laurel and hardy movies march of the wooden soldiers

#Laurel and hardy movies march of the wooden soldiers cracked#
#Laurel and hardy movies march of the wooden soldiers movie#

#Laurel and hardy movies march of the wooden soldiers movie#

What's the best way to ignore how terribly hot it is at the end of July? Watch a Christmas movie, of course! Yes, it's time to have a little Christmas in July, and what better way to do so than with two of the most famous funnymen of all time, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy? Though they were in many movies throughout their careers, Laurel and Hardy are probably best known for a movie that might do well if they weren't even in it, March of the Wooden Soldiers, which is popularly known as Babes in Toyland. Part two of this three part review runs tomorrow.Classic Review: March of the Wooden Soldiers By Josh Spiegel July 23, 2009 Ask yourself just how well most recent kids films will appeal to youngsters in seven decades? Yet, films like this, and the later, more polished, The Wizard Of Oz, whose endebtedness to this film is manifest, still appeal, and will appeal, in that later time precisely because they are not reliant on the â€˜gee wizâ€™ special effects factor. My review and defense of it has proven to be one of the most popular essays Iâ€™ve ever written on Cosmoetica.īabes In Toyland is not in a cinematic league with the Jimmy Stewart classic, but itâ€™s an even greater treat for children. I was wrong about Itâ€™s A Wonderful Life, as it is a great piece of cinema. But, before I did, I also watched NBCâ€™s early December broadcast of Itâ€™s A Wonderful Life, after avoiding that film, due to its saccharine reputation, for years, and reviewed it instead. Last year I had seen it for the first time in a few years, when WGN reran it on Thanksgiving, and was going to review it. I recently bought a DVD copy of the film from GoodTimes DVD, because I wanted to see how the film, which I watched regularly for years, would now appeal to me, analytically. I will not argue that this is, by any stretch of the imagination, great filmic art, but it is great fun. No, this film is not special effects laden yet therein lies its charm and timelessness.

Even the wacky grass skirts they wear lend an air of frightening androgynous bizarreness, if there can be such a thing. One can easily see the cheap rubber masks that the Bogeymen are wearing, and even the seams and zippers in their cheap furry costumes, which are more like body pajamas. Wells The Time Machine), are even scarier, especially to a four of five year old child- which was the age I first saw this film in its usual Thanksgiving showing, in between King Kong and Godzilla marathons. Thus, the Bogeymen, who come off as fifth rate Morlocks (see the 1960 version of H.G. The film, from its first frame, when Mother Goose (Virginia Karns) sings and flips pages of an oversized book sheâ€™s stepped out of, to the last frame, is wholly make believe. This does not occur in Babes In Toyland because there is no disbelief to suspend.

#Laurel and hardy movies march of the wooden soldiers cracked#

How many times has a film shown someone knocked out with one punch, or a handy vase cracked over a skull, or some similarly unbelievable thing that occurs, with no logical reasoning behind it? Thus, a dissonance between the inner reality, or diegesis, of the film, and the real reality of the viewer is felt, if not cogitated upon, especially when nothing else fosters the suspension of disbelief within the movie. Thus, grown men in bad ape-like suits and phony masks are even creepier than paranormal ghouls, because they should not scare, but amuse. Of course, no one in this movie is killed, mutilated, raped, nor has anything worse than a clonk on the head or a dart in the ass happen to them, but this only reinforces the dream logic of the film. However, the film is not much like the original operetta, for only a few of the original songs remain. Thus the most scary villains to ever appear onscreen in film may well be the semi-simian Bogeymen in the Hal Roach Studioâ€™s 1934 filmic adaptation of Glen MacDonoughâ€™s and Victor Herbertâ€™s 1903 operetta Babes In Toyland, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, in what may not be their best film, in terms of pure screen comedy, but is easily their most memorable one. They are not like slick Hollywood special effects laden films, but like those lower budget masterpieces Carnival Of Souls or the original Night Of The Living Dead. The scariest dreams are tattered and not seamless. He has this site and this new film site.ĭVD Review Of Babes In Toyland (aka “March of the Wooden Soldiers”)

This is a three-part review of the DVD of Laurel and Hardy’s classic film “March of the Wooden Soldiers” (aka “Babes in Toyland”) written by Dan Schneider who sometimes leaves comments on this site. NOTE: We occassionally run Guest Voice posts from thoughtful readers (and those who comment under our posts).