12 Days of Christmas Movies #1: Babes in Toyland (1934)

Happy Holidays everyone! To celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, I've decided to complete a daily review series of 12 Christmas movies leading up to the big 12/25. To qualify, the movies have to be tied to Christmas in some way and also something I've never seen before. I'll be going in chronological order. So, without further ado, if you got chestnuts, roast 'em - and enjoy my 12 Days of Christmas Movies!

Babes in Toyland
Dir. Gus Meins & Charley Rogers

I'm probably paging Captain Obvious here, but movies as we know it were completely different 83 years ago. When comedy producer Hal Roach made Babes in Toyland, sound in film had only existed for 7 years. Because most silent actors weren't trained for the transition, Hollywood often mined Broadway and the vaudeville stage for on-screen talent, including Laurel and Hardy. While successful on stage and in silent shorts, the comedy team really came into their own in the sound period. One skinny, one fat. One English, one American. One clumsy and childlike, the other bullish and short-tempered. They're the classic "odd couple" and one of the best comic pairings of all time.

At the height of their film career they starred in this bizarre adaptation of Babes in Toyland. Laurel and Hardy play Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee, two "boys" who live in the fairy tale world of Toyland, where they work as tinkerers for the big red guy himself, Santa Claus. They board with Mother Peep (Florence Roberts) and her daughter, Bo (Charlotte Henry) in a large shoe. However, the Peeps are down on their mortgage, and the villainous Barnaby (Henry Brandon) is owed money. With the boys unable to procure the money from Santa Claus after a mishap at the shop (Santa wanted 600 soldiers at 1' high, not 100 soldiers at 6' high) and subsequently getting fired, Barnaby agrees to drop the charges only if he can marry Bo Peep, despite the fact that she's a young, beautiful girl and he's a creepy old perv. Who does he think he is, Woody Allen?

Stan Laurel (right) looking like a cut-rate Peter Pan, Oliver Hardy (left) like
that "Berries and Cream" dude from the Skittles commercial

Don't let the lighthearted plot fool you - this is one weird-ass movie. Like acid-trip weird. The various characters and "creatures" that reside in Toyland range from bargain bin Halloween costume terrible to outright terrifying. The three little pigs look demonic and the cat playing the fiddle is the stuff of nightmares. There's even a bizarre cameo appearance from "Mickey Mouse." Apparently because they were good friends, Walt Disney lent the character to producer Hal Roach to use in Toyland, but in one of the weirdest decisions I've ever seen manifested in a film, they decided to cover a creepy Mickey mask over the face of an actual live monkey and have it climb all over the set, often confused and bumping into things. This was clearly before PETA existed.

Demon Pig PSA: Brush your teeth, kids!

Toyland itself looks like a themed miniuature golf course localized in an LA sound studio. That being said, this movie was a major production back in the day. Hal Roach had to combine two studios to accommodate the length of Toyland, with a total area of about 250 feet wide by 500 feet long. Lining the main street are all kinds of fairy tale homes, such as the old lady's shoe, Santa's toy factory, the three pigs' hideout, the windmill, and a whole bunch of others. They used hundreds of costumes, employed huge amounts of crew, and even animated a brief stop-motion sequence showing toy soldiers coming to life. It all looks pretty cheap and dated now, but Babes in Toyland is definitely impressive in its historical context.

The humor also isn't knee-slapping by today's standards, but there are a few good gags here and there. There's a running gag where Laurel plays with a toy he refers to as a "pee wee." I'm not sure if this is real or not, but all it seems to be is an oblong object he uses to whack away with a stick. You can imagine the ruckus he causes with that doohickey. I also love how Hardy is want to break the fourth wall by giving that "I have to deal with this every day" look to the camera - decades before Jim's camera mugging in The Office. There's a funny scene with Hardy trying to sneak into Barnaby's house through a "Trojan present" - not to be opened until Christmas, even though it's July ("We get our shopping done early"). There's also a solid gag where Laurel starts eating the evidence to a crime scene: sausage links, which may be linked to Elmer the pig's murder.

Unfortunately the comedy is routinely interrupted by the budding musical romance between Bo Peep and the Pied Piper that really drags the pace down. If you watch a lot of other comedies from this era, there are always random musical romances that have nothing to do with the main characters. The romance here isn't just unnecessary though, it's downright creepy. When Bo Peep loses her sheep, Pied "Peeping Tom" Piper emerges from the woods and sings her a ballad. Then he literally locks her legs in stocks, kisses her on the lips, convinces her to employ him, then marries her on the spot. This dude works quick. Doesn't even wait until after their first meeting before marriage, like a true Christian.

Tom Tom the Piper's Son putting the moves on Bo Peep

This movie is horribly dated, but that's part of the charm. It's like looking into a time capsule of early Hollywood - a time where you could get a lot of mileage out of a simple "pee wee" joke. Add on top of that some (unintentionally) disturbing character designs that belong more in Pennywise's dungeon than in a children's film, and Babes in Toyland is a Christmas movie unlike any other, for better or worse.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Clip - (Cat and "Mouse" Nightmare fuel!!):