HOUSE OF ERRORS was the second feature film pairing silent (and sound) comedy great Harry Langdon (who also wrote the story) with British comic actor-writer-director Charley Rogers (best known for his work as a writer-director with Laurel and Hardy), playing Bert and Alf. In this one, the boys are the lowest level of employees at a newspaper and have always wanted to be reporters. They happen to overhear a potential story about an inventor who has a new model machine gun (this is a wartime film, after all!), and they pose as servants in order to get into his house. While there are some other wonderful elements in the film (one scene taking place in a flophouse features Monte Collins doing a brilliant routine about a flea circus--one wonders if Langdon, who wrote the story for the film, dragged that routine out of his old vaudeville days!), what makes it worthwhile are Langdon and Rogers. Langdon wrote in any number of scenes that rely on his brilliant physical comedy skills, honed during years of vaudeville work and in his classic silent shorts and features. The scene with the "fish hooks" coming through the window, the scene where he is walking along the molding on the wall of the flophouse, the scene at the movie's start with the car horn--there are any number of hilarious comic set-ups. Rogers is the more aggressive of the duo, and he is the perfect foil for Langdon's lost, confused character. This is a low-budget PRC feature, but director Bernard B. Ray was a master of getting the most out of a little because of his experience running his own studio in the 1930s and directing some classics in the western and action veins, starring the likes of Tom Tyler and Richard Talmadge and Jack Perrin. The lighting in this film is rudimentary at best and the sets ultra-cheap, but who cares? Langdon could perform in front of a brick wall, and he would be brilliant. I'm glad he had the chance to star in films like this one, the earlier DOUBLE TROUBLE with Rogers, DUMMY TROUBLE/MISBEHAVING HUSBANDS with Ralph Byrd, and his continuing series of Columbia comedy shorts during the early 1940s, in the last few years of his career and life. His timing and mannerisms and ability to play off others had not diminished. Langdon fans should NOT miss HOUSE OF ERRORS.
