https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132229/We are truly cheated. This is the third and final El Brendel short we can review do to limitations. Latter shorts are shorts co-starring him with other Columbia comedians. If I were independent, I could order the DVDs from the Shorts Dept, but I am not. Two shorts we miss are significant. The first, THE BLITZKISS, was supposedly so good it got nominated for an Academy Award. The other, SWEET SPIRITS OF NIGHTER, is a true horror-comedy short; it is so much so that, in England, it was given an "H" rating, which is basically like here getting an "R" rating but specifically due to horror content! Dark stuff out there!
We get here a rare non-Stooge WW2 propaganda film. It makes me yearn for the Stooges shorts for sure! The entire short basically consists of El acting like an idiot and getting himself and others in trouble. Most interesting though is that we see a lot of physical comedy, and El Brendel sure can take a fall! His Swedish shtick is sore-lacking, but he has the talent for taking a beating as well as catching fish.
Give credit to Bud Jamison here: this is one of his finest performances, and we get a fantastic reprisal of his Johnson character with the bonks he takes off the bunk bed. He delivers and receives his abuse well in this one.
Vernon Dent and Stanley Blystone do great in this one, though the former is almost insignificant. The latter is in perfect form and does a great job with it. Al Thompson also does well as the overly panicked unit leader.
Kathryn Keyes appears in her first of two Columbia shorts, the latter being PICK A PECK OF PLUMBERS also with El Brendel. She had a lot of potential, but she quietly disappeared and eventually passed away in 2018 at age 101. She doesn't do bad here.
Overall problem is the plot. It's a slow plot consisting mostly of angry reactions, dull chase scenes, and yelling. It's not the most interesting short. However, this is the same set used in BACK FROM THE FRONT, and it's therefore tempting to compare the two. They were released a month apart, likely filmed around the same time. Stanley Blystone is even a Nazi villain in both. I believe Vera Vague's WW2 propaganda short, which we will review in the future, also used this set.
Jack White could have done better with writing this, but overall it was a fantastic effort from Columbia's directing, production, and staging crews and their dependable supporting casts. But it's just lacking a "WOW!" moment. However, it definitely fits in the line of WW2 propaganda Columbia put out and thus makes it an interesting artifact.
8/10