Habeas Corpus

Mad scientist Richard Carle is musing that he needs a human brain for his research. There's a knock on the door, and it's Laurel and Hardy. So he sends them to the graveyard to dig one up.

It had been more than a years since DO DETECTIVES THINK had contained a funny graveyard scene, and there's a lot here to suggest that. There's a tremendous amount of spooky shadows by the wall, the Boys are terrified, ad so forth. There are also plenty of new gags, and a long, fully ornamented scene of them trying to get over a wall. Stan was a great gag technician who could direct his own movies. Here he's working with James Parrott, who also was a fine gagman.

What would happen if Dr Frankenstein sent Laurel and Hardy to get a dead body instead of Igor? This is a very funny silent for the boys, and something of a departure. The scared stiff shtick wasn't usually their thing, but they pull it off nicely. They're still developing their chemistry here, but it works very well. The more familiar gags abound along with the Eek! a ghost! bits. Very worth a watch.

I don't understand the occasional low ratings I've read by viewers of this great '20s silent film.

It's early vintage Laurel & Hardy with a very good demonstration of most aspects of their particular brand of physical humor and emotional reactions to each other and their situations.

Done in 1928 in the Hal Roach studio, a silent film historian said it's the beginning, in a sense--a preview, or first chapter, of what was to become a great series of longer comedy escapades.

One can only downgrade this film by judging it against Laurel & Hardy's other, later, longer and more fully developed films.

This was one of the usual two-reel silent shorts that ran about twenty minutes back in the 1920s. It's reasonably effective, with one or two good laughs.

Laurel and Hardy are sent by a goofy professor to dig up a body at the graveyard, to be used in an experiment. The police, knowing of the plan, have an officer dressed in a white sheet waiting for them.

I think the best gag comes when the boys are trying to climb over the cemetery wall. Hardy cups his palms but Laurel only seems to bounce up and down on them. They try various other ways to get Laurel over the wall and they all fail. Finally, Hardy tells Laurel to bend over. Hardy will make a running jump and leap over the barrier. He doesn't make it. He smashes into the thick brick wall -- and all the way through it. Hardy wasn't too fond of jokes about his weight and that seems to make the gag a little funnier.

Otherwise, it's good but hardly incomparable.

When I first read about this Laurel & Hardy comedy in Randy Skretvedt's book "Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies", it revealed that it was the first to have music and sound effects on disc, courtesy of the Victor Talking Machine Company. Skretvedt also mentioned that that disc was lost though according to this site, it's now been found. Maybe that music and sound effects I heard on the Hulu print as linked from IMDb were indeed from that disc. If that was it, then it was a pretty good choice to use for this film especially when what would become the theme for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was used. Okay, Stan & Ollie happen to stop at a house in which the owner there (Richard Carle) offers $500 if they dig up a dead body for him. They accept though Stan gets scared when he seems to have to do all the work. I'll stop there and just say this was quite a funny scare comedy though the unfilmed or deleted scenes Skretvedt mentions in his book might have made it even more funny. Certainly the sound effects contribute mightily to the atmosphere though I did notice some spots when they weren't used that could've used them. Besides Carle-who has an amusing bit concerning his pocket and what he feeds into it-there's also Charley Rogers as a butler/detective that adds immensely to the fun. So on that note, Habeas Corpus is another worthy L & H comedy.