Block-Heads

"Block-Heads" begins in WWI, where Stan and Ollie are in a platoon fighting in Europe. While Ollie and the rest of the group go into battle, Stan has to guard the post. You can tell that he's doing his job, because he continues doing it for twenty years after the war ends. After he returns to America, he and Ollie meet up again, and from there, they do their usual stuff. Probably the best scene was the football scene (I won't spoil it). But the wheelchair, temptress, garage door and kitchen all provide some laughs. They may play blockheads in the movie, but believe you me, Laurel and Hardy were comic geniuses. Gilligan and the Skipper were sort of a later version of them, and Chris Farley and David Spade were an even later version.

Two War buddies - BLOCK-HEADS both - create complete chaos in & around a fancy apartment building.

Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy are once again up to their usual high jinks, dealing with frightful wives, dangerous neighbors and the homicidal tendencies of nearly every inanimate object with which they come into contact. At this point in their partnership the Boys' were firmly established as screen legends; they worked together like well-oiled machinery, producing one laugh after another.

Billy Gilbert & James Finlayson - the Boys' greatest nemesis - are on hand and in very fine form as Ollie's highly belligerent neighbors. Gilbert's Great White Hunter (`I don't bring ‘em back alive. I bring ‘em back dead. I come back alive.') is especially funny. Patricia Ellis as Mrs. Gilbert & Minna Gombell as Mrs. Hardy add to the merriment.

Movie mavens will recognize OUR GANGer Tommy Bond as the mean kid with the football.

The film's opening sequence, with newsreel footage of World War One battles, is unexpectedly grim for a comedy. Fortunately, the laughs start quickly. Best bit - Ollie, thinking Stan has lost his right leg, insists on carrying him everywhere. Stan lets him.

It's the year 1938 and the war has been over for twenty years. But Stan is still patrolling in the trenches without knowing that the war is over.Stan's good buddy Oliver sees his friend's picture in the paper and goes to the veterans' home to get his buddy. Block-Heads is a hilarious Laurel and Hardy comedy.The movie offers you lots of laughs with the boys.Who could forget the scene where Ollie carries Stannie because he thinks Stan has lost his leg in the war.But Stan has the leg underneath him in the wheelchair.And the scene in the stairs.Block-Heads is one of the best Laurel and Hardy movies.Just watch the movie and it's non-stop laughing from the beginning to the end.

Relations with producer Hal Roach were strained when the boys made this short feature (or long short) and it wouldn't be long before they made the fateful decision to throw in their lot with 20th Century Fox, a move that would mark a slow, painful and irreversible decline. This is one of the last of the films that shows them almost consistently at the top of their game - although even here the cracks are beginning to show. When comedians start relying on re-working their own material from nearly a decade before - as Stan and Ollie do here in the final reel which is a virtual scene for scene remake of their first talkie Unaccustomed as We Are - you know something isn't right.

This one's probably best remembered for the opening sequence which sees Stan still guarding his company's trench twenty years after the end of the Great War. It's a funny idea, and the boys get a huge amount of mileage out of it. When Ollie reads about his old friend's remarkable return from the dead he naturally wants to see him again. Big mistake. Within hours of meeting up again Stan has managed to bury Ollie's car in builder's sand, drive it into his garage door, blow up his kitchen, get him into a fight with James Finlayson and send his wife packing. Added to all the usual slapstick and pratfalls are some truly surreal moments such as when Stan pulls down the shadow blinds and when he smokes a pipe made out of his thumb. Definitely one of the boy's films that can be watched over and over again.

BLOCK-HEADS is set up with an idea which must have seemed totally ridiculous in 1938 but when you stop to consider that Japanese soldiers were being found on remote Pacific islands 30 years after the second world war ended the idea stops being ridiculous and becomes shockingly prophetic

This is possibly the last of the great L&H movies ( FLYING DUECES being the only other contender ) , after this the comedy duo started appearing in studio features that didn't seem to show much respect to their genius , made them slightly off centre and stretched stories out for almost 90 minutes when a 60 page script would have worked much better

This means that BLOCK-HEADS suffers from the mild irritation of so many other Stan and Ollie star vehicles - It's rather episodic . But seeing as it's so funny what have we got to complain about ? Listen out for Stan's tagline " Is there gonna be a fight ? " which is repeated several times and the surreal sequence of closing the blinds on the stairway . Strange when people discuss the films of these two comedy gods they always think of slapstick but forget they were also masters of surrealist visualism too . The funniest moment is probably the final scene in Ollie's apartment involving the married couple from next door

I still think THE LAUREL AND MURDER HARDY CASE is the best of their vehicles but BLOCK-HEADS deserves its own mention as being one of the very last superb Stan and Ollie comedies