Gold Bricks (1936)

Whenever I think of the words “Hiya, Pal!” I immediately think of the one moment in Home Alone when Joe Pesci finally outwits Kevin by waiting for him in the flooded house next door (before Kindly Old Neighbor beats him on the head with the snow shovel).  His exclamation of “Hiya, Pal” amid water pouring down the basement stairs may have been his single best movie quote not containing the words “Fuck” or “Funny how” in it.  Gold Bricks would definitely be funnier if Bert Lahr’s picture had been replaced by Joe Pesci’s, but that doesn’t take away from the humor of the animated priest trying to pull down his pants and Lahr’s hilarious reaction of apparently shitting out stars from beneath his chaps.  And then there’s the cartoon girl next to him, giving the poster a whole quasi-Kim Basinger in Cool World motif that entirely contradicts the words “stimulate the box-office.”  I wondered, since there weren’t any gold bricks in the poster, if the term had some deeper socio-cultural meaning in the 1930s, so I looked on Wikipedia and found that “gold brick” can refer to: (A) A special item from Lego Star Wars, (B) A 2001 album by the indie rock band Fuck, and (C) A lazy or slow person.  All of these seem to suggest better ways of spending 75 minutes than watching anyone from the Distinguished Order of Funny Men (which sounds like an award whose past recipients include Clement Attlee, the Earl of Salisbury, and Claus von Bulow.) And in the priest’s defense – hey, at least Bert Lahr doesn’t look like Maculay Culkin for once.