Review of Busy Bodies

This L&H comedy short could have been filmed without sound, with little loss of comedy content. It's filled with slapstick and sight gags, and focuses almost exclusively on the duo, with a little Charlie Hall friction. When the boys drive into the lumbar yard where they work, they blow their horn, and Charlie drops his armful of sticks in panic. Later, Charlie complains they are bothering him, and socks Stan on the chin. There follows some back and forth socking involving the 3. Then, Charlie calls for a truce. Stan offers him a cigar(not the exploding kind!). He decides to smoke it there, ignoring the nearby 'no smoking' sign, which Stan point out. Along comes a huge worker, who carts him off after seeing him smoking............ When the boys arrive, they walk into the building and, immediately, Ollie walks into a board being moved. Soon, both do. Later, Ollie does again, in a running gag.........Stan can't find a free place to hang his jacket. So, he hammers a nail into the wall. Unfortunately, it's too long, and pierces a water pipe behind, causing a leak.(I've seen this in an earlier film of theirs).........Ollie is fiddling with a window frame. He can't get the upper or lower windows(lacking glass) to move up or down. He calls for Stan's help, and Stan eventually gets them to move, but Ollie's fingers are caught between the frame and the window, both above and below. Stan spends some time trying, in vain, to free his fingers. Finally, he gets up on a table and pushes, knocking Ollie off balance, causing Stan to fall on him, causing the window frame to come apart........Then, Stan is planeing a board, and Ollie bends over one end region. Without looking up, Stan pushes the plane over Ollie's rear, ripping a strip of his overalls out.. He puts glue on the strip, and puts it back in place(But, the strip will only stick to what's underneath?)........In retaliation, Ollie partially bends a straight saw, then lets it fly, hitting Stan in the head . Ouch!. That probably hurt more than when Ollie was hit in the head by a falling circular saw blade. Stan retaliates by sticking the paint brush in the glue bucket onto Ollie's chin. like a beard. It sets very quickly, and neither can get it off. From Stan's pulling, the handle eventually comes off, leaving the bristles as a more convincing beard. Stan clips the 'beard' with scissors, then gets the idea to use a small plane like a razor, to trim the bristles to the skin. If real, Ollie's lower face would be a bloody mess! .........Stan accidentally soaks Ollie with a hose. Ollie angrily pulls on the hose, amazingly, pulling the sink off the wall! , and sending him reeling backwards. Somehow, he gets caught up in a vertical belt that sends him up and down, finally to deposit him in the hopper of the long, snaking, sawdust disposal duct. We see he has quite a ride in the duct, to the external opening, where he gets stuck. Stan tries to get him unstuck but, strangely, a keg of shellac dumped in the hopper(why?) pushes him out, flying onto the roof of a shed, which collapses.(Things sure were flimsy in those days!)........They get in their car to exit from a bad day. But, for some reason(?), Ollie drives into a giant band saw, which saws the car in half!! (How's that for fantasy?). The film ends with Stan turning on the phonograph they installed under the hood(bonnet), to provide some exit music. I definitely recommend that you see this film if you like L&H-style humor. See it at YouTube. I watched the colorized version, but the B&W version is also present.