Long Pants (1927)

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Few comedies of the 1920s were as bizarre and surreal as Harry Langdon's Long Pants. Having recently come of age, small-town-boy Langdon aspires to become a great lover, drawing inspiration from the romantic novels he's been reading since childhood. Falling hard for a "vamp" (Alma Bennett), Harry… More Few comedies of the 1920s were as bizarre and surreal as Harry Langdon's Long Pants. Having recently come of age, small-town-boy Langdon aspires to become a great lover, drawing inspiration from the romantic novels he's been reading since childhood. Falling hard for a "vamp" (Alma Bennett), Harry vows to rid himself of his childhood sweetheart (Gladys Brockwell) in the traditional literary manner by taking her into the woods and shooting her! Of course, he fails in this effort and flops even worse with the Vamp, who turns out to be a gangster's moll. After a bloody gangland shootout in which the Vamp is killed, a sadder-but-wiser Harry returns to the arms of his hometown girl, who has never quite figured out that she'd previously been a candidate for extermination. Written by future director Arthur Ripley, Long Pants is as kinky as any of Ripley's film noirs of the 1940s. Long Pants represents the second and final collaboration between star Harry Langdon and director Frank Capra, who was fired when Langdon wrong-headedly decided to become his own director, resulting in a series of career-destroying flops. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi