A seene halfway through "Room Service" finds a doctor bound and gagged in the bathroom, Harpo Marx chasing a turkey around the hotel room, and Groucho and Chicho browbeating a timid lawyer into signing a $15,000 check. In a matter of minutes Harpo accompanies the other two on the harmonica as they sing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" over the body of a possum-playing playwright. All this and love interest too is entrenched at Boston's citadel of slapstick, the Laffmovie.

Never ones to let a logical plot stand in their way, the Marx Brothers outdo themselves in this revived 1937 classic. The chase, the great delaying action, Groucho scooting around like a bowlegged buzzard, and all the traditional slapstick routines are crammed into a confusing but hilarious "Room Service." According to the screenplay, Groucho is a producer who has no backers, Chico an unidentified character who lives with Groucho and owns a large stuffed moose head, and Harpo an actor who plays a dead body in Groucho's epic. But as in all their films, the zany trio slip in and out of their plot roles as the occasion demands; so Groucho leers, Chico mugs, and Harpo ogles with accustomed vigor. After two reels, even the most astute give up trying to follow the incredibly involved machinations of the brothers Marx; in favor of just sitting back and howling. As the story picks up speed, the hectic actions of Groucho and Chico, and the idiotic ones of Harpo make latter-day Bob Hope look like an esthete.

But the Marx brothers are survivals of a vanishing era. They, together with buffoons Bobby Clark and Bert Lahr, and screenmen Laurel and Hardy, are the last of a unique school of slapstick comedians. Spawned in old-time vaudeville and burlesque, the brothers excel in the highly specialized arts of pantomime, pie throwing, and provocative leering at women, while our present generation of couriers relies chiefly on flip lines and artless mugging. Slapstick is passing out of existence, but not out of date. Until a new generation of wits rediscover the art, go down to the Laffmovie and rear at the last of the great comedy teams in action.