeur. And his suddenly becoming a heroine's boyfriend also is unbelievable. Still, for anyone that's a fan of Stan Laurel, The Pest is worth a look. P.S. Stan's common-law wife, Mae, is credited on IMDb as appearing as a woman in court but I found no such scene.