The Flying Deuces (1939)
Heartbroken over a Parisian innkeeper's daughter who turns out to be married, Ollie drags Stan into joining the French Foreign Legion with him — a decision that leads to a firing squad, a jailbreak, and a runaway biplane.
A loose remake of their own 1931 short Beau Hunks, The Flying Deuces stretches the same heartbreak-and-Legion premise to feature length and closes on one of the duo’s stranger images: Stan meeting a talking horse he takes for Ollie’s reincarnated spirit.
Background
The Flying Deuces is a loose remake of Laurel and Hardy’s own earlier short film Beau Hunks, stretched here to feature length. Heartbroken after discovering that a Parisian innkeeper’s daughter he has fallen for is already married, Ollie drags Stan into joining the French Foreign Legion with him, a decision that leads the pair through a firing squad, a jailbreak, and a runaway biplane before the story resolves.
What to watch for
Watch for the film’s final, stranger-than-usual image: Stan encountering a talking horse that he becomes convinced is Ollie’s reincarnated spirit, an odd, almost surreal closing note for a comedy otherwise built on the duo’s familiar bickering and physical mishaps. As one of their relatively few feature-length vehicles from this period, it is a useful example of how the team’s shorter comic routines could be stretched, with mixed but generally successful results, across a longer runtime.
