Hog Wild is widely considered to be one of the best of the short films made by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. As William K. Everson wrote (in The Films of Laurel and Hardy), "Hog Wild gives Laurel & Hardy something of an affinity with Buster Keaton as they struggle manfully but unsuccessfully with an inanimate and basically simple mechanical prop - a radio aerial. Laurel's profferred help is accepted somewhat dubiously. 'Well, all right, if you'll really help me!' agrees Hardy, his expression showing all too clearly that he realizes what a mistake his decision is." In his book Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy, Simon Louvish writes, "Hog Wild is the perfect exemplar of a great Laurel and Hardy principle: if at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again." Louvish also calls the film "...an excellent example of the maturity reached by Stan and Ollie's comedy within just one year of their initiation into the talkie world. Although dialogue is central to the opening sequence of Ollie and his vanishing hat, the rest of the film relies almost solely on visual gags, give or take the inevitable crashes, crunches and cries as Ollie goes off the roof yet again."
Producer: Hal Roach
Director: James Parrott
Screenplay: H.M. Walker (dialogue); Leo McCarey (uncredited)
Cinematography: Jack Stevens
Music: William Axt, Hal Roach (both uncredited)
Film Editing: Richard Currier
Cast: Stan Laurel (Stanley), Oliver Hardy (Oliver), Dorothy Granger (Tillie, the Hardy's maid, uncredited), Fay Holderness (Mrs. Hardy, uncredited), Charles McMurphy (streetcar conductor, uncredited)
BW-19m.
