Stan y Oliver toreros

Way back in the day before Laurel teamed with Hardy, Stanley was quite the comic silent screen star and many of his short subjects were satires of current big screen productions. One of the best of them was Mud And Sand where Stan Laurel did a spoof of Rudolph Valentino and his role in Blood And Sand. 20th Century Fox also now owned the rights to Blood And Sand because of the great Tyrone Power sound version that had come out a few years earlier.

So in their farewell film before the disastrous comeback with Utopia, Stan and Ollie did The Bullfighters where Laurel got to be a bullfighter again. And he plays a dual role the great Don Sebastian of Spain and just plain Mr. Laurel who with Mr. Hardy are a pair of private eyes from Peoria.

Now if you can wrap your minds around the concept of ANYBODY hiring these two as detectives, The Bullfighters is an amusing enough film though not up to the standards of their Hal Roach work. They're in Mexico on an extradition job to bring back Carol Andrews and of course in their usual fashion make a holy hash of that.

But promoter Richard Lane notices Stan's resemblance to Don Sebastian and since this guy whom he has brought over and promoted is being held up at the border. They've got a problem however in Ralph Sanford who got sent up the river on the mistaken testimony of these two lugnuts and threatens to skin them alive.

The Bullfighters is amusing, especially in that last sequence when both of Laurels personas show up in the bullring with the PI from Peoria getting well fortified for the occasion. I can't blame Stan it's the only way I would go in a bull ring.

You'll have to see The Bullfighters to see if Sanford makes good on his threat.