According to Turner Classic Movie historian Ben Mankiewicz, this was the first Laurel and Hardy film short to use synchronized music and sound effects. Most of it takes place in a cemetery if you can believe that, after the boys agree to Professor Padilla's (Richard Carle) offer of five hundred dollars to bring him back a dead body! Apparently the professor had a theory that the human brain has a level surface, practically flat!, and he wants to test that out. Hmm.
I've seen a fair number of Laurel and Hardy's silent pictures and never thought about it before, but watching them go through their routines here, I couldn't help but think how their own distinctive voices were just perfect for their characters when they got around to talking films. Like icing on a cake one might say.
Obviously the graveyard scenario offers many opportunities to explore comedy horror in the way of black cats, flying bats and white sheeted ghosts and they're all used here to wonderful comic effect. With the ton of silent films both comedians made prior to 1928, I don't know if this is the first one to use the theme, but having recently watched "The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case" (1930) I can state that the idea was used again there, along with the traveling lamp gimmick, this time on the back of a turtle.
Interestingly, the boys never do come up with a corpse for the good professor. Lawman Ledoux (Charley Rogers), assigned to follow them to thwart the grave robbing scheme is tripped up into a huge puddle as the boys scatter. It's a bit of an abrupt ending, but with Laurel and Hardy, it doesn't really matter.
I've seen a fair number of Laurel and Hardy's silent pictures and never thought about it before, but watching them go through their routines here, I couldn't help but think how their own distinctive voices were just perfect for their characters when they got around to talking films. Like icing on a cake one might say.
Obviously the graveyard scenario offers many opportunities to explore comedy horror in the way of black cats, flying bats and white sheeted ghosts and they're all used here to wonderful comic effect. With the ton of silent films both comedians made prior to 1928, I don't know if this is the first one to use the theme, but having recently watched "The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case" (1930) I can state that the idea was used again there, along with the traveling lamp gimmick, this time on the back of a turtle.
Interestingly, the boys never do come up with a corpse for the good professor. Lawman Ledoux (Charley Rogers), assigned to follow them to thwart the grave robbing scheme is tripped up into a huge puddle as the boys scatter. It's a bit of an abrupt ending, but with Laurel and Hardy, it doesn't really matter.