Red Noses

Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd were a third-tier comedy team from Hal Roach Studios--the same folks who were responsible for Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang, Charley Chase and many of Harold Lloyd's films. My assumption is that because so much effort was expended in making these great comedies that there simply wasn't anything left for these girl comedies. Mostly the films consist of Zasu simpering like Olive Oyl and Thelma just standing around watching! Apparently the formula didn't work well and eventually the studio replaced Zasu with Patsy Kelly and all this really did was make the films louder--not better.

In this installment, the ladies are sick in bed and can't go to work. However, the boss really needs them so he pays for them to go to a health spa to help them get over their colds and return to their jobs. The entirety of the film consists of them being pummeled and prodded by Amazons who seemed more interested in inflicting pain than anything else. Some of it's funny...but most isn't--especially the horribly bad use of rear projection near the end. Clearly this is the case of a film where a concept was generated but nothing else. Not terrible and probably among the team's best...and that's a real shame.

By the way, when this was recently shown on TCM, I noticed that the sound was terrible and was greatly in need of restoration. You also might notice that the music was the same music used in Laurel & Hardy shorts--something that was true of all their films.