Flying Dueces (1939)

Starring:Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Jean Parker, Reginald Gardiner, Jean Del Val, Charles Middleton, James Finlayson, Billy Engle, Bonnie Bannon, Frank Clarke (VI), Sam Lufkin, Eddie Borden, Arthur Housman, Jack Chefe, Richard Cramer, Crane Whitley, Christine Cabanne, Kit Guard, Mary Jane Carey, Monica Bannister
Director: A. Edward Sutherland
Studio: Good Times Video
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Gee that's swell photograpghy
Two Laughs is Not Enough
Deuces review
One of their best non-Roach films
Hardy Reincarnated

Flying Dueces (1939)
Starring: Stan Laurel , Oliver Hardy , Jean Parker , Reginald Gardiner , and Bonnie Bannon
Director: A. Edward Sutherland
Manufacturer: Good Times Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00006RCLK
Release Date: 2003-08-05

Customer Reviews:

Gee that's swell photograpghy.......2007-05-20

Ah life does imitate art. Almost 60 years after this film was made, a suicidal young man joined the US Marines to forget his girl troubles. This film will always have a special place in my heart.

Ollie falls in love while in Paris, to an inn keepers daughter. His proposal is turned down amidst laughter at his expense. Stan thinks that the best thing to do is to go back to the fish market where they work, but Ollie had nobler ideas, he must drown himself along with his broken heart. Of course Ollie convinces Stan that he must die too, after all what would Stan do without Ollie, aside from having a wonderful and rewarding life at the fish market. But thanks to some friendly advice and a man-eating shark, the boys decide to live again and join the French Foreign Legion.

What a Legion it is, work and march from sunup until sundown for 2 cents a day. Ollie tells the commandant that they refuse to do that much work for 2 cents, so they are put on laundry detail. I have never in my life seen a pile of clothes that large. Well Ollie has a revelation and forgets about his heartache and decides it is time to go home. After all why clean a mountain of dirty drawers if you don't have too.

Well the boys do not understand the terms desertion, UA, or AWOL, so off they go, but not without wrting a nice letter to the Commandant and stealing his cigars. Well the letter was pretty insulting and maybe it is a good thing that Ollie cannot spell raspberries. So after a little chase and a nice rendition of 'Shine on Harvest Moon', the boys are captured and thrown into a cell to await the firing squad. However, an eternal mysterious hand throws them a letter through the bars. There is an escape hatch. Stan is not sure why they are crawling through an underground tunnel.

Ollie "We're making our escape"
Stan "Are we allowed to do that?"

Anyway they make their way to an airplane and get away from the chasing legionaires, only to crash. Ollie becomes a horse through the magic of movie reincarnation and Stan is doomed to walk the earth with people 'staring at him and wondering what he is'.

It's a good flick, I like it

Two Laughs is Not Enough.......2007-05-17

I tried to hard to love this movie, but in all honesty, I thought it was painfully unfunny. I laughed twice - first when Ollie tells Stan that without him "people would stare at you and wonder what you are - and I wouldn't be here to tell them" and last at the very end when Ollie is reincarnated as a horse with a mustache and a hat. To be fair, I admit that I also smiled once to see Ollie's coy flirtation with the innkeeper's daughter.

Apart from that, the film was only interesting for its surprising bleakness at the beginning - there was something compelling about watching Ollie, suicidally depressed, decide that Stan too must die.

All in all, I was bored. The boys try hard to be funny but the material just isn't up to it. Two laughs is not enough.

Deuces review.......2007-04-20

Most L & H fans are by now familiar with this classic tale of Stan & Ollie in the French Foreign Legion so I will not discuss the merits of the plot line and focus instead upon the quality of this restored edition. On the whole, the images are crisp and the sound is consistently clear. There are occassional scratch and dirt marks but these are so infrequent and occur so quickly that they do not detract in any way from the viewing of this film. These elements, combined with some of the extras included on the CD make it an excellent value and a worthwhile addition to any collection of classic Laurel and Hardy films.

