Los calaveras

In the early days of sound movies, the studios had not yet perfected the art of dubbing films into various languages...and that was important with international stars like Laurel & Hardy. Their films were popular throughout Europe, as their earlier silents were shown everywhere. So, instead of depriving the studio of revenue for their films in foreign markets, the Hal Roach Studio decided to make some of their Laurel & Hardy films in foreign languages*. But there was a problem. The length of a typical Laurel & Hardy film was too short for these markets, so they often would combine two of the team's films into one longer length short. And, if that wasn't long enough, they'd pad the films out a bit. This also meant the duo needed to speak the various languages of the shorts (some were in Spanish, French, Italian and German). But, they didn't speak the languages...so they delivered their lines phonetically.

In the case of "Los Calaveras", the studio combined "Be Big" with "Laughing Gravy" and made the film in Spanish. Unlike several of their other foreign language films, this one follows the English language ones more closely. And, the quality is roughly that of the American counterparts. Neither of these is among the best Laurel & Hardy flicks (particularly "Be Big"), but the film is enjoyable and worth your time.

This short, incidentally, was the last foreign language films the team made...after which they'd subtitle the films or dub them using other voice actors. It's also available along with several more foreign language versions in "Laurel & Hardy: The Essential Collection".

*Incidentally, some other studios did the same thing...such as Universal with both a Spanish AND English language "Dracula".

Los calaveras (1931)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Spanish version of Laurel and Hardy's BIG BIG! and LAUGHING GRAVY. The film starts off as Laurel and Hardy lie to the wives so that they can go to a party being thrown for them (from BE BIG!) and then we see the boys kicked out, living on their own and having to sneak their dog back into their room after the landlord kicked him out (from LAUGHING GRAVY). This Spanish version of the two L&H shorts isn't nearly as good as the American versions and I'd also add that they were better done in the French version LES CAROTTIERS. With that said, this here remains a curio just to see the boys speaking Spanish and having to do the same film in multiple versions. Very few of the alternate versions I've seen have actually been better than the American ones but it's still speaks to the talent of the men that they were able to do all these different versions with a language that they weren't used to speaking. Of the two shorts, I'd say that LAUGHING GRAVY works the best here even though it really doesn't offer anything that we didn't see in the previous versions. I thought the humor was much better suited here and especially the stuff dealing with the dog. The first portion taken from BE BIG! is nice and the jokes involving Hardy getting into his shoes is decent but just doesn't get any big laughs.

Although not all of Laurel and Hardy's films were good, you cannot deny the intensity of Hal Roach's creativity. The fact that he produced 740 films is reason enough to watch this short subject. If you are an aspiring director and want to make a short film as a calling card, watch this short subject and study Roach's films as he was the prime mover in short films.