(1930; director: James Parrott)
I’m not a laugher. Never been a laugher. Even when I was a kid. I remember watching old Looney Tunes cartoons with my younger cousins while they were LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY. They were falling to pieces. Every time that Bugs got the upper hand on Elmer Fudd or The Coyote got flattened by another anvil, these kids lost their shit.
Meanwhile, I, age 9 or 10, just sat there quietly. I liked the cartoon, too. I was enjoying it. I was entertained. It was good. I was happy. I probably had a smile on my face.
But I didn’t have the physical reaction that my cousins did. And to this day I still find myself in the same situation all of the time and I don’t know why. I have a sense of humor. I like to laugh, but I’m very stingy about it for some reason. I mostly laugh at real-life mishaps and accidents rather than jokes or movie gags. For that stuff, I tend to smirk and think “yeah, that was good.” I rarely cut loose and explode.
I guess I’m just a creep.
And I mention this because Night Owls made me laugh my face off. It bored a hole through the stone wall. This is my favorite short so far on my Laurel and Hardy journey.
The story is complete absurdity, which makes it better.
There have been FORTY-TWO burglaries in the city in one week and no arrests. Beat cop Edgar Kennedy is feeling the pressure from the police chief. Arrest somebody. Arrest anybody. Meanwhile, he’s so incompetent that he probably accidentally handcuffs himself everyday. (About a quarter of this two-reeler plays like an Edgar Kennedy comedy.)
Kennedy strolls the city park, bumbling around, looking for bootleggers and couples necking, when he finds Laurel and Hardy snoozing like hobos on a bench. He’s ready to haul ’em in for vagrancy when he gets a bright idea: Convince these two idiots to rob the police chief’s house so that Kennedy can swoop in and catch them and look good to his boss for once. What could go wrong?
Everything, of course. This is inspired calamity.
It’s a film so good that they made it twice, with one being a Spanish-language version called Ladrones (included on the Essential Collection DVD set). Back in 1930, I guess the Hal Roach people didn’t think to just overdub a film like this. Instead, they remade most of the movie, re-using shots that didn’t contain any dialogue, and rewriting the ending to add sixteen minutes to the film.
The English-language version is tighter and, thus, better, but the Spanish version is still funny. Plus, you get to see Laurel, Hardy, Edgar Kennedy and James Finlayson awkwardly speak espanol via pure phonetics. They handle it like professionals, but there’s a stark contrast between the gringos’ slow, simple delivery and the Spanish-fluent supporting cast who deliver their lines rapid-fire.