One of their best non-Roach films.......2006-10-10

While everyone seems to agree that L&H did their greatest most representative work for Hal Roach Studios, there are some films here and there from other studios which are just as strong, great, and funny. This is one of them, and in spite of a mixed reputation among fans, is often cited as the best non-Roach film, period. The plot starts out simply enough; Stan and Ollie are vacationing in France, about to return to the United States, but Ollie is in love with Georgette. He is heartbroken when he finds out she loves another man (later he finds out she's actually married, and to his Foreign Legion commanding officer no less), and decides to bump himself off. Naturally he makes Stan commit suicide too, but after a number of typical false starts, they're finally saved when Georgette's husband comes by (he overheard them arguing) and recommends joining the Foreign Legion as a surefire way of forgetting all about women. The boys take him up on his advice, but after causing a lot of trouble and a quick discovery that they're just not cut out for the service, they pack up their things and leave. Their superiors are furious to discover the note they left, and have them arrested when they finally catch up to them. When they tunnel their way out, there's an avalanche and they're forced to start digging up instead, right into the wine cellar in Georgette's house. More comedic mayhem ensues as they start running away again, and they end up in a plane they can't even fly properly, culminating in one of their strangest endings ever.

Also included are a bunch of interesting rarities--two short silent newsreels showcasing their 1932 visit to Edinburgh, Scotland and Tynemouth, England, a brief 1943 PSA short narrated by Pete Smith, 'Tree in a Test Tube' (their only appearance in color besides the short surviving fragment of the 1930 feature 'The Rogue Song'), a gallery of posters, stills, and PR materials, an introduction by Serge Bromberg (director and co-founder of Lobster Films), a star-studded (but not very good) 1931 short they made a brief cameo in, 'The Stolen Jools' (just about everyone under contract to MGM at the time makes an appearance here, along with some guest stars from other studios!), and their 1954 appearance on 'This Is Your Life.' It's well-known in the fan community that they weren't really pleased about appearing on the program, and it really shows in how quiet they are and how ill at ease and embarrassed they look. Stan in particular wasn't happy about being surprised like this, since he always liked to have material prepared before giving a performance. Additionally, most of the guests who came on didn't really have much of a connection to them; it was nice to see people like Ollie's first sweetheart, the woman who was in his performance troupe when he was living in Florida, and director Leo McCarey, but most of them didn't have a big connection to them like, say, Charley Hall, Billy Gilbert, Hal Roach, Sr., Anita Garvin, or Tiny Sanford, all people who were still alive at the time. It could have been a great loving tribute to them, but instead falls really flat.

Although fan reaction to 'The Flying Deuces' is mixed, I really like it, though perhaps wouldn't rate it quite as high as a feature like 'A Chump at Oxford' or 'Pack Up Your Troubles.' And even though they weren't at Hal Roach for this picture, their longtime foil Jimmy Finlayson also appears here, and he's as great and funny as always. Unlike most of their other non-Roach films, here they still have control over their characters, aren't relegated to lesser roles, and had a great script. As for picture quality, I'm reviewing the Kino release, which has very good image quality. It's too bad the reviews for all of the releases of this are being mixed together. I didn't see anything wrong with the prints, certainly not enough to give this a lower rating. Whatever happened to the days when fans didn't throw a fit just because something didn't always have crystal-clear picture-perfect image quality? It seems as though the invention of the DVD has really raised people's expectations, and now we hear complaints about less than 100% perfect or remastered images when such prints would have been considered just fine instead of horrid or unwatchable in the era of the VHS.

Hardy Reincarnated.......2006-08-07

Quite a bit of stuff happens in this short 70-minute film. Hardy falls in love with a girl who is already married, and Laurel keeps bumping his head into a ceiling by accident. When Hardy's girl tells him she's not available, he contemplates suicide. Naturally, Laurel is dragged into the suicide attempt as well. They go to a river where Hardy ties one end of a rope to a heavy object, and ties the other end to himself. Then he ties Laurel to the rope too. Laurel says he has no reason to follow Hardy into going through with such a dreadful act, but Hardy says Laurel is incapable of making it in life alone, so he has no choice. In Hardy's own words, "People would stare at you and wonder what you are...and I wouldn't be there to tell them."

Just as they're about to end it all, a man recommends the two men join the foreign legion to forget about their girl troubles and they take his advice.

