Habeas Corpus

Mad scientist Richard Carle is musing that he needs a human brain for his research. There's a knock on the door, and it's Laurel and Hardy. So he sends them to the graveyard to dig one up.

It had been more than a years since DO DETECTIVES THINK had contained a funny graveyard scene, and there's a lot here to suggest that. There's a tremendous amount of spooky shadows by the wall, the Boys are terrified, ad so forth. There are also plenty of new gags, and a long, fully ornamented scene of them trying to get over a wall. Stan was a great gag technician who could direct his own movies. Here he's working with James Parrott, who also was a fine gagman.

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.

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.

Habeas Corpus (1928)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy knock on the door of a doctor hoping for a piece of bread but instead he offers them five hundred dollars if they'll steal a body for him from the local cemetery. The boys agree to take the offer but their nerves start to play against them.

HABEAS CORPUS isn't the greatest Laurel and Hardy film you'll ever watch but there are enough funny moments to make it worth viewing. I think the highlights of the film deals with Hardy trying to get Laurel over the wall but when he goes to help the dimwitted Laurel keeps forgetting to actually jump. There's another funny gag dealing with some wet paint that works quite nicely. The stuff inside the cemetery isn't quite as funny as you'd hope for but there's no doubt that fans will still want to watch this one.

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