Many of you are writing to tell me how much you're enjoying the Laurel and Hardy Marathon currently in progress on Turner Classic Movies. I'm watching only intermittently because I don't have to. I (gloat, gloat) own all these films on DVD. I can have my own little Laurel and Hardy Marathon any time I like and I can see any film I choose in any order and without all those ads and trailers interrupting.
I told you about this before but it's worth mentioning again. A few years ago in England, a company issued a wonderful 21-DVD box set of about a thousand minutes worth of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The prints are for the most part, excellent. The material covered includes all their silent and sound shorts plus all but three of the features they made before they left the Hal Roach Studio. There are also alternate, colorized and foreign versions of some of the films. For a Laurel and Hardy fan, it's an absolute treasure trove.
However! For those who live in North America, there is one drawback: It's a PAL/Region 2 release, meaning that it won't play on a Region 1 DVD player, which is what you probably have if you live on this continent. Fortunately, there's a workaround: Just buy a region-free DVD player (which means it'll play anything) and you can do that from Amazon or almost any online electronics dealer. They aren't expensive. I picked one up for around $60 and it plays these DVDs with ease. This is the model I got, which is not to suggest there aren't others as good or better…or even cheaper. I've seen them as low as $35.
The DVD set itself is even less of an investment of your hard-earned dollars. When it first came out, it cost £199.99 (about $333 USD) and it's now down to £24.99, which is less than 40 bucks in American loot. If you order from Amazon UK, they'll do all the currency conversions and such. Here's a link.
This sounds like the greatest bargain ever. You get a new DVD player plus almost everything good Laurel and Hardy ever did for a hundred bucks or even less. Being an honest soul though, I must mention one thing. The rumor mill has it that there will soon be a major Laurel and Hardy set released in Region 1 for America. This is still a rumor…though reports are getting louder. I can't tell you for sure that it will happen soon or even that if/when it does emerge, it will be comparable. In terms of content, It's hard to imagine it being better. What I will guess is that it'll cost you a lot more to buy one of those than to buy the British set plus a new DVD player. That's assuming the Region 1 set comes out soon or at all. I make no assertions about that. I'm just telling you that the set I have is a great thing to own…because boy, those guys were wonderful.