Developed as a two-reeler spoofing prison pictures, the project grew into Laurel & Hardy’s first feature film at Roach. For years, their popular shorts were billed above the feature attraction on theatre marquees, so, at last, they appeared in a full-length movie themselves. Imaginative individual set pieces are among the fellows’ funniest and most endearing, including a prison-school sequence meant to echo the shorts being made by Our Gang at the time. Listen carefully early in the picture when someone in the crew cannot help himself and laughs off-scene! This is an extended version, restored to reflect what the motion picture looked like during its final preview stage. Directed by James Parrott, who along with Hal Roach makes a gag appearance as a prisoner. With Wilfred Lucas, James Finlayson, June Marlowe (OUR GANG’S “Miss Crabtree”) and Walter Long as the “The Tiger. ”
