Laurel & Hardy's Atoll K: The Fan Edit
About
Prior to the launch of Hats Off Entertainment on YouTube, I had been working on a side project that involved Laurel & Hardy's final film - Atoll K (1951). The movie, which was a French-Italian co-production, never had its copyright filed in the United States - resulting in poorly duplicated copies to flood the home video & streaming market in the years that followed.
The movie was plagued with production problems from the very start, compounded by communication issues between Stan & Ollie and the film's foreign speaking cast & crew. Despite their own declining health at the time, Laurel & Hardy worked tirelessly to better their scenes in the movie - reinventing some of their old gags and coming up with completely new ones as well.
I have always found some of their scenes in this movie to be the best in their post-Hal Roach Studios career, even given their poor physical appearance. These great comedy scenes are often overshadowed by elongated subplots that don't involve their characters, with most of the foreign cast dubbed very poorly in English.
Originally, my goal was just to take some of Laurel & Hardy's scenes from the movie and add the musical scores from their earlier work at Hal Roach Studios to better accent their comedy. In my opinion, the addition of this music vastly improved their scenes - not only in pacing, but also in improving otherwise empty-sounding scenes. After seeing these scenes improved, I then decided I would recut the entire film - adding not only a much needed new score, but also trimming out the dubbed scenes not relevant to the plot, or their characters. This shaved about 20 minutes off of the runtime and helped it flow much better. In cutting together this new edit, I used only the finest prints of the movie available, as well as a soundtrack composed by the Beau Hunks Orchestra.
The project is not endorsed, sponsored, or licensed by any of the above parties - nor is it being made for profit. My cut of the movie will be released for free via YouTube.
The following edits were made to the film:
The movie was plagued with production problems from the very start, compounded by communication issues between Stan & Ollie and the film's foreign speaking cast & crew. Despite their own declining health at the time, Laurel & Hardy worked tirelessly to better their scenes in the movie - reinventing some of their old gags and coming up with completely new ones as well.
I have always found some of their scenes in this movie to be the best in their post-Hal Roach Studios career, even given their poor physical appearance. These great comedy scenes are often overshadowed by elongated subplots that don't involve their characters, with most of the foreign cast dubbed very poorly in English.
Originally, my goal was just to take some of Laurel & Hardy's scenes from the movie and add the musical scores from their earlier work at Hal Roach Studios to better accent their comedy. In my opinion, the addition of this music vastly improved their scenes - not only in pacing, but also in improving otherwise empty-sounding scenes. After seeing these scenes improved, I then decided I would recut the entire film - adding not only a much needed new score, but also trimming out the dubbed scenes not relevant to the plot, or their characters. This shaved about 20 minutes off of the runtime and helped it flow much better. In cutting together this new edit, I used only the finest prints of the movie available, as well as a soundtrack composed by the Beau Hunks Orchestra.
The project is not endorsed, sponsored, or licensed by any of the above parties - nor is it being made for profit. My cut of the movie will be released for free via YouTube.
The following edits were made to the film:
- Overall picture quality was refined and sharpened.
- New titles and opening credits music.
- The voiceover narration was completely removed from the film.
- Most of Cherie & Antoine's subplots have been edited out completely.
- Any closeup shot of a character with their dialogue dubbed, that didn't contribute to the plot, was removed.
- Most of the musical score and sound effects were completely replaced.
- Music recorded by the Beau Hunks orchestra was added throughout the movie.
- Audio levels were rebalanced.