A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short.

Vaudeville musicians Stan & Ollie board a train heading for Pottsville. Finding their reserved `upper', their attempts to get into it & maneuver around it are a study in total frustration. They'll have more bruises than just BERTH MARKS when they finally reach their destination.

This little film is pure slapstick and very funny. The Boys make travelling in an upper berth look absolutely hideous.

Laurel and Hardy play musicians who need to board a train as they are on tour for a so- called big vaudeville act. After losing all of their music and one instrument, Stan and Ollie attempt to settle in their overnight sleeping compartment. They don't achieve this without causing the other passengers to tear each other's clothing first. I found "Berth Marks" to be disappointing. There weren't enough gags and the story wasn't as interesting as it could have been. However, such disappointments from Laurel and Hardy's best period are few and far between.

Several published works on Laurel And Hardy seem to rate this as one of the boys' poorest shorts. How dare they! This is extremely funny - if not quite top drawer - Stan and Ollie. An early talkie, half the film is simply our two heroes trying to get undressed in the upper berth of a sleeper train, getting entangled in each others trousers, night-shirts etc. The boys have also inadvertently set the rest of the passengers against each other, via a method I won't spoil by revealing. It's simplicity itself, yet it works wonderfully well. When most comedies of the twenties and thirties have long been forgotten, the films of these two lovable characters continue to delight.

The real secret is surely in their universal humanity; there's a little bit of Stan and Ollie in all of us.