25 Days of Christmas: Day Eight - March of the Wooden Soldiers

Y’know Laurel and Hardy, right? (If you don’t I’m afraid we can no longer be friends) Imagine if you will that it is the past (1934 to be precise) and Messrs Laurel and Hardy have been asked to star in a pantomime called Babes in Toyland. Got it? Good, because that’s what March of the Wooden Soldiers is. Less Christmas Story, more pantomime story. Also, if you fall into the camp of people who don’t think Die Hard is a Christmas film MOTWS is not for you. As one exchange between Barnaby and Stan shows, MOTWS isn’t even set in December, it’s set 6 months prior, in July!

“A Christmas present in the middle of July?” “Well, we like to do our shopping early.”

The Christmas Story

WELCOME TO TOYLAND! Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee live a pleasant little life in Toyland, a land full of toys and entirely inhabited by a whole host of fairytale characters including such well known folk as The Three Little Pigs, Tom Thumb, Mother Goose, Jack and Jill, Red Riding Hood and Little Miss Muffett. To heighten the fairytale nursery rhyme theme, where do Stannie and Ollie live, where else but in Widow Peep’s shoe, with her sheep tending (and oft sheep losing) daughter, Little Bo Peep; A Shepherdess who has attracted the attentions of Toyland’s scrooge-like hunchbacked ol’ miser, Mr Barnaby. Mr Barnaby takes a fancy to Li’l Bo and casually asks her one day if she’ll be his bride naturally she reacts as any rational woman would when faced with an impromptu proposal from a man who looked like Dr Mabuse (I will be using this reference a lot, so if you don’t know what he looks like quickly now go and google him…done? Ok, where was I?) she declines, which angers Barnaby. He responds to this rebuttal by essentially blackmailing Li’l Bo into marrying him, if she doesn’t Widow Peep will lose her shoe and then it all goes a bit mental. Seriously, it’s like a mad pantomime but madder than a normally mad pantomime, think of a mad pantomime but with the whole cast, crew and audience on acid, now cast Dr Mabuse (aren’t you glad you googled him?) as the baddie and… who am I kidding, that barely even scratches the surface. 2/5

The Voice of Christmas

Santa (Or ‘Santy’ as Ollie refers to him) turns up to the Toy Factory where Stannie and Ollie work to check up on his toy order. Santa, as he usually does, is full of festive cheer and merriment resplendent in his traditional red and white suit even though it is presumably a baking hot sunny July day. His voice of Christmas skills come to the fore when faced with negativity, nothing can shake the jolly Saint Nick. Delivering bad news? He simply emits a “Ho Ho Ho” and BOOM everything is fine. He gets knocked over by a rogue toy soldier and falls into a drum, “Ho Ho Ho” and BOOM he’s full of sherry fuelled Christmas cheer. A six foot tall toy soldier is causing untold havoc and still a simple “Ho Ho Ho” and all’s well. Santa Claus amidst all the crazy and all the mental reminds us that at Christmas it is best to laugh in the face of trials, see the bright side and teaches us that going “Ho Ho Ho” can diffuse even the most tense of festive situations. 4/5

The Annoying Li’l Girl (At Christmas)

I’m not going to lie, there are a lot of annoying people in this film. Tom Tom Piper is well annoying, he insists on singing everything and seems to serve no purpose in Toyland other than merrily skipping about and getting falsely accused of pignapping. Little Bo Peep is also pretty annoying, she has a lot of heart and passion but delivers every line in a shrill, ear bursting manner, she falls asleep when faced with untold peril and man, she is annoyingly careless with her sheep. But the truly annoying scrooge of the piece is “That old skinflint Barnaby” he steals Ollie’s moustache, clonks Stannie on the head when he, quite rightly, calls him a Buzzard. Ollie nearly drowns, Ollie nearly actually dies and Barnaby just stands by and laughs. Plus he commits the heinous crime of pignapping, (the pig in question is called Elmer to boot, what a damnfine name for a pig!) a crime punishable by banishment to Bogey Land; a place full of crocodiles, dripping stalactites, ginormous spider webs, see through children with fake beards, caves and a cypress tree, which I can only assume is the most evil tree to ever darken the doors of Toyland. Oh and there are this weird monkey demons called Bogey Men, who answer to Barnaby’s call, that live there who sort of look like cast offs from an episode of Land of the Lost. I digress, Barnaby is a class A gonk. Even Old King Cole calls him a scoundrel! 3/5

The Christmas Miracle

Erm, seriously this will be some mad barrel scraping right here. OK, there are two somewhat miraculous occurrences at work in Toyland as far as I see it. Number 1, no one is even slightly weirded out by the variety of distressingly creepy animals that live in Toyland. No one, if anything people seem really pleased to be surrounded by a whole host of bizarre animals, specifically the frightening 3 little pigs, the cat lady and the weird monkey child dressed in a Mickey Mouse costume. No one minds. Mad.

Good Luck Sleeping Now

And Number two, that seeing as all that separates Toyland form the evils of Bogey Land is a river with a rickety raft, it is miraculous that it takes a Dr Mabuse look-a-like with a stick in order to mobilise the Bogey Men into attack mode. What have they been doing in Bogey Land all this time that is better than seeing and ruling the surface world? Answers on a postcard to the usual address. 2/5

The Christmas Message

Don’t trust evil men with malevolent top hats, who fancy young shepherdesses, sort of look like Dr Mabuse and who command an army of half man half animal monkey demon hybrids. That or, I dunno, don’t move to Toyland.

1/5

Additional Notes

-“Let’s drop a rock on him, then we’ll make him dead when he’s alive.” & the mahoosively vast amount of brilliantly nonsensical music hall type jokes. (+2)

-Even though it’s nowhere near Laurel and Hardy’s best effort they do provide a great on-screen chemistry that is a pleasure to watch. (+1)

-The Mickey Mouse Monkey Child takes to the skies in a Blimp and drops mini-bombs of the marauding Bogey Men. Genius. (+1)

While I have your attention may I recommend you check out some of L&H’s awesome films and shorts, such as Way Out West, Liberty, Big Business and Sons of the Desert. Thank you.

OVERALL FESTIVITY RATING - 16/25 (I suppose if we’re doing this properly you should take a further 5 off of that score, as I said, the films set in flippin’ July!)

SO

Tomorrow it’s time for Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. Cos nothing says Christmas like the pure love between a girl and a big hairy man.