Them Thar Hills

Them Thar Hills (1934) is a short comedy film starring Laurel and Hardy.

The story involves Stan and Ollie traveling to the mountains for Ollie to recover from gout. They park their caravan near a deserted cabin recently occupied by a gang of moonshiners who had been ousted by Prohibition authorities; the moonshiners, attempting to hide the evidence, had dumped their brew into the well, which Stan and Ollie now proceed to drink from, thinking that it is healthy mountain water ("that odd taste is just the natural iron in the water").

A motorist couple who have run out of petrol arrive and ask for help. While the irritable and overbearing husband (played by familiar nemesis Charlie Hall) walks back to his car with Stan's spare can of petrol, the man's wife (Mae Busch), appreciating the boys' affable and respectful manners as a refreshing relief from her husband's crabby belligerence, willingly joins the boys for supper and ladlefuls of the "mountain water". The husband returns with the car to find that the three are all roaring drunk, and his anger at Stan and Ollie triggers a "tit for tat" sequence at the end. It culminates with the wrecking of the caravan, Hall being tarred with molasses and feathered, and with a toilet-plunger stuck to his forehead. Ollie then jumps into the well because his trousers are on fire. The alcohol in the water detonates, causing Ollie's explosive ejection, leaving him buried in the ground with his legs flailing in the final scene. It is one of the team's most celebrated "tit for tat sequences; so much so that a sequel, Tit for Tat, was produced the following year.

External links

• Them Thar Hills at the Internet Movie Database