Them Thar Hills



Them Thar Hills is a 1934 short comedy film directed by Charley Rogers and starring Laurel and Hardy. The film was so well received by audiences that it generated the sequel Tit for Tat, which was released less than six months later.

Plot
At the advice of a doctor (Billy Gilbert), Stan and Ollie travel to the mountains in order for Ollie to recover from gout. They park their travel trailer (caravan) near a deserted cabin recently occupied by a gang of moonshiners who had been raided and arrested by Prohibition authorities. Before being captured, the moonshiners tried to get rid of their illegal liquor by pouring two full barrels of it into a nearby well. Stan and Ollie now use that same well as their source for drinking water. While making a pot of coffee with the alcohol-laced water, Stan notices it has “a funny color”, but Ollie tastes it and explains that all mountain water is like that. "It's the iron in it", he says, "it's good for your nerves."

A motorist couple who have run out of petrol arrives and asks 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 potent "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 (which happens to also be the name of the "sequel" film). It culminates with the wrecking of the camper, 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.