Hardy plans to only be a part of the legion for a few days, until he forgets about women completely. He and Laurel refuse to work for less than 25 cents a day, yet they end up working for 3 cents a day washing and ironing clothes. After Hardy sees the mountain of work he's asked to do, he says, "A miracle has happened. I've completely forgotten what I'm supposed to forget. Let's go home." Unfortunately his iron sets fire to a giant pile of clothing, and he and Laurel are both arrested. They tunnel out of their jail cell, and try their hand at flying a plane to escape. This is where the "Flying Deuces" title comes into play. Both steering wheels of the plane break off at the same time, leaving its two occupants helpless. They crash into the ground at full speed, and Laurel miraculously survives. Hardy isn't so lucky, and is reincarnated into a mustached horse with a derby. A very unusual ending I must say. Great plot though, and a great film.

Laurel & Hardy Double Feature Utopia/the Flying Dueces

Average customer rating:

Good thing they put the depressing film first on this DVD

Laurel & Hardy Double Feature Utopia/the Flying Dueces

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

Customer Reviews:

Good thing they put the depressing film first on this DVD.......2005-06-07

This would be a decent double-feature for Laurel & Hardy if their final film, "Utopia," was not so depressing a farewell to the great comedy duo. "Utopia" was originally released in 1952 as "Atoll K" and later as "Escapade" and "Robinson Crusoeland," and whatever the title finds that an aging Laurel & Hardy have inherited a yacht and an island. The boys set off to see along with a refugee as their cook and a stowaway. The yacht sinks in a storm, but a newly created atoll (hence the original title) emerges from the sea to give them a place to live. They are then joined on their new little island paradise by Suzy Delair as Chérie Lamour, who is running away from a jealous fiancée. Together they create their own private little utopia, where everything is just perfect until uranium is discovered and all of the nations of the world begin to battle over ownership of the atoll. Just as the boys are about to be lynched, the atoll sinks back beneath the seas.

Whatever its title, this final film from Laurel & Hardy certainly provides mixed feelings. The political satire angle is ambitious, but scarcely appropriate for comedians who rely so much on visual humor (compare with the Marx Brother's more success effort in a similar comic vein in the classic "Duck Soup"), although the sequence where Hardy distributes key political posts to everyone but Laurel (he gets to be "The People") is pretty good. But most of the sight gags are not typical Laurel & Hardy routines and several people have claimed the best gags were cut from the film (it would be nice to believe that, but I have my doubts).

There is also the shock of the appearance of Stan Laurel, who had been ill before the production from prostate and dysentery, literally looks like he is at death's door. As for Oliver Hardy, he looks distressingly overweight (he would die in 1957 after a series of strokes). The result is that when Oliver slaps Stan or there is any sort of physical routines it is not funny but sad and you cannot help but think that they are going to get hurt. Laurel had an operation during the filming and recovered, living another 15 years. Laurel & Hardy made some stage appearances after this and there was talk about a film with Billy Wilder, but this was the last film appearance for both and Hardy's 426th screen appearance in a career that went all the way back to 1914 (Laurel only made 187 films going back to 1917 and it says something that he never made again once his partner was in ill-health). Consequently, "Utopia" is a sad farewell to the screen's greatest comic team.

That makes the other film here superior by default, but it is really a decent offering. "The Flying Deuces" gets its name from the final sequence where Laurel & Hardy escape from a firing squad in an airplane. The boys get in this predicament because Ollie is jilted by his girl friend (Jean Parker) and wants to commit suicide. Despite Stan's more than willing help the attempt fails and the boys end up joining the French Foreign Legion instead. Needless to say, Stan and Ollie are not very good soldiers, hence the appointment with the firing squad. The comedy routines in the film are okay, but there is nothing special. The best moments are the more musical ones, especially a nice soft-shoe routine and Stan playing a prison bedspring like a harp. This 1939 seven-reeler was directed by Edward Sutehrland for RKO and co-stars Charles Middleton, James Finlayson, Reginald Gardiner, Jean Del Val and Clem Wilenchick. One of the writers receiving screenplay credit for "The Flying Deuces" was Harry Langdon, the great silent comic who was just a notch below the celebrated triumvirate of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd.