While this is far from the best of Laurel and Hardy's short films it's still an amusing comedy with a rather bizarre ending that is guaranteed to stick in your memory.
Stan lodges with Ollie and his domineering - and diminutive - wife in this one. The boys obviously understood the comic value of playing opposites off one another - after all, their entire act was based upon it. Here, though, there's a second opposite in the form of Ollie's wife, who barely reaches his chest (at one point she has to stand on a chair to belt him with a frying pan). Both Stan and Ollie live in abject fear of this little battle-axe and it's funny to see.
Two things stand out about this film. The first is the clever use of screen transitions. A couple of times Stan or Ollie will run to the far right of the screen and 'pull' the next scene across the screen behind them as they exit stage left. Stan even manages to fumble it in a moment of panic and the next scene goes zipping back across the screen. The other moment is when the boys play each other after a botched blood transfusion - it's not particularly funny, but you can tell the duo are having a hoot mimicking one another.
Stan lodges with Ollie and his domineering - and diminutive - wife in this one. The boys obviously understood the comic value of playing opposites off one another - after all, their entire act was based upon it. Here, though, there's a second opposite in the form of Ollie's wife, who barely reaches his chest (at one point she has to stand on a chair to belt him with a frying pan). Both Stan and Ollie live in abject fear of this little battle-axe and it's funny to see.
Two things stand out about this film. The first is the clever use of screen transitions. A couple of times Stan or Ollie will run to the far right of the screen and 'pull' the next scene across the screen behind them as they exit stage left. Stan even manages to fumble it in a moment of panic and the next scene goes zipping back across the screen. The other moment is when the boys play each other after a botched blood transfusion - it's not particularly funny, but you can tell the duo are having a hoot mimicking one another.