This is the "boys" - Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy - it what many consider their last good comedy feature film, doing what they do best: short slapstick routines. It's almost a compilation of them, a series of routines more than a story with a plot. Stan and Ollie, between 45 and 50 years old when they made this film, were Hollywood veterans by now.

Frankly, the comedy might be considered a little too corny for today's crowd but, hey, the movie is 70 years old. If you're a fan of these two comedians you should enjoy this film. Anyway, when anyone provides a lot of gags in just under one hour, you'll hit and miss a lot....but some things will always be funny. Some are still clever, too, such as the bit with the window shade being a shadow.

You can always count on Ollie being henpecked and Stan being an airhead (he's a WWI soldier who marched in a trench for 20 years not realizing the war is long over). Of course, if you think about it, that premise has more holes in it than the proverbial swiss cheese, but who cares? A good portion of this film involves the simple fact of Ollie and Stan just trying to walk 13 flights up the stairs to Ollie's apartment, and the adventures that happen to them along the way.

After watching just 57 minutes of these guys pratfalls and slapstick routines, you'll be exhausted!

BLOCK-HEADS is set up with an idea which must have seemed totally ridiculous in 1938 but when you stop to consider that Japanese soldiers were being found on remote Pacific islands 30 years after the second world war ended the idea stops being ridiculous and becomes shockingly prophetic

This is possibly the last of the great L&H movies ( FLYING DUECES being the only other contender ) , after this the comedy duo started appearing in studio features that didn't seem to show much respect to their genius , made them slightly off centre and stretched stories out for almost 90 minutes when a 60 page script would have worked much better

This means that BLOCK-HEADS suffers from the mild irritation of so many other Stan and Ollie star vehicles - It's rather episodic . But seeing as it's so funny what have we got to complain about ? Listen out for Stan's tagline " Is there gonna be a fight ? " which is repeated several times and the surreal sequence of closing the blinds on the stairway . Strange when people discuss the films of these two comedy gods they always think of slapstick but forget they were also masters of surrealist visualism too . The funniest moment is probably the final scene in Ollie's apartment involving the married couple from next door

I still think THE LAUREL AND MURDER HARDY CASE is the best of their vehicles but BLOCK-HEADS deserves its own mention as being one of the very last superb Stan and Ollie comedies

Although this movie occasionally looks like a re-tread of their earlier pictures (especially the final scene--which was done exactly the same way earlier by Laurel and Hardy),it is the best they did late in their careers. For the most part (apart from Chump at Oxford),all movies completed after this were either sub-par or even unwatchably bad--as the team got perhaps too old to continue, they made the fateful decision to leave Hal Roach and go to 20th Century Fox (a studio that simply knew NOTHING about comedy in the 1940s).

So what did I like about this movie? Well, the opening segment is great--one of the funnier bits they ever did. Stan and Ollie are soldiers in WWI and everyone is getting ready to go over the top (i.e., leave their trenches and charge the German lines). Stan is told by the commanding officer to stay behind and guard the lines until he is relieved. So, of course, twenty years later, he is STILL waiting to be relieved. His uniform is in tatters and he has a stack of empty food cans as high as a mountain. That's cute! Stanley is found and brought back to the states. Naturally, his story makes the newspaper and Ollie discovers that his presumed dead friend is alive and well. So, he goes to the Veteran's Home to get him and bring him home to stay with him and his wife. Where it goes from there I'll leave you to find out yourself. However, it's a cute and well-crafted film that shouldn't be missed by Laurel and Hardy fans or anyone needing a good laugh.

FYI--the ending, as I mentioned above, was not very original. The actual ORIGINAL ending for this movie was much darker and funnier but the powers that be at MGM (who bankrolled and distributed Hal Roach's films) nixed the ending and it was re-shot in the boring way. The jealous neighbor who was an avid hunter STILL chased them as he did in the new ending but instead of firing a shot in the air and all the people diving out of the apartments, it dissolves to a scene where the hunter is later relaxing at home and Stan and Ollie's heads are mounted on the wall like trophies among all the other hunting paraphernalia! Then, Ollie gives his old familiar line "well here's another fine mess you've gotten me into" towards Stan. Now THAT'S FUNNY! Too bad it only exists is a few studio stills and is not on the DVD or video copies.