This runs twenty minutes but it's one of my favorite Stan Laurel comedies from the days before he paired off with that Hardy guy. Mr. Laurel had modest success as a solo comic…never quite a star, perhaps because he had no particular personality in his films. Many, like this one, were spoofs of other movies and while the gags were quite good, he didn't really have a defined character and that made him somewhat forgettable to audiences.
Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pride was made in 1925 for an independent producer named Joe Rock. Around 1970, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Rock briefly and I recall little of our conversation except that he claimed he wanted to use Oliver Hardy in the Stan Laurel films he produced, not as a co-star but as a villain. But Stan, he said, thought Hardy was too good a comic to play a good villain…or something like that. It is said that this film was shot on the Universal lot (where Rock had offices) using many of the same sets and props from the 1920 version made there of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring John Barrymore. The Laurel version is a pretty faithful, albeit sillier, telling of the same story.
This was a "lost" film for many years but a print finally turned up in France and someone did a full restoration, including recreating the title cards in English. If you enjoy what you see, I highly recommend that you buy The Stan Laurel Collection, a DVD set put out by the folks at Kino Video. It's full of films like this one. In fact, it contains this one. And then, after you enjoy those, buy The Stan Laurel Collection 2 from the same folks…and then investigate their series on Oliver Hardy's pre-Stan work, as well. Good stuff.
