A Hal Roach Production. Copyright 17 August 1938 by Loew's Inc. A Hal Roach Feature Comedy released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. New York opening at the Rialto: 29 August 1938. U.S. release: 19 August 1938. Australian release: 1 June 1939. 6 reels. 57 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Mislaid for twenty years after the Great War, Stan is finally re-united with Ollie, but wreaks havoc on the Hardy home. NOTES: It's hard to believe, but Marvin Hatley's incessantly inappropriate music score was nominated for an Academy Award, losing out-and rightly so!-to Korngold's The Adventures of Robin Hood. Stan bitterly disapproved of the film's ending. He wanted a two-shot of himself and Babe, mounted as trophies over Billy's fireplace. Ollie turns to his partner and declaims with all his customary exasperation: "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!"COMMENT: Any film with Patricia Ellis is infinitely worth looking at, even when she's stooging for that delightful threesome, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Billy Gilbert. In fact, it's nice to find the boys with two leading ladies worthy of their talents. Misses Ellis and Gombell are both expert comediennes. Block-Heads provides all five principal players with many opportunities to shine and is one of the funniest of the L&H features. After a splendid introduction (using spectacular stock footage from The Big Parade), Laurel and Hardy each have a winning solo scene before destructively joining forces in some cleverly engineered, hilarious mayhem. We love Stan jumping into Babe's arms to be carried, Billy cleverly inverting Frank Buck's celebrated boast to the reporters ("I don't bring them back alive. I bring them back dead. I bring myself back alive!"), Babe huffing and puffing endlessly down the stairs (with Stan's magic window shade), and the king-pin domestic squabble that rages as Stan sits up and down in the "chair". Block-Heads rates as a very amusing entry indeed. Proficiently directed and produced, it thoroughly deserves its high popularity with L&H fans.

"Blockheads" was a huge return to form for Stan and Ollie after the film "The Bohemian Girl" was met with a bit of disappointment. The above film was a case of going back to basics and the boys were back on top where they belonged! Stan and Ollie are soldiers in the First World War and Stan volunteers to stand guard alone. However, he still there on guard about 20 years later! He is declared a war hero and Ollie invites Stan home for a meal with Mrs. Hardy. Unfortunately, this doesn't go according to plan....... Silent film comedian Harry Langdon wrote some of the gags and he deserves credit in helping to make "Blockheads" one of the funniest films from Laurel and Hardy. Billy Gilbert makes a welcome return appearance as a big game hunter and James Finlayson appears as someone who provokes Ollie into an argument. The flights of stairs that were used for this film are put to very good comic use. I loved every minute of this film.

Like their previous feature-Pack Up Your Troubles, this one has Laurel & Hardy in a World War I setting, only here while Ollie has gone back to a normal life, Stan is left still guarding his post 20 years after it ended! In the present time, Ollie has been married for a year to the day so he has an hour to go out. That's when he discovers Stan back from his duty at the soldiers home when someone shows his picture in the paper. I'll stop there and just say this was another of their hilarious movies from the late '30s complete with some of their regular supporting cast of James Finlayson and Billy Gilbert as well as some newbies like Minna Gombell and Patricia Ellis, who I just watched in Romance on the Run. I also liked Marvin Hatley's score as I always like his music in the other L & H pictures. So on that note, I highly recommend Block-Heads. P.S. This was Hal Roach's last film under his M-G-M contract before switching to United Artists afterward. He sold his Our Gang shorts series to his former distributor beforehand so this turned out to be one of those players-Tommy Bond's-last appearance for his former boss as he'd join the rest of the gang at his new Culver City neighbor. Also, if you'd read Randy Skretvedt's book, "Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies", you probably know about Stan's original ending and his boss Roach vetoing it. Personally, I think I liked Hal's better.

Since I was a kid, BLOCK-HEADS was one of my favourite Laurel and Hardy feature-length movies. There's truly nothing to dislike about this one; from the opening, which paints an unusual but successfully comedic slant on the horrors of WW1, to the vintage spousal comedy which evolves when Ollie brings Stan home to tea.My favourite part of the feature, though, is the mid-section which involves the troublesome twosome climbing 13 flights of stairs in order to reach Ollie's apartment. The antics they get up to in this section are truly side-splitting, invariably involving the great James Finlayson, a brattish kid and some weird shadows. It's the stuff of comedy gold, and seeing it today I'm once again surprised at how it hasn't dated in the slightest.Inevitably, Laurel is the true star here, playing off his weird activities against Hardy's increasingly exasperated straight-man. The stuff with the hand-pipe and the glass of water are smaller gags, but in many ways I like them better than the bigger stuff. BLOCK-HEADS is an all-time comedy classic and a film I can watch over and over without getting bored.