BUY

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1931	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	251:45	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	Dual Sided	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Selection, then Menu
Region	2,4	Director	James W. Horne
Studio Distributor	Universal Home Video	Starring	Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy
Case	Super Jewel
RRP	$34.95	Music	Uncredited

    Be Big/Laughing Gravy is a most interesting presentation and restoration of what are basically five reels of Laurel & Hardy. They are presented in various formats and running times

    The disc starts off with Be Big!. In Be Big!, Oliver and Stan and their wives are planning to go to the seaside for a holiday, however, Oliver's friends at the hunt club have other ideas and want to throw a stag party for the pair. Oliver is initially reluctant, but when he hears of the forbidden delights on offer, he is convinced to feign illness in order to go to the party. Things basically go from bad to worse as a comedy of errors results in Oliver and Stan getting into very big trouble.

    The second feature on this DVD is Laughing Gravy. Oliver and Stanley live in a boarding house with one rule - NO PETS! Stan, predictably, has a dog, Laughing Gravy, who begins barking in response to Stan's acute attack of the hiccoughs. Their landlord is unimpressed and evicts the dog into the cold, snowy night, whereupon Oliver and Stan take it upon themselves to attempt to rescue Laughing Gravy. Inevitably, another comedy of errors follows.

    These two features are presented in various ways on this dual-sided DVD;

Side A

• Be Big! - English (27:25)
• Be Big! - German (dubbed - 24:27)
• Laughing Gravy - English 2 reel version (20:54)
• Laughing Gravy - English 3 reel version (longer and with a different ending - 29:52)
• Laughing Gravy - German 2 reel version (with an excerpt from a Stan Laurel silent feature added at the beginning, dubbed - 24:39)

Side B

• Los Calaveras - Spanish. A combination of Be Big! and Laughing Gravy, tied together with Stan and Oliver being divorced by their wives between the features. (61:09)
• Les Carottiers - French. The same as Los Calaveras but in French. (63:19)

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced, and it is all presented in Black & White.

    The sharpness and clarity of the English features is remarkable given the age of the source material. I draw a direct comparison with the other Laurel & Hardy feature available in R4, March Of The Wooden Soldiers, and the clarity of this presentation is far superior. On the other hand, the foreign language presentations are rather less well-defined, and appear to have been sourced from analogue video transfers.

    Brightness tends to vary up and down a little as the movie progresses, as does the density of black, but this is to be expected in source material of this vintage. Once again, the foreign language presentations are worse in this respect than the English presentations. In particular, the Spanish presentation is extremely dark.

    Shadow detail is lacking, as is to be expected from this age of material. Low level noise is not present in the English presentations, but does creep into the foreign language presentations, giving them a considerably more grainy appearance than the English presentation.

    There is a lot of video material on this dual-sided DVD. In total, the program material runs for 251:45, or well over 120 minutes per side. Fortunately, there is not a lot of movement on screen at any one time, and so there is not a lot to test the MPEG encoding. Smooth camera moves were still a thing of the future when these movies were made, as all we get to see are the occasional very jerky camera pan or tilt. Nevertheless, MPEG artefacting is pleasingly rare, with only the odd one or two fleeting examples of macro-blocking in the backgrounds to mar the presentation.

    Film-to-video artefacts are non-existent during the English features, but there are some blemishes during the foreign language presentations, with analogue video dropouts and glitches occasionally apparent.

    Film artefacts abound, and are of all types and sizes. The English presentations are relatively free of film artefacts, but they are still there in copious quantity. The foreign presentations again are worse in this respect. The French presentation in particular suffers from very jerky editing with each cut jumping dramatically in a most distracting fashion.

Audio

    Dialogue was extremely frequency limited and hard to make out at times, but it was something that you became used to as the presentation progressed. In many ways, the quality of the audio was reminiscent of an old 78 rpm recording. The dialogue had quite an odd sound about it, too, and was not well spatially integrated with the on-screen action. Hiss was apparent throughout the presentation.

    Audio sync was variably in and out, but was never so badly out as to be problematic.

    The music nicely suited the on-screen action and was well-and-truly of a traditional orchestral genre.

    The surround channels were not used. Neither was the .1 channel.

Menu

Booklet

    The video quality is variable, but the all-important English features are in remarkably good shape.

    The audio quality is poor, but not unacceptable.

    There are no extras as such.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
2nd February 2000