Gabbo

To fend off American Film Studio competition and influence British parliament passed a film act requiring a minimum fraction of films exhibited in Britain to be produced in Britain. To comply with the law, American studios made very cheap films in Britain to show at off hours in order to have the legal right to exhibit the profitable American "A" pictures. Lazybones in an example of this type of film dubbed a QUOTA QUICKIE.

I learned of this film from an episode of a British TV series (listed below) which excerpted this film to illustrate the regulation scheme that sustained the production of these Quota Quickies by British producers for American studios.

Calling these "B" movies is really missing the point. B movies were made to fill out a program at studio discretion. Quota Quickies were made and shown ONLY to satisfy British regulations and were never intended to show outside Britain. Often these QQs played while the lights were up and the cleaning staff was doing the overnight cleaning.

I learned about this practice from a British program on YouTube called, An Ocean Apart Episode #2 (Home in Pasadena).

Quota Quickies air from 32:45 to 36:30.

Lazybones is shown at 34:20.

According to Stephen Kotkin's near-definitive biography of Josef Stalin (vol 2, pages 192-3), he insisted his posse watch the film a second time immediately after viewing it the first time. Furthermore, since the Soviet Union had only 450 sound theaters at that time, he commissioned 30,000 sound theaters that night in order that the entire country could view this film with synched sound.

I was interested in this based on a video I saw online. I liked the 12 minute video version better for reasons outlined in other reviews. You can find that video by searching for: QXIR Diver Lost Footage

If you like that then maybe this longer documentary with less detail might be right for you.