Babes in Toyland

1934's BABES IN TOYLAND aka THE MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS is quite a busy seventy-eight minutes.   The titular town is home to the likes of Little Bo Peep, the three little pigs, the woman in the shoe (Bo Peep's mother), the cat and the fiddle, the Pied Piper, and the evil Silas Barnaby.  Also, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, playing Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee, who work in the toy factory.  They're great fun as usual, but I wanted more of them.  This film has so much going on that at times it almost seems like they are pushed to the margins.  Their interaction with any one of the aforementioned fairy tale characters would've been enough.

Mainly, they square off against Barnaby (Henry Kleinbach), who holds the mortgage on Mother Peep's shoe house, but is willing to forgive missed payments if he can have Bo Peep's hand in marriage.  He's much older and a total creep, so that ain't happening.  And Bo Peep is in love with Tom-Tom (Felix Knight), son of the Pied Piper.  Stannie and Ollie fail to raise the needed money or get their hands on the mortgage papers, but devise a clever ruse.  Then Barnaby plots revenge.  Along the way, the boys get fired from the toy factory for building one hundred six foot soldiers instead of six-hundred one foot soldiers.  Santa Claus is not amused.

There's also the business of Bogeyland, where the chaotic climax occurs.

BABES IN TOYLAND, remade by Disney some thirty years later (the one you're probably more familiar with), is elaborately designed and well performed by the cast, but those blah musical interludes hurt a bit.  Then there are those frightening costumes.  Actors dressed as pigs, cats, and rodents.  The latter looks like a drug addled Mickey Mouse.  Did they scare the hell out of children back in the day? They're plenty scary now, though this may be an asset to the film, which is filled with grim imagery.  Ollie's dunking scene is surprisingly brutal, but fairy tales always were likewise.  To wit, we see the Rock a Bye baby balancing on a tree branch, but thankfully (and surprisingly) we don't see that cradle fall.

Another issue: this is a Christmas film that takes place in July.