By Yair Solan

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Habeas Corpus

The Boys think they've got a dead body --

It's really Charley Rogers in the sack

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Habeas Corpus

(1928)

Stan and Ollie are assigned to dig up a dead body from a cemetery by crazed scientist Richard Carle. Getting into the cemetery is quite a struggle for the Boys, as well as trying to be brave when encountering some "ghosts" -- or what seem to be ghosts.

Habeas Corpus is an overall "average" Laurel & Hardy with enough laughs to be quite entertaining. Despite their use of "ghost gags" in this film, it is still quite original, as Laurel & Hardy put their own spin on the style. A few memorable gags are also included in this film, namely Ollie's climb up a sign that says "Wet Paint" and his crash through the cemetery's wall. In this film, Stan's friend and gagman, Charley Rogers, plays a suspicious detective who the Boys believe is first a ghost and then a dead body after he falls into a white sack.

In Laurel & Hardy's first talking picture, Ollie brings Stan home to meet his wife (Mae Busch) and after Stan makes a mess of things, she leaves Ollie. The Boys try to prepare dinner, turning the kitchen into shambles. They meet Ollie's neighbor, Mrs. Kennedy (Thelma Todd) and she tries to help them prepare the meal. Her dress gets caught on fire and she drapes up in a sheet seeing her police officer husband (Edgar Kennedy) return home. Ollie sees his wife returning, too, and the Boys hide Mrs. Kennedy in a trunk. Ollie's wife apologizes for her outburst, but Ollie rejects his wife's pleas and tells her, needing to get rid of the trunk, that Stan told him to go to South America. Ollie's wife starts hitting Stan over the head with plates and Officer Kennedy enters the apartment. Ollie's wife tells him what happened and Stan tells Kennedy that there's a girl in the trunk. Kennedy is delighted and tells Mrs. Hardy that he will talk to the Boys in his apartment. The three, and Mrs. Kennedy in the trunk, go there and Kennedy tells Stan and Ollie to be more careful when dealing with such matters. Mrs. Kennedy is furious inside the trunk. When they leave, Mrs. Kennedy gets out of the trunk and gives her husband a peace of her mind. Meanwhile, Laurel & Hardy are having dinner with Mrs. Hardy and Officer Kennedy calls Ollie to the hallway. Returning, Ollie is bruised after a beating by Kennedy. Stan is then forced to go to the hall and when Kennedy is about to hit him, Mrs. Kennedy smashes a vase over his head. Stan walks back into Ollie's apartment, unhurt and whistling, and leaves. Ollie watches Stan as he strolls down the hallway and says "good night, Mr. Hardy!" when he trips and falls downstairs.

For their first talking film, Unaccustomed As We Are has quite an abundance on sound gags as well as meaningless chatter. This quality is quickly erased with the release of their second sound film, Berth Marks and improved upon with their third, Men O'War. There are some good sound gags in this film, though. One example is when Stan falls downstairs at the end of the short, and the viewer cannot see the fall as it is shot from the upstairs. We can only hear the sounds of Stan's fall which makes the gag work much better than is we saw the pratfall. Unaccustomed As We Are is the prototype for Laurel & Hardy's classic 1938 feature film, Block-Heads.

Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly get into a minor auto accident and a lawyer (Eddie Foy, Jr.) convinces them to take part in an insurance scam. Patsy has to pretend to have a broken leg, despite her almost too audible objections. A man who works at the phone company (Mr. Miffin) comes to fix the phone, but Thelma and Patsy mistake him for a representative of the insurance company and play the broken leg act for him. He is a bit surprised by their action and leaves, saying he can't take any more of it. The two insurance men then come in, and Thelma and Patsy once again pretend that Patsy's got a broken leg. The two men almost fall for it, when they discover Patsy's fake broken leg.

A pleasant entry in the Todd-Kelly series, I'll Be Suing You also contains an actor, billed as "Mr. Miffin", who plays the man who comes to fix the telephone and looks remarkably like Charley Rogers, a Laurel & Hardy director and gagman. Fred Kelsey, who plays one of the insurance men, has a prominent role in Laurel and Hardy's 1930 short, The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case. One of the best routines in this short is the one which has Thelma dramatically acting a scripted account of the accident -- "It was a lovely spring day..." -- which is repeated no less than three times in full. What is bothersome about this short is Patsy Kelly's refusal to take part in the scam; although it might be logical for her character to not want to pretend to have a broken leg, it takes away from the momentum this short needs. Another interesting aspect of the film is the part where the lawyer tells the insurance men, after they hear Thelma's speech, "that's our story and you're stuck with it", reminiscent of Stan Laurel's line in Laurel & Hardy's 1933 feature Sons of the Desert: "that's our story and we're stuck with it."

A half-hour interview with Laurel and Hardy's producer, Hal Roach, which is interesting, but not surprising. Most of the material in the interview was used in Randy Skretvedt's book, Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies. Roach is in his early 90's during this interview and still has a good memory concerning his early days with Harold Lloyd and his later success with Laurel and Hardy. A few film clips are shown, notably of The Music Box (1932), which is the only Oscar-winning Laurel & Hardy film.

Laurel and Hardy go to work at a sawmill and perform great gags with tools and machines for twenty minutes, while encountering an aggressive co-worker (Charlie Hall) and a burly foreman (Tiny Sandford).

An almost plotless Laurel & Hardy short, Busy Bodies is also one of their best. The highlight of it is, in my opinion, Stan and Ollie's fight with Charlie Hall which includes the part when Stan gives him a cigar and tells the foreman about it while pointing to a "No Smoking" sign.