O Poço de Pifão

A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short. Poor Ollie is suffering painfully from gout. His doctor advises rest, country air & lots of fresh water. So the Boys rent a trailer and head up into THEM THAR HILLS. Picking a quiet spot, they are unaware that the well has been tainted with many barrels of bootleg liquor. Drinking the water while fixing their dinner, they quickly become inebriated. They are suddenly visited by a bickering couple who've run out of gas. Playing host to the wife, Stan & Ollie share their water with her and she is roisteringly drunk by the time her husband returns...

This is a very funny little film & should be seen in conjunction with its follow-up, TIT FOR TAT. The slapstick fight between the Boys & Charley Hall, as the furious husband, is hilarious. Mae Busch is the wife; film mavens will recognize Billy Gilbert as the doctor.

Them Thar Hills is another favorite Laurel and Hardy episode of mine. In this one, Stan and Ollie go out into the country for Ollie's health. Along the way they encounter a fun loving wife (Mae Busch) and her exasperated husband (Charlie Hall), and they get drunk on some wishing well water that had been contaminated with alcohol by moonshiners.

The funniest part in this episode was when Stan and Ollie retaliate against Charlie Hall! Laurel and Hardy were both ingenious when it came to making episodes and movies, Stan Laurel had taken any gag he used and made it be extremely funny! Also, the way they played off each other in this episode and others were absolutely impressive. That's what made L&H so exquistite, comedy-wise. In fact, Laurel and Hardy are my second favorite comedy team of yesteryear!

Also, Charlie Hall was a great L&H regular, too! And the fun doesn't stop there! After you see Them Thar Hills, watch the bonus sequel Tit for Tat! Both episodes are a can't-miss for Laurel and Hardy fans!

This Laurel&Hardy short subject opens with Ollie suffering the effects of the gout. Given his stoutness I would think that was something that Oliver Hardy might have had in real life. In any event Dr. Billy Gilbert suggests that he and Stanley go off into the mountains and get some clean country living. Ollie's been living it up too good with that rich city food. Surprisingly Gilbert, a great comic talent in his own right is little used in this short.

But anyway off go Stan and Ollie in a trailer to Them Thar Hills. But they come into some moonshiner territory where the locals have dumped some of their product into a well the boys stop at. That leads to all the rest of the gags in this film including getting a neighbor's wife drunk and the neighbor taking umbrage.

At least until the final gag Ollie may not have had his gout cured, but with all that moonshine in him, he forgot his ills.

Mr. Hardy is suffering from gout, so Mr. Laurel proposes they buy a trailer and go stay in the country. They park on a patch of land with a well on it. Little do they know.... well, anything. In this case, revenooers have poured moonshiner's products down the well. As they drink the water, their mood rises..... but here comes married couple Charlie Hall and Mae Busch. It all ends in one of the marvelous slow motion 'tit for tat' duels that the Boys got into.

Stan and Ollie were alternating their shorts with features by this point, and could choose to make a movie short or long depending on what they wanted to do. This undoubtedly contributed to their sustained level of excellence in this period.

This is a good Laurel & Hardy short comedy, with one particularly hilarious sequence. With Ollie suffering from too much high living, the two take a trip to the country to live the simple life for a while, but instead they find themselves getting into one caper after another. After some adventures of their own, they encounter a pair of stranded motorists. Their extended squabble with Charlie Hall in the last part of the film is non-stop laughs, and one of their funniest sequences. That, and plenty of other laughs in the rest of the film, make "Them Thar Hills" one of the best-remembered Laurel & Hardy short features.