NOTE: We occassionally run Guest Voice posts from thoughtful readers (and those who comment under our posts). This is a three-part review of the DVD of Laurel and Hardy’s classic film “March of the Wooden Soldiers” (aka “Babes in Toyland”) written by Dan Schneider who sometimes leaves comments on this site. He has this site and this new film site.
DVD Review Of Babes In Toyland (aka “March of the Wooden Soldiers”)
Copyright © by Dan Schneider
The scariest dreams are tattered and not seamless. They are not like slick Hollywood special effects laden films, but like those lower budget masterpieces; Carnival Of Souls or the original Night Of The Living Dead.
Thus the most scary villains to ever appear onscreen in film may well be the semi-simian Bogeymen in the Hal Roach Studio’s 1934 filmic adaptation of Glen MacDonough’s and Victor Herbert’s 1903 operetta Babes In Toyland, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, in what may not be their best film, in terms of pure screen comedy, but is easily their most memorable one. However, the film is not much like the original operetta, for only a few of the original songs remain. Of course, no one in this movie is killed, mutilated, raped, nor has anything worse than a clonk on the head or a dart in the ass happen to them, but this only reinforces the dream logic of the film. Thus, grown men in bad ape-like suits and phony masks are even creepier than paranormal ghouls, because they should not scare, but amuse.
Yet….they scare, especially a child.
How many times has a film shown someone knocked out with one punch, or a handy vase cracked over a skull, or some similarly unbelievable thing that occurs, with no logical reasoning behind it? Thus, a dissonance between the inner reality, or diegesis, of the film, and the real reality of the viewer is felt, if not cogitated upon, especially when nothing else fosters the suspension of disbelief within the movie. This does not occur in Babes In Toyland because there is no disbelief to suspend.
The film, from its first frame, when Mother Goose (Virginia Karns) sings and flips pages of an oversized book she’s stepped out of, to the last frame, is wholly make believe. Thus, the Bogeymen, who come off as fifth rate Morlocks (see the 1960 version of H.G. Wells The Time Machine), are even scarier, especially to a four of five year old child- which was the age I first saw this film in its usual Thanksgiving showing, in between King Kong and Godzilla marathons.
One can easily see the cheap rubber masks that the Bogeymen are wearing, and even the seams and zippers in their cheap furry costumes, which are more like body pajamas. Even the wacky grass skirts they wear lend an air of frightening androgynous bizarreness, if there can be such a thing. No, this film is not special effects laden; yet therein lies its charm and timelessness.
I will not argue that this is, by any stretch of the imagination, great filmic art, but it is great fun. I recently bought a DVD copy of the film from GoodTimes DVD, because I wanted to see how the film, which I watched regularly for years, would now appeal to me, analytically. Last year I had seen it for the first time in a few years, when WGN reran it on Thanksgiving, and was going to review it. But, before I did, I also watched NBC’s early December broadcast of It’s A Wonderful Life, after avoiding that film, due to its saccharine reputation, for years, and reviewed it instead. I was wrong about It’s A Wonderful Life, as it is a great piece of cinema. My review and defense of it has proven to be one of the most popular essays I’ve ever written on Cosmoetica.
Babes In Toyland is not in a cinematic league with the Jimmy Stewart classic, but it’s an even greater treat for children. Ask yourself just how well most recent kids films will appeal to youngsters in seven decades? Yet, films like this, and the later, more polished, The Wizard Of Oz, whose endebtedness to this film is manifest, still appeal, and will appeal, in that later time precisely because they are not reliant on the ‘gee wiz’ special effects factor.
Part two of this three part review runs tomorrow.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.