On the Loose

ON THE LOOSE

Aspect ratio: 1.37:1

Sound format: Mono

(Black and white - Short film)

Two young party girls (ZaSu Pitts and Thelma Todd) are romanced by a couple of clueless Brits (John Loder and Claud Allister) who take them out to their least favorite place on earth - Coney Island - where they suffer a series of adventures and indignities.

Part of an attempt by producer-director Hal Roach to recreate the successful Laurel and Hardy formula with other performers, this lumbering comedy is long on sight gags and short on laughs. Pitts and Todd - neither of them strangers to this kind of material - fail to strike many sparks as a potential 'comedy team', and the scenario is both obvious and heavy-handed. There's a surprising amount of risqué material, much of it revolving around gay stereotypes: Roach regular Billy Gilbert camps it up as an effeminate haute couturier, much embarrassed whenever he tries to describe the manner in which his dresses emphasize various parts of a woman's anatomy (however, a gruff aside to his staff reveals the campery to be a mere façade), and Allister plays his Brit character as a queenish fop, caught up in a running gag which finds him falling repeatedly into the arms of a young woman and her hot-tempered boyfriend, and he's more than happy to accommodate *both* of them! Laurel and Hardy make an unbilled appearance at the very end of the movie, and there's a brief cameo by frequent L&H co-star Charlie Hall.