Habeas Corpus

When I first read about this Laurel & Hardy comedy in Randy Skretvedt's book "Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies", it revealed that it was the first to have music and sound effects on disc, courtesy of the Victor Talking Machine Company. Skretvedt also mentioned that that disc was lost though according to this site, it's now been found. Maybe that music and sound effects I heard on the Hulu print as linked from IMDb were indeed from that disc. If that was it, then it was a pretty good choice to use for this film especially when what would become the theme for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was used. Okay, Stan & Ollie happen to stop at a house in which the owner there (Richard Carle) offers $500 if they dig up a dead body for him. They accept though Stan gets scared when he seems to have to do all the work. I'll stop there and just say this was quite a funny scare comedy though the unfilmed or deleted scenes Skretvedt mentions in his book might have made it even more funny. Certainly the sound effects contribute mightily to the atmosphere though I did notice some spots when they weren't used that could've used them. Besides Carle-who has an amusing bit concerning his pocket and what he feeds into it-there's also Charley Rogers as a butler/detective that adds immensely to the fun. So on that note, Habeas Corpus is another worthy L & H comedy.

Starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Habeas Corpus is directed by James Parrott and photographed by Len Powers. Plot finds Stan and Ollie as a couple of drifters short of cash who agree to do a bit of grave robbing to earn themselves $500, courtesy of the mad professor Padilla (Richard Carle). But the cemetery at night is not a fun place to be...

Not so much Burke & Hare, more like Berk & Berk!

Not a prime short from the boys but lots to enjoy. The frenetic organ swirls as Stan & Ollie prat about down at the cemetery. After the tone is set via a fun escapade with wet paint, the spooky shenanigans begin - which constitutes the boys scaring each other even without outside influences!

There's the usual visual ticks, the various looks at the camera, which are supplemented by some animal participation (including the world's fastest cat and a fun tortoise). An extended sequence of them trying to get over the wall of the cemetery is overplayed, but after an Ollie wrecking ball moment and a quite brilliant and hilarious body bag sequence of events, this short is back on track and showing why they would become legends of cinema. 7/10

I don't understand the occasional low ratings I've read by viewers of this great '20s silent film.

It's early vintage Laurel & Hardy with a very good demonstration of most aspects of their particular brand of physical humor and emotional reactions to each other and their situations.

Done in 1928 in the Hal Roach studio, a silent film historian said it's the beginning, in a sense--a preview, or first chapter, of what was to become a great series of longer comedy escapades.

One can only downgrade this film by judging it against Laurel & Hardy's other, later, longer and more fully developed films.

Before Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, in Robert Wise's BODY SNATCHER and also other features like John Gilling's FLESH AND THE FIENDS or Freddie Francis'BURKE AND HARE, I am surprised to see that topic of grave robbers in order to serve rogue medical experiments was used by Laurel and Hardy, in of course the most funniest way. What could I say more? The cemetery setting is also a very easy way to bring scary elements in a comedy scheme and show many gags to the audiences. I am not a Laurel and hardy specialist however but this short film seems pretty good for me, although I have not seen the other ones.

After all those decades and not only years, that is still amusing, entertaining at the most, even for youngest audiences.

But all Laurel and Hardy stuff is not so good.

Laurel and Hardy's earliest foray into Horror comedy is by no means their best,with a rather awkward opening scene with a mad doctor(Richard Carle,his only known appearance with L & H)which leads to the boys' attempted grave-robbing.There's plenty of opportunities for much comic panic here,some of which is very funny but is occasionally over-prolonged and a trifle predictable.The scenes in the graveyard recall the previous year's DO DETECTIVES THINK(1927)which didn't take up as much running time as it does here.It is sometimes thanks to Stan and Ollie's sheer and unparallelled comic brilliance that such potentially obvious gags are made fresh and inventive;for many years,a synchronised soundtrack with music and sound effects to accompany the film was thought to be lost,but has turned up in recent years and is now available on DVD.The only L&H silent now known to have lost it's music and effects recording is WE FAW DOWN,made several months after HABEAS CORPUS.