Movie Review "On the Wrong Trek"

Hal Roach Studios ( 1936 ) Two Reels
Cast: Charlie Chase, Rosina Lawrence, Clarence Wilson, Bonita Weber, with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy
Producer: Hal Roach
Director: Charles Parrott

At the Salt Lake Investment Company Charlie Chase returns from his vacation and everyone wants to hear how it was. Charlie says it was terrible. He wanted to go on a car trip to Michigan but his mother-in-law decided they should go to California instead. The scene changes to a flashback of Charlie's road trip. On the way they see many hitchhikers and Charlie's mother-in-law asks him to stop and pick one up because they have enough room. But Charlie will have no tramps in his car. Mother says they are not all tramps and points at two who have kind faces. The two men are Stan and Ollie thumbing for rides. Stan is pointing his thumb in the opposite direction as Ollie, and after Ollie slaps him he begins pointing it in the right direction. But chase does not stop and they are both left behind. Further up the road some holdup men see Chase's car coming. After spreading ketchup over themselves they turn their cat on it's side and lay on the ground. Charlie thinks it is an accident, but Mother thinks it is a trick by holdup men and warns him to keep going. Charlie insists it is an accident, and besides, the law says he has to stop. He does stop and the men hold him up. Charlie is robbed of his car and he and his wife are robbed of their clothes. Fortunately the holdup men have left behind their clothes and car.

Charlie and his wife continue their trip to California wearing hobo clothes and in a rundown car with the mother-in-law in the back seat. They run out of gas and Mother tells Charlie to ask a couple parked on top of a hill if they could borrow some. He is reluctant to beg for gas, but eventually is browbeaten by his mother-in-law to do so. The man says yes and tells him there is a can of gas inside the car. There is not that much gas in the can, so the man tells Charlie to go ahead and take some out of his gas tank. But the tank is parked right over a rock outcrop. Mother suggests that Charlie push the car forward past the outcrop. He does and the car rolls off the side of a small cliff. Charlie tells him that next time he is in Salt Lake to drop by and see him, then runs off. When they get to the California border they are not allowed in because the border patrol thinks they are hobos. Forced to turn back they stop overnight at a hobo camp where Charlie and Rosina both sing a song in trade of some food. 200 miles from Salt Lake City the engine of the car explodes and they are forced to hitchhike. When no one stops Mother suggests they all lay in the road and pretend they were in an accident. The police had been alerted to look for holdup men using the car wreck scam to rob people and seeing Charlie lying on the road pretending to be injured they arrest him. Back at the office Charlie ends his story by saying he spent the rest of his vacation in jail. One of his coworkers comes running into the office and says they all better get back to work because the new district manager was coming down the hall. When the new boss walks in he turns out to be the same man who's car Charlie rolled off the edge of the cliff. He does not seem to recognize Charlie and invites him into his office. Chase is in there no more than a few seconds when he comes sailing back through the door.

This was the first and only appearance by Laurel and Hardy in a Charlie Chase movie as a team. They had both had roles in "Now I'll Tell One" and had appeared with Chase in "Call of the Cuckoos". And Chase had guest starred in "Son's of the Desert". One of the reasons why the duo appeared in this movie was because Chase was about to be let go. Short features were no longer being booked by theaters. A year earlier Laurel and Hardy had made their last short for Hal Roach studios "Thicker Than Water". The only two short feature series left were Charlie Chase and Our Gang, both which the studios were cancelling. Chase had tried to make the transition to full length features in the movie "Kelly The Second" which did poorly at the box office. A second full length feature "Bank Night" was censored behind the scenes and when finally released was cut down to two reels and released as "Neighborhood House". Chase's days at Roach Studios was numbered, and two months later he would be officially fired. Chase paid for an ad in the trade papers: "Thank you, Hal Roach, for a wonderful engagement that lasted more than 17 years. ( I knew I shouldn't have cleaned up that dressing room ). Chase had been with Roach Studios since it opened in 1919. He would go on to work at Columbia, the only studio that was still making short comedy features, where he would not only make his own movies but occasionally direct for the Three Stooges.