Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.5

Sons of the Desert Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 28, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations.

Laurel and Hardy made well over one hundred films of various lengths to their combined credit as a comedy duo (spanning both the silent and “talkie” eras), but their output is still kind of woefully under recognized on Blu-ray. Two niche labels have helped that deficit at least a little, with VCI bringing out The Flying Deuces and Legend offering March of the Wooden Soldiers and then March of the Wooden Soldiers 3D, but that’s basically it for Region A consumers, perhaps unbelievably. (It does look like some other regions have their own peculiar releases, many afflicted with less than stellar technical merits, at least based on some member reviews on our site.) An amalgamation of folks including Kit Parker Films, Jeff Joseph (AKA SabuCat), Randy Skretvedt, the UCLA Film and Television Archive and (just for good measure) the Library of Congress have started to remedy that sad situation with this new collection which aggregates two of Laurel and Hardy’s best remembered “feature length” offerings (still on the short side compared to many contemporary outings) along with a glut of shorts, including a reconstructed version of The Battle of the Century, which many fans had considered the “Humpty Dumpty” of Laurel and Hardy films, unable to be “put back together again” after decades of improper curation which is detailed in the commentary track for that film.

Sons of the Desert is so well remembered by diehard Laurel and Hardy lovers that one of the pair’s biggest fan groups is named after the film. This is an often laugh out loud offering that features the inimitable partners as henpecked husbands who happen to be members of the “fraternal organization” named in the title (think Elks, Lions or other “friendly” animals). When the Sons of the Desert announces that their annual convention is coming up in Chicago and that all members need to take an oath to attend, Stan is reticent, since he knows his wife Betty (Dorothy Christy) is going to object. Ollie, ever the blowhard, tells Stan that a man needs to be “in charge” at home, and that Ollie’s wife Lottie (Mae Busch) will have no say in whether Ollie attends or not. Yeah, right — fans of the comedy titans can probably already see at least some of the “writing on the wall”.

Suffice it to say that the kibosh is put on the boys’ plans, though of course Ollie has a backup plan, which involves faking an illness and then having a quick (?) trip to Hawaii aboard a cruise ship set up as a supposed “cure”, since Ollie knows full well his wife gets seasick. With that “alibi” in the works, Stan and Ollie of course head off to Chicago to enjoy the revelry of the Sons of the Desert. While there, they have one close call (literally, in that a telephone is involved, though the whole plot point in this sequence actually defies logic, but of coure logic is not always a strong suit in Laurel and Hardy efforts), but also end up getting filmed for a newsreel, which of course leads to calamity later in the story.

Further complications (of course) ensue when the wives are shocked to hear that the ship Stan and Ollie were supposedly on has sunk and that there are casualities, so they head off to the shipping line's offices in a panic to see what they can find out. At more or less that exact same moment Stan and Ollie return home, ready to simply tell the girls that they're back from Honolulu, only to find a newspaper emblazoned with a headline about the tragedy at sea on Ollie's kitchen table, which of course alerts Ollie that a "new, improved" story is going to need to be manufactured. Things go from bad to worse when the wives return home unexpectedly, and the boys need to hide somewhere. Everything builds to a wonderfully farcical climax, with Ollie's bluster never quite able to control Stan's meeker but perhaps more honorable tendencies.

Sons of the Desert Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sons of the Desert is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kit Parker Films and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. This is one of the titles culled from the UCLA Film and Television Archive, with closing credits disclosing a digital restoration undertaken by SabuCat in 2017. This is a rather beautiful looking transfer a lot of the time, with good, solid contrast and appealing black levels and generally commendable detail levels across the board. There are definitely fluctuations in clarity, as can be seen in some of the screenshots accompanying this review, and occasionally deficits in detail levels are noticeable (see screenshot 19). Some of the nighttime rain material also looks fairly rough when compared to the bulk of the presentation. There's a slightly "dupey" look here at times that at least offers a very noticeable grain field. Grain resolves naturally throughout and I noticed no compression issues of any kind.

Sons of the Desert Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sons of the Desert features an LPCM 2.0 mono track that certainly displays the boxiness and thinness associated with this relatively early "talkie" era, but that said, the film delivers surprisingly energetic accounts of the music in particular (there are songs scattered throughout the story). Dialogue is also rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, and aside from some background hiss, I didn't really notice any major age related wear and tear in the form of discernable damage or dropouts.

Sons of the Desert Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Randy Skredvedt


• Galleries feature some prefatory explanatory text which is often very interesting:

  Sons of the Desert

  Publicity Portraits (1080p; 3:31)

  
  

  Scene Stills (1080p; 4:23)

  
  

  Deleted and Candids (1080p; 3:36)

  
  

  Posters and Publicity (1080p; 7:22)

  
  

  Early Script (1080p; 3:57)

  
  

  Dialogue Continuity (1080p; 3:54)

  
  

  Contracts and Documents (1080p; 2:57)

• Sons of the Desert Trailer (1080p; 2:35) is the Spanish language trailer, the only one known to have survived.

This film is on Disc One of this set, and those interested should peruse the Supplements section of the Laurel & Hardy - The Definitive Restorations Blu-ray review for a list of other supplements on this disc, some of which are at least tangentially related to the film.

Sons of the Desert Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It had been years since I had seen Sons of the Desert, and the world being what it is as this review is being written, I have to say I really needed the rather hearty (Hardy?) guffaws this film provided to me. This is a pretty simple film in terms of plotting, but the characters are all so expertly drawn and the comedy so appealing (especially the physical comedy), that the entire outing is just a pleasure from start to finish. Technical merits are generally solid and the supplements very appealing. Highly recommended.