She’s Oil Mine (1941)

The Passionate Plumber was of the last of Buster’s MGM films that I saw, so when I did, I already recognized a good chunk of the first two reels of that feature.  That’s because She’s Oil Mine follows the same basic plot pretty faithfully and, in my opinion, brings the comedy quite a bit more than the original.  The Columbia shorts aren’t all winners, but they pretty much always shine when they draw direct comparisons to the MGM talkies (see also, General Nuisance.)

Buster (working as a plumber here) and his colleague discover a wealthy woman hiding out in their workshop from her overly-passionate boyfriend, whom she wants to leave but can’t bring herself to.  She engages the two men to fix her shower, but when the boyfriend shows up, a series of “this isn’t what it looks like” mishaps leads him to believe that Buster is the lady’s side piece.  The boyfriend challenges Buster to a duel to preserve his honor, a feat Buster is in no way prepared for.

The original MGM film goes on to tie these plots more closely together, with the woman eventually hiring Buster’s character and tasking him with the job of ensuring she “quits” her boyfriend cold turkey, but this short doesn’t go beyond the initial misunderstanding (that the woman is fooling around with Buster) and consequence (the duel.)  For a two-reeler, that’s plenty to go on, and while the action spins pretty outrageously out of control pretty quickly, it’s entertaining enough.  I’m not a fan of the boyfriend, an over-the-top “foreigner ruled by his passions” stereotype, but the woman’s clever French maid helps to balance out the lazy cultural humor.

But now, let’s move on to the gags.  The standout sequence here is undoubtedly the duel itself.  There are good jokes to be had with the pretentious dueling outfits, Buster’s complete unfamiliarity with the whole system, and the many missteps that keep deriding it.  And of course, the short has plenty of fun with the “slap across the face with a glove” trope, and the ear-splitting glove-slap noises provide one of the few instances where I think the emphatic sound of early audio technology works in favor of the comedy.  Usually, the crashing noise that accompanies the tumbling or slapstick in a talkie is at best as distraction from the humor, at worst a detractor.  Here, though, I think it works (and the initial instance, where the boyfriend slaps Buster with his glove and the gloveless Buster returns the favor with a towel, is great!)

That’s the short’s funniest segment, but there are other good bits as well.  I like Buster and his buddy’s puzzled search of their workshop when they realize they’re not alone, and I get a kick out of the recurring gag of them carting around a huge time clock wherever they go so they can punch in and out.  Overall, not too shabby, although I definitely acknowledge that it benefits from the favorable comparison to the parallel scenes in The Passionate Plumber.

Warnings

Slapstick violence, gunplay, and a few very veiled sexual references.