Two Lame Ducks

I note that the other reviewers remark on the fact that this seems to be a silent 1936 film, however the version that was broadcasted on Talking Pictures TV (a UK free to air channel) this week (September 2019) had full sound throughout, ducks and all!! As a matter of fact, both actors sounded like a Laurel and Hardy tribute act, and if you didn't know better, you could be fooled into thinking it was actually them.

Vince Barnett and Billy Gilbert starred in a few short subjects as Laurel & Hardy wannabes. In this one, they go duck hunting and while Gilbert shows signs of being good, with his emphatic, amusing manner, he overwhelms the nebbishy Barnett entirely. The usual tropes of the incompetent duck hunter ensue, directed wearily by veteran Alf Goulding from a script by Charles Lamont.

This short subject looks like it was made on the cheap to fill out a couple of contracts. 1936 was the year that Roach gave up on short subjects and Sennett lost his studio. Educational, the studio that made this one, had been making good comedies for two decades at this point, but the demand for short subjects had been drying up for a few years and the major studios had taken over the niche to use as training grounds for their own up-and-coming talent. Within a year Educational's remnants would be folded into Fox's B unit and its talent scattered.

I found "Two Lame Ducks" on a DVD of 1930s comedies from Alpha Video. Oddly, however, the film is silent with intertitle cards. This IS odd since by 1930 all American films were being made with sound...yet this one from 1936 is a silent. I have a couple ideas why. First, perhaps the print is actually from Castle Films or some other company that converted films for home viewing...and home movie projectors at that time were all silent. Second, perhaps they made two versions--a silent and a sound one. The silent one would be sent abroad, as in many countries (especially in Asia) they were still using silent equipment. Either way, I am pretty sure that there IS a sound version out there somewhere. This one, however, only has music...no spoken dialog or sound effects.

Vince Barnett and Billy Gilbert are two idiots who are out duck hunting. However, instead of getting ducks, they mostly just make nuisances of themselves and nearly get themselves and others killed due to their dopiness.

The laughs are in this one but most tend to be more slapsticky and are a bit dumb. However, the final bit about the shotgun shells in the fire...that is pretty funny. Worth seeing if you don't mind watching a silent, but I can't score this one higher because it certainly should have sound and isn't filled with good laughs.