User Reviews

This is a very funny 1929 L&H comedy short. I watched the colorized version at YouTube. .......The boys begin by being transported to a prison(hoose-gow), along with a bunch of other men who were all arrested together for some illegal activity, in a police raid. The boys protested they were but innocent bystanders, but the judge ruled otherwise........Ollie managed to sneak in 2 green apples they are supposed to throw over the wall as a signal for some friends to throw a rope ladder over the wall(How are they supposed to know in what section of the wall this will take place?) But, a guard sees them talking about the apples, and demands they give them to him. He throws one over the wall(why?), and a rope ladder soon appears. The guard climbs it, and chases the men away. But, somehow, the boys end up outside the prison wall, anyway. They run, but a guard sees them and shoots them both in the rear with a shotgun. They return........They join a work gang, digging ditches. For some reason, the 2 work too close together, allowing interference. You can imagine what mischief they get into with their pickax and shovel. Ollie received a real wound in the rear from Stan's pickax........Come lunch time, the boys are very slow to get to the mess area. Hence, there is no more room on the benches. One inmate tells them that's their table over there. The sit at the small table, set for 2 people(but there is only one overseer). Stan opens the pepper shaker and sprinkles a little pepper in his soup. But, he doesn't screw the cap back on. Ollie holds it over his soup, and all the contents spills into his soup.(They had done this gag previously, in the silent short "You're Darn Tooting")........After the overseer scolds him, they ask the cook how they can get some food? He tells them to gather some firewood: the more they gather, the more food they will get. So, Ollie suggests they chop down the tree next to the cooking tent(Green timber for a cooking fire?). This tree happens to contain a lookout station in the top, which they don't see. Also, why don't the cook and other inmate see or hear the chopping? Of course, it falls in the middle of the cook tent........ In the next frame, they're back digging ditches, and again get into trouble because they are too close to each other. Stan again puts a big rip in Ollie's jacket(They are wearing their usual street clothes!). Angry Ollie throws Stan's pickax far away. Unfortunately, it lands in the radiator of the car that brought the governor(James Finlayson) and entourage for a visit. A leak sprouts, so what are the boys to do? One inmate recommends they pour some rice in the radiator to stop the leak. Somehow, they obtain a partial bag of rice from the destroyed cooking tent, and pour a bunch in. Soon the leak stops. The governor and entourage are ready to leave. When they warm up the car, a thick slurry of rice and radiator fluid emerges from the top, which the boys had neglected to screw on. A guard starts a rice brawl by pushing Stan into a bunch that had fallen on the ground. Stan retaliates, but hits the wrong person in the face. Soon, the others, including the ladies, are embroiled in a brawl. Very funny! I'll leave the remainder of the finale for you to see.

. . .THE HOOSE-GOW suggests that Herb Hoover could unleash Gatling Guns upon a contingent of World War One War Heroes, along with their wives and kiddies, as long as he could get some goofy-looking buffoons--such as corncob pipe Doug MacArthur and I-Like-Ike Klondike Bars--to carry out his dirty work. By simply keeping the massacre cartoonish enough, Herb discovered that he could fill mass grave trenches on America's National Mall without reducing the fervent backing of his Core Supporters. Herb and his oligarchical henchmen then divvied up the savings accounts of their deluded Base, causing half of U. S. banks to fail, and the other half to close for several years. Instead of permanently outlawing Herb's pernicious Pachyderm Political Party, the foolish People's Party decided to "let by-guns be by-guns." Will History repeat itself in the 21st Century? Is the eldest ever President a dead ringer for Stanley?

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are the most famous comedy duo in history, and deservedly so, so I am happy to see any of their films. A police patrol car pulls into a prison, and all new inmates get out, with Stan and Ollie in amongst them fidgeting over each other. Getting out, they explain that they were only watching the raid that got them in this situation, and a little kick fight (started by Ollie trying to shut Stan up) gets the Warden (Tiny Sandford) a kick too. Then Ollie explains a secret plan he has made with another prisoner, involving oranges thrown over the wall to get a rope ladder. The Warden spots these oranges, gets the boys to get rid of them, and the last in Stan's mouth is swallowed with a hard pat on the back. An orange is thrown over the wall, and the rope ladder is dangled, and the Warden chases the danglers outside the door away, and with the door open the boys run to escape, only to return with powder burns on their backsides from a gun shot. Next we see the boys on the side of the road with pickaxes, with Stan continually sticking his in Ollie's coat, and still he gets hit when he gives Stan a spade. The bell rings for a food break for all prisoners, and when the boys have nowhere to sit, they mistakingly get the Warden's table, have some pepper trouble, and are shouted away. The only way to get their food is to get loads of wood for the chef, and they find a tree to cut down, which they don't realise has a Treetop Lookout post and guard (Charlie Hall) at the top, so both fall into the below gazebo. Then everyone gets back to work with the Governor (James Finlayson) coming to inspect, and when Ollie gets his coat ripped again, he manages to throw Stan's pick-axe into the Govenor's car radiator. To stop the leak of gas a prisoner suggests filling it with rice, and this seems to work until the car starts to drive and the radiator erupts with this gas/rice mixture. The Warden pushes Stan in the mound of mixture as lesson, and Stan throws some in his face, and throwing back the Warden manages to hit the Governor. So the Governor accidentally hits Ollie, and soon enough everyone including the two women in the car, other prison staff and all the inmates are throwing this mixture at each other. With this chaos going on, the boys run away, and the Warden and Governor decide to get the Manager to stop the whole thing, and they reverse a car into a cart carrying barrels of white paint, which spills on the boys hiding in the back of the car. Filled with wonderful slapstick and all classic comedy you could want from a black and white film, it is an enjoyable film. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were number 7 on The Comedians' Comedian. Good!

"The Hoose-Gow" is an American 19-minute live action short film from 1929, so this one will have its 90th anniversary next year. It is one of the earlier sound films starring Laurel and Hardy and it is a black-and-white film of course too. Don't be fooled by versions out there that include color, which was added later on, but to me did not have a positive impact on the film. Like several other Stan and Ollie works, this one here was made by the unluckily short-lived Parrott and Walker and our duo of "heroes" here ends up arrested and at jail. But they are not really behind bars here, but basically doing prison labor on the outside where they are causing more harm to each other and t o the guards of course than really to any of the other inmates. I have seen quite a few Stan and Ollie shorts and this one simply wasn't funny enough for me to say it is among the better ones. The element of effortlessness, which is so strong in many of their works, feels missing almost entirely here, it all seems so forced, almost try-hard. At times, this one reminded me a bit of a Three Stooges short film in terms of the plot and general approach and as I am not the biggest fan of the trio by any means, this should not be seen as a compliment. So yeah, I wanted this one to be better. It's not even among the better works from Laurel and Hardy's sound film period. Do not watch.

Laurel and Hardy are already in enough trouble, having been falsely arrested and sent to prison where they should be released just so they don't accidentally burn the prison down. They end up on a chain gang, try to chop a tree down that has a prison guard attached to it, and overfilling the governor's car up with gasoline with amusing results. This was two years before they starred in their first feature, "Pardon Us", a more detailed prison comedy. While photographed by George Stevens, this has some creaky moments of little sound, but that wet goo fight at the end is straight out of the keystone cops. A disturbing visual has Laurel's mouth stuffed with a whole apple which he can't get out and had me cringing.