With the massive success of Laurel and Hardy, who producer Hal Roach had paired together after signing them separately in 1926 (they would remain with his studio until 1940), the man had the bright idea of creating a female counterpart duo, bringing together Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd. The team would make seventeen popular shorts from 1931-33, their first two, Let’s Do Things and Catch-As Catch-Can, looked at here today. Like all good comedy teams, you have two very different character types. Zasu comes across as the slightly depressed, nervous and fretful brunette, while Thelma is a much more vibrant and colourful blonde dame. . . the former’s desperation often dragging her more put together friend into rather unorthodox situations. In Let’s Do Things, they find themselves as employees selling music for a giant department store... while looking for a way out of their dead-end jobs.
If, for whatever reason, you are looking for some advice on kissing, then Good Boys, directed by Gene Stupnitsky, is probably not where you should be starting your search. Written by Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, and produced by Seth Rogen, it is like Superbad for tweens. . . instead of a triumvirate of friends looking for alcohol to impress as they head to a party (hoping to finally get laid), this story finds three buddies on a quest to learn how to kiss before going to their first kissing party – they must also try to track down a new drone after destroying one. This is Good Boys narrative in a nutshell.
A slick con artist, an unscrupulous priest and a ruined aristocrat walk into a house. . . sounds like a joke; it kind of is – for this is the lead-in to Mel Brooks’ 1970 comedy The Twelve Chairs. Loosely based on the 1928 Russian novel of the same name (written by Ilf and Petrov), this film is arguably the black sheep of Brooks’ filmography, a more artsy piece that is less laugh out loud funny, and instead, more of a thinking man’s funny – for instance, as a character wanders the Soviet streets at the beginning of the film (set in 1927), he passes two different street signs, the original: “Czar Nicholas II Avenue”; the new one, “Marx, Engels, Lenin & Trotsky Street – with a line running through the final name” – if you know your history, Nicholas and his family were executed during the Russian Revolution of 1917, while the name Trotsky has been eliminated, as in the very year this story is set, Joseph Stalin ran him out of the country and into exile – in 1940, Stalin would have him killed in Mexico City by way of an ice axe (I almost had a really good ice pun for this, but it slipped my mind). . . fear not, Brooks works some cheesy humour into the story as well.
Before Kinky Boots, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Tootsie, even before Some Like It Hot, there was the original cross-dressing comedy, 1941's Charley’s Aunt (directed by Archie Mayo). Based upon the famed stage play by Brandon Thomas, this was actually the third filmed version of the farce – and they say Hollywood is remake happy today! No better place to set such a premise than at the stuffiest of Universities, Oxford, the madcap premise is only further exaggerated by its time – 1890's Victorian England.
What do boxing promoters have to do in the Middle East? Other than throwing a he-jab or two (I know, I know, a touch lame), absolutely nothing, unless you are caught up in another one of Bud and Lou’s zany misadventures. . . namely, Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950). Directed by Charles Lamont (his first of eight features with the comedy team –the efficient filmmaker was not overly excited to head these simple projects) and written by frequent A&C screenwriters’ John Grant (every one except Lost in Alaska and Dance With Me, Henry), Martin Ragaway and Leonard Stern (both wrote three), the story finds two boxing promoters, Bud Jones (Bud Abbott) and Lou Hotchkiss (Lou Costello) – a rare time the pair used their first names, losing control of one of their star wrestlers, Prince Abdullah (William ‘Wee Willie’ Davis) – who is infuriated that he is slated to lose his next match, returning home to Algiers instead of taking the loss (but not before roughing up poor Lou – who did all of his own wresting stunts in the film – leading to a wrenched arm socket and a stretched tendon).
An Italian sex comedy with some class – I know, I know, that sounds like an oxymoron, the great Mario Bava (Black Sunday) co-adapts and directs Four Times That Night (1971), a film that structures itself in a similar way to Akira Kurosawa’s classic Japanese motion picture Rashomon – also, for a more modern example, think of the television series The Affair (starring Joshua Jackson, Dominic West and Ruth Wilson). Looking at one fateful night, four individuals get a chance to tell their side of the story. Dealing with perspective and viewpoint, the narrative revolves around Gianni Prada (Brett Halsey) and Tina Brandt (Daniela Giordano), a wealthy man always on the prowl – this time spotting a pious young woman in Tina.
A tale of visual trickery, rotten luck, and arguably, the bleakest of Buster Keaton’s shorts, Cops (1922) finds The Great Stone Face losing the girl (she is unwilling to even think of dating the man until he makes something of himself) – so, he heads out into the streets of Los Angeles (actually filmed on them) to do just that. Shot during the third trial of his good friend Rosco “Fatty” Arbuckle (charged with manslaughter), it is perhaps evident that the comic actor is not at his most cheerful. After making a few mistakes – Keaton’s use of the space onscreen and the items cleverly placed within it always awes and amazes, he accidentally purchases a cop’s furniture from a street scammer who has spotted that he has some dough (he also buys a horse and carriage that is not actually for sale). . . trotting away with the furniture in tow, he finds himself amidst a police officers’ parade and has the rotten luck of having an anarchist’s bomb land on the vehicle – completely unaware of what it is, he lights his cigarette with it, tossing it aside as it explodes (this idea very well could have come from fellow comedian Harold Lloyd, who, three years earlier, thought it would be funny to pose for photos as he lit a cigarette from the fuse of a bomb – it ended up being real. . . and the man lost his thumb, index finger, and a portion of his palm, it also left him partially blind for more than half a year).