FILM
REVIEW – LAUREL AND HARDY – WAY OUT WEST
Undoubtedly the funniest of the great duo’s full
length films. The plot is slender – Stan & Ollie are sent West with the
deeds to a gold mine which has been inherited by a naïve young and pretty
saloon girl. They have the task of getting her to sign the deeds and take
possession. They fall foul of another woman who takes gold-digger literally and
pretends to be the other girl. Fooled,
the pair now helps the real girl get back what is rightly hers.
Set against is framework is some of the finest gags
and stunts and songs the pair ever accomplished. There is the running gag of
the waterhole which is shallow for Stan, but which nearly drowns Ollie every
time he crosses, even when he crosses where Stan previously walked with
ease.
Stan baffles Ollie by constantly using his own thumb
as a cigarette lighter, with flames coming up from the thumb itself as he
lights his cigars. Ollie tries in vain to light his own thumb for much of the
film – when he finally ignites it, he screams in agony where it burns.
Stan snatches the deeds from the evil gold-digger in
her bedroom, and she tickles him as an act of torture on the bed while he
laughs desperately and suggestively as she tries to get it back from him.
The song ‘On The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine’ became a
surprise hit in the British pop charts in the late 1970’s, but the greatest
moment is the pair dancing to the song immediately before that – it’s wonderful
– a comedy classic I could never tire of watching. Utter bliss.
Arthur Chappell
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