Sous les verrous

PARDON US, filmed in 1930 then edited down and released in 1931, is Laurel and Hardy's first feature-length comedy. In it, they are set to jail after Stan sells some illegal brew to a policeman ("Well, I couldn't help it-I thought he was a streetcar conductor!"). The whole film is pretty funny. There isn't much story, but a series of funny things that happen to the boys in jail. The finale has Stan and Ollie foiling a jailbreak. Highlights of the film include a great "welcoming" scene with extremely tolerant warden Wilfred Lucas, Laurel and Hardy posing as African American sharecroppers (with Stan shoving entire plants of cotton into his bag while Hardy daintily picks each piece of cotton with care), and a hilarious schoolroom scene with teacher James Finlayson! Not up to the standard of SONS OF THE DESERT or WAY OUT WEST, but still very funny. Try and get the complete 65-minute version that was on video in the early 1980s.