Hi again guys, still loving your site, keep up the good work!
I was wondering if you could help me identify what sounds like a classic Kindertrauma scene, not on my behalf but my girlfriend's, who was traumatised by this scene she said she saw in a LAUREL AND HARDY comedy short. It was one of those comedy of errors that they always did, getting themselves into trouble with one of the stock villains.
At the end of this one, however, STAN and OLLIE ended up literally tied into knots, a visual gag I'm sure many found hilarious but which mentally scarred my honeybunny at an early age. I'd love to find it, just to satisfy my own curiosity. Anyone have an idea about it?
Many thanks,
Kahotep
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Thanks to Reader Viktoria for the email assist with LAUREL & HARDY's GOING BYE-BYE!
Reader Viktoria emailed this hot tip:
Viktoria gets it… check out the knotty ending on this clip:
Laurel and Hardy quite often ended up in physical predicaments that were more nightmarish than funny. One episode – I forget the title, but they were sailors on a supposedly haunted ship, and much hilarity ensued as a result of Stan stumbling around covered in flour – ended with them having their heads twisted back to front. The set-up seems to have been absolutely identical to the one mentioned here, and I think it was probably Walter Long, the stock heavy in a lot of their films, who did the twisting.
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But the one that really bothered me as a youngster was the merry tale which finishes with Stan having to hide in a barrel which turns out to be full of water. During a painfully long scene in which Ollie casually leans on the barrel, exchanging repartee with the people looking for Stan while obviously preventing him from breathing, exaggerated gulping can be heard – it really sounds as if he's drowning! Alas, the reality is even worse. Stan has been forced to drink the water, and is now cartoonishly spherical from neck to waist. It is obvious even to a very young child that a human being could not survive this. Also, it is made apparent that Stan desperately needs to go to the lavatory, which somehow makes it worse.
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I cannot claim this as an authentic Kindertrauma, since I only worried about this image mildly, and I never had actual nightmares, but I bet there are kiddiwinks out there who did. And I bet at least half of them widdled the bed.
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By the way, did you know that Peter Cushing appeared with Laurel and Hardy in "A Chump At Oxford"?
Thanks the one! Many thanks for all your help with this – now if only I can get my honeybunny to watch it. But I don't think she'll thank me for it…
Kahotep/Derek