Old Spanish Customers

What's wrong with Leslie Fuller? He's not really terrible, but he seems to think he's hilarious by puckering up his face, squinting his eyes tightly and arching his shoulders a lot. A ten-year old girl doing this is cute, but not a large, middle aged man. He is good at quick comebacks like all good music hall and radio comedians could, and he can do some good physical comedy too. He also, as seen here, is an impressive comic adagio dancer.

As for the film, it's well made, the direction and editing move it along at a nice pace. Lupino Lane was a good man to helm light, semi-slapstick projects like this. But the main problem I have with it is they palmed off this weary old bullfight story. i.e.: a non-bullfighter pretends to be one, and to insure his safety, friends replace el Toro, donning a bull skin one might see in a kiddie's pantomime. I can think of other times this happens, for instance, Sid Smith in "Bull And Sand" (1924), Porky Pig in "Picador Porky" (1937), and Three Stooges in "What's The Matador?" (1942). One could let this ride, but they show the two in the Bull costume getting on a bicycle built for two to escape an angry mob. Wow, Laural & Hardy's "Another Fine Mess" wasn't even two years old, and this gag from it is shamelessly appropriated. It couldn't be that audiences in the UK, or most of the world, for that matter, wouldn't notice. It would seem they didn't care.