Habeas Corpus

Laurel and Hardy's earliest foray into Horror comedy is by no means their best,with a rather awkward opening scene with a mad doctor(Richard Carle,his only known appearance with L & H)which leads to the boys' attempted grave-robbing.There's plenty of opportunities for much comic panic here,some of which is very funny but is occasionally over-prolonged and a trifle predictable.The scenes in the graveyard recall the previous year's DO DETECTIVES THINK(1927)which didn't take up as much running time as it does here.It is sometimes thanks to Stan and Ollie's sheer and unparallelled comic brilliance that such potentially obvious gags are made fresh and inventive;for many years,a synchronised soundtrack with music and sound effects to accompany the film was thought to be lost,but has turned up in recent years and is now available on DVD.The only L&H silent now known to have lost it's music and effects recording is WE FAW DOWN,made several months after HABEAS CORPUS.

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.

Habeas Corpus (1928)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy knock on the door of a doctor hoping for a piece of bread but instead he offers them five hundred dollars if they'll steal a body for him from the local cemetery. The boys agree to take the offer but their nerves start to play against them.

HABEAS CORPUS isn't the greatest Laurel and Hardy film you'll ever watch but there are enough funny moments to make it worth viewing. I think the highlights of the film deals with Hardy trying to get Laurel over the wall but when he goes to help the dimwitted Laurel keeps forgetting to actually jump. There's another funny gag dealing with some wet paint that works quite nicely. The stuff inside the cemetery isn't quite as funny as you'd hope for but there's no doubt that fans will still want to watch this one.

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.

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.