1. Full Cast And Crew

Quotes: 111 Main Street.: pretending the building is on fire for emergency training Hey,you can't go in there! That place is a blazing inferno of flames and smoke, where one false step might mean sudden death, it says here.: Well, what'll we do if it's burn.: We'll crawl in.: How are we gonna crawl in - -?: Get down on your knees and quit arguing! Stanley crawls into the building and briefly stands up: Get down.

Stan and Ollie crawl in together: they stand up How do you do, Mr Norton? An unashamedly jingoistic Laurel and Hardy movie that sees them try to join the war effort. Watching loveable everymen Stan and Ollie put up signs saying 'gone to fight the Japs' troubles me ideologically. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but seeing such crass propaganda as Ollie saying, 'There's a job to be done right here at home' fills me with a sense of dread. And it's weird hearing English Stan talking about 'Our Country' and uttering such trite platitudes as 'We'll do anything that Uncle Sam wants us to do, won't we, Ollie?' What's most unsettling is that Stan and Ollie look so old and ill you no longer laugh at their slapstick but fear for their safety.

Direction by Edward Sedgwick is quite nice in terms of angles and camera motion, but completely at odds with the material. More to the point, sometimes poor shots and editing made the old Laurel and Hardy films funnier. With more professional standards they seem like an anachronism. The tiredness of the two leads (Stan in particular, who liked to be more involved in the creative level) comes through, and it all has a jaded, rehashed feel.

Find great deals on eBay for air raid wardens and tl-29. New listing Vintage Civil Defense Air Raid Warden Cloth. AIR RAID WARDENS LAUREL HARDY / ERA LUI SI SI. Directed by Edward Sedgwick. With Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Edgar Kennedy, Jacqueline White. Two bumblers, failures as businessmen and air raid wardens, stumble. The situation worsens when they botch a job as air-raid wardens but ultimately redeem themselves by battling a spy ring. Played by Laurel and Hardy.

I laughed just four times in the film's 64m duration, and while I cannot imagine any L & H vehicle plumbing the depths of a. movie, this is easily the weakest of their work that I've seen so far.

There's a lifeless atmosphere throughout, and Stan and Ollie's rapport is virtually non-existent for once. Some bits, like Stan sleeping in a gas mask amuses, but the chemistry is almost entirely absent.

If they'd made the film half the length yet with the same material it might have meant a pacier, snappier, product. In fact, it took me a while to put my finger on it, but what the picture misses more than anything else is incidental music, something that was synonymous with Laurel and Hardy. Their violent fight with an awkward houseowner – including ramming a pipe down his throat and smashing his head into a fusebox – does recapture some old glories, but it's too little. Most unsettling scene is the one where Stan can't write his own name. Laurel & Hardy are always dumb, but here it's supposed to be funny that they have learning difficulties? The climactic final pay-off is particularly notable for being nowhere near good enough.

Full Cast And Crew

The film doesn't so much end, but slump to a halt. Intriguingly, when Air Raid Wardens was released with Nothing But Trouble on one tape in 1993, the blurb on the back told you the ending. How thoughtful.