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A Chump at Oxford
Thursday, October 15th, 2009 12:37 amHaving watched an understrength England run up a slightly flattering 3-0 score against Belarus, a nation ranked 70 places lower than them, I decided to watch one of my recently bought Laurel and Hardy collection. Furtle isn't the Laurel and Hardy fan that I am, though she doesn't dislike them by a long chalk, so we had already pulled a DVD from the middle of the range and watched it on the basis that all the stories on it were twenty minute shorts. With Furtle upstairs doing computery things, I decided that I could, therefore, indulge myself in a full feature - a whole 60 minutes, how time change - so I pulled disc 1 from the collection. Why not start at the beginning of the set?
This is a slightly misleading tack as the films are all mixed up, being arranged roughly by theme rather than chronology, but it's easier to keep track if you watch the DVDs in their numbered order and it's not as if there's any continuity between the various productions.
Anyway: the first film in the collection is A Chump at Oxford, made in 1939 and released a year later. It is not one of their better offerings, but is entertaining enough. The European release is effectively two films spliced together with a linking sequence. The US/Canada version was 40 minutes, this version is 60 minutes and the entire first 20 minutes is nothing to do with the title, simply highlighting their down and out status. While I was watching it - particularly after their arrival at Oxford, I found myself looking at one of the students and trying to remember where I'd seen that face before - a number of actors recur in Laurel and Hardy movies, most notably the outrageously squinting Jimmy Finlayson with his fake moustache. Well he's in it too, but I couldn't place this chap.
Imagine my surprise then, when at the end the cast list included a young Peter Cushing in what transpires was only his fourth movie role, or third if you allow for the fact that his footage was edited out of his first movie because of time constraints!
This is a slightly misleading tack as the films are all mixed up, being arranged roughly by theme rather than chronology, but it's easier to keep track if you watch the DVDs in their numbered order and it's not as if there's any continuity between the various productions.
Anyway: the first film in the collection is A Chump at Oxford, made in 1939 and released a year later. It is not one of their better offerings, but is entertaining enough. The European release is effectively two films spliced together with a linking sequence. The US/Canada version was 40 minutes, this version is 60 minutes and the entire first 20 minutes is nothing to do with the title, simply highlighting their down and out status. While I was watching it - particularly after their arrival at Oxford, I found myself looking at one of the students and trying to remember where I'd seen that face before - a number of actors recur in Laurel and Hardy movies, most notably the outrageously squinting Jimmy Finlayson with his fake moustache. Well he's in it too, but I couldn't place this chap.
Imagine my surprise then, when at the end the cast list included a young Peter Cushing in what transpires was only his fourth movie role, or third if you allow for the fact that his footage was edited out of his first movie because of time constraints!