In this Spanish language version of THE BIG KICK, Harry and his girl friend operate a curious looking glass-house gas station, and get caught in the crossfire of bootleggers and federal revenue agents. THE BIG KICK was the sixth of eight Langdon shorts that Roach produced during his initial season of making all-talking comedies. (MOTION PICTURE NEWS had originally reported, incredibly, that this was to have been a “musical comedy feature film series.”) THE BIG KICK was also the first Langdon entry that was adapted and re-shot in foreign languages for exhibition in the key export territories – a task made easier by Langdon’s dependence on simple stories, told in surreal pantomime and slapstick. George Stevens photographed this one, and long-time studio business executive Warren Doane received directing credit, which usually meant someone else didn’t want credit. “On the Langdons,” Hal Roach explained, “I’d see the dailies and wasn’t happy. I’d have to go down on the set. Harry and I got to be friends pretty quickly, and I thought it would help him get going again – because sound offered a new opportunity for everyone – if I was there to work with him. But you just couldn’t get him to move, and that was the problem. Harry should have been the greatest comedian in the business, but he resisted direction. We’d develop some great gag, then everything would stop because he did. I pictured the audience watching still photographs.” Leo McCarey said Langdon “was erudite…too intellectual to be appreciated by the general public.” Funny or not, Langdon shorts are still fascinating to watch – like a train wreck in very slow motion.

Shooting the five page script took place in and around the studio’s nearby Arnaz Ranch, November 20 through November 29, 1929. Exactly four months later the picture was issued to theaters. VARIETY’S verdict: “Okay anywhere. Hoke comedy, and though not riotous, this short is well-spattered with laughs.” Miss Dover, later known as Judith Barrett, was once married to Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards. At age twenty, she appeared in half the Roach Langdons, and lived to be eighty-six. The baby-faced Langdon was forty-five here, and within a year declared bankruptcy.

This print was made a decade ago from a nitrate composite dupe neg. As a production economy, in some few scenes Langdon dubbed his Spanish dialogue.

Richard W. Bann