The Big Noise (1944)

THE BIG NOISE  (1944)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Mal St. Clair
    Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Doris Merrick
    Arthur Spade, Veda Ann Borg, Bobby Blake
Laurel and Hardy play janitors who answer the call at the detective agency where they're sweeping floors, and come into the possession of an experimental bomb. This is relatively late Stan and Ollie, made at Fox after they'd moved on from Hal Roach. (It's even missing "The Cuckoo Song".) It's got some amusing moments, but nothing that compares to their previous work. The sequence in the railroad sleeper is a variation on "Berth Marks", one of their early sound shorts, released in 1929.