Works featuring "animal act" (59)

The Cook

Fatty's back in the kitchen, juggling utensils again, this time with help from Buster as a waiter - until Buster is overcome with exotic dance fever, that spreads to Fatty and results in exotic apparel created from kitchenware. Wonderfully destructive and wacky fun to watch, even without being aware that it's a parody of a popular 1918 film (now lost), Salomé - complete with the dancer being brought a head on a plate. Al The Bad Guy breaks it up with a bit of Tough Dancing, and has to be put in his place by Luke the ladder-climbing dog (revisiting the 1915 Fatty's Faithful Fido). When things settle down we are reminded that, despite its current ubiquity, spaghetti is relatively new to the US - just another case of a country's debt to its immigrants.

The Hayseed

A few goofy gags got me giggling (including the signs in the background) but, overall, this is considerably below the standard Comique had achieved up to this point. Could the much lower energy level be due to the absence of Al. St. John?

Of note, however, is the scene that subtly slips in a bit of political/social satire: the “death” of alcohol - presumably a reference to the ratification of the 18th Constitutional amendment earlier that year, paving the way for Prohibition. Just two days after the film was released, the Volstead Act enforcing Prohibition became law, thus threatening one of comics' most enduring characters - the drunkard - with extinction in the US.

The Garage

Sight gags and synchonized acrobatic gags from the comedy duo of Arbuckle and Keaton - lacking the wildness and zaniness that Al St. John contributed, but still funny. Dark comedy creeps in when Keaton's character is pleased with the effect of adding toxic wood alcohol (methanol) to his drink - a not uncommon practice in those days of Prohibition when industrial alcohol was all that was available. The practice results in blindness, respiratory paralysis, or death. And in 1927, the government increased the toxicity of such industrial alcohol “to root out a bad habit”, according to a Prohibition proponent - by “legalized murder.”, as it was described by a Prohibition opponent.