The set includes pretty much the same silent films as those long out-of-print Image DVDs, plus all of Laurel & Hardy's talkie short subjects and features through 1940, excepting only a handful of titles ( The Devil's Brother, Babes in Toyland, Bonnie Scotland, The Flying Deuces) whose rights reside elsewhere. Even more ironically, four of the six films turned out to be far better than their uniformly negative reputations suggested, and their true worth was rightly reappraised.īut the team's best movies, during their years with producer Hal Roach, remained stubbornly MIA, and eventually a great many fans took the extreme step of ordering PAL format DVD boxed sets released in Europe, especially Laurel & Hardy - The Collection, a May 2004 shoebox from Universal's British subsidiary. Ironically, the movies widely regarded as Laurel & Hardy's worst, the half-dozen they made for 20th Century-Fox in the forties, were issued in luxuriously appointed boxed sets, featuring excellent audio commentaries and other supplements. There were two half-hearted releases, one in 2003 that included their feature Sons of the Desert (1933) plus four classic shorts, and another in 2005 containing Way Out West (1937), Block-Heads (1938) and another two-reeler, but both sets utilized extremely mediocre transfers and were obviously slapped together with little enthusiasm. The original film elements were in poor shape, and the company, now called Hallmark Entertainment, had little interest in releasing them to DVD.
Meanwhile, rights to the Roach library passed to Hallmark, the greeting card company, and Laurel & Hardy's Roach titles pretty much languished there, unloved, year after year. But those very quickly went out-of-print and even now several volumes command premium collector's prices.
Featuring the team's silent films, they were among the very first DVD releases of any kind, with Volume One released in December 1998. The DVD era had started off well, with Image's The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy series. The beloved comedy team's best films, those made for producer Hal Roach from the mid-1920s through 1940, were maddeningly stuck in a kind of apathetic corporate limbo. All rights reserved.The last dozen or so years have been mighty rough on Laurel & Hardy fans. Laurel & Hardy: Songs and Sketches from the Hal Roach FilmsĬopyright © 1999-2003 Way Out West. Smile When the Raindrops Fall: The Story of Charley Chase The Little Rascals: The Life & Times of Our Gang Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies The Midnight Patrol, Night Owls, & Scram! Going Bye-Bye!, Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, & Oliver the Eighth The Fixer Uppers, Me and My Pal, & Our Wife VHS Colourised Video Cassettes (PAL standard for Europe)īerth Marks, Men O'War, & Unaccustomed As We Areīelow Zero, The Hoose-Gow, & One Good TurnĬhickens Come Home, The Chimp, & Dirty Work Should Married Men Go Home?, Their Purple Moment, & We Faw Down The Music Box, Sons of the Desert, & Way Out West Me and My Pal, Our Wife, & That's My Wife March of the Wooden Soldiers (Babes in Toyland) Laurel-Hardy Murder Case & Oliver The Eighth Hog Wild, Perfect Day, & Thicker Than Water The Fixer Uppers, Slipping Wives, & Sugar Daddies The Finishing Touch, 45 Minutes from Hollywood, & Leave 'Em Laughing VHS Black & White Video Cassettes (PAL standard for Europe)Īngora Love, The Chimp, and Flying ElephantsĪny Old Port, The Battle of the Century, & On the Wrong Trekīacon Grabbers, Double Whoopee, & Libertyīelow Zero, Wrong Again, & You're Darn Tootin'īerth Marks, They Go Boom, & Unaccustomed as We Areīig Business, Do Detectives Think?, & From Soup to Nutsīusy Bodies, Helpmates, & Towed in a HoleĬall of the Cuckoos, The Hoose-Gow, & The Second Hundred YearsĬome Clean, Going Bye-Bye!, & Love 'Em and WeepĬounty Hospital, Them Thar Hills, & Tit for Tatĭirty Work, Habeas Corpus, & The Live Ghostĭuck Soup, Putting Pants on Philip, & Why Girls Love SailorsĮarly to Bed, On the Loose, & One Good Turn You may order additional items by returning to this page before you "checkout."
To order, simply select any of the following titles and you will be taken to the .uk website to place that item in your shopping cart. For your convenience, their Laurel & Hardy related material is listed below. You will pay .uk directly for your order, and they will ship it to you.Ī.uk sells Books, Video Cassettes, and Digital Video Discs online.