Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Mabel Normand (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Alice Davenport (lead)
Frank Hayes (lead)
Keystone (production)
Like an old country mule, this just plods along (obscured by poor print), until Al St. John enters. But he soon exits and story degenerates to a generic chase, with no laughs. Mere months later, this is remade as Fatty and Mabel's Simple Life. And five years later, in the Comique era, the fetch-the-fallen-from-the-well gag gets developed into grand absurdity in Love.
Charles Chaplin (director/lead/writer)
Frank D. Williams (cinematographer)
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (lead)
Chester Conklin (lead)
Minta Durfee (lead)
Cecile Arnold (lead)
Vivian Edwards (lead)
Harry McCoy (lead)
Mabel Normand (cameo)
Keystone (production)
Featuring:
Broncho Billy Anderson (director/lead/writer)
Lee Willard (lead)
Marguerite Clayton (lead)
Essanay (production)
Broncho Billy weighs into the debate on multiculturalism. Definitely not starring Jerry Mathers as "The Greaser".
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Minta Durfee (lead)
Ed Brady (lead)
Edgar Kennedy (lead)
Mack Swain (lead)
Slim Summerville (lead)
Phyllis Allen (lead)
Frank Hayes (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Keystone 5-step Porch (location)
Keystone (production)
When Fats is dumped by his dame, everybody must pay by the pounding.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Minta Durfee (lead)
Harry McCoy (lead)
Alice Davenport (lead)
Phyllis Allen (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Slim Summerville (lead)
Keystone 5-step Porch (location)
Keystone (production)
Fatty wants to take a dame to a tango whirl, but he has two problems. First, a dress suit is required and he has none. Worse, the dame's notion of dance seems limited to shimmying like a floozy. So when a dude comes along sporting formal duds, and who has no problem with the dame's shimmy, she drops Fatty to jump on this dude's jock. So good riddance, Fatty's problems are solved, and he lives happily ever after - right? Of course not. We paid to see Fatty suffer, and won't be satisfied until he's dragged down lower than us - so we can have a good laugh. Best of all, we get to see him dance.This was reworked into 1916's The Waiters Ball.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Minta Durfee (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Frank Hayes (lead)
Charles Lakin (lead)
Luke the Dog (lead)
Keystone (production)
Highlights:
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Helen Carlyle (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Joe Bordeaux (lead)
Frank Hayes (lead)
Keystone 6-step Porch (location)
Keystone (production)
Little-known Helen Carlyle gives an animated Mabel-style performance in this aptly-titled fast-paced fun April Fool's Day flick, that also features a chase that looks like the inspiration for It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963).
Charles Chaplin (director/lead/writer)
Harry Ensign (cinematographer)
Edna Purviance (lead)
Essanay (production)
Seemingly endless loop of the same type of slapstick that was done with much more enthusiasm in Chaplin's earlier Keystone reels with Mabel Normand.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Mabel Normand (lead)
Alice Davenport (lead)
Edgar Kennedy (lead)
Glen Cavender (lead)
Keystone (production)
Mostly looks like another product of the “Let's just go down to the park and roll the camera while we clown around” school of film-making. Highlight is use of a blackfaced stand-in for a role genuine black faces were not likely to be eager to be seen in.
Reginald Barker (director)
Joseph August (cinematographer)
Thomas H. Ince (writer)
C. Gardner Sullivan (writer)
George Beban (lead)
Clara Williams (lead)
Leo Willis (lead)
When a film opens with someone reading a book titled the same as the film, slowly reading while puffing pipe...you know this film is in no big hurry. But if time is valued, skip to 17:26, where the story actually begins, and nothing will be missed. But it still doesn't move any faster, because this is D..R..A..M..A, where ultra-slow movements are the hallmark of reknown stage professionals. So if time is valued, skip this film entirely and nothing will be missed.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Josephine Stevens (lead)
Phyllis Allen (lead)
Edgar Kennedy (lead)
Joe Bordeaux (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Luke the Dog (lead)
Keystone Cops (lead)
Keystone (production)
Starts with a clever sketch that was reused two years later in an extended, and even funnier, form in The Rough House. Then moves on to a dull rework of the 1895 The Sprayer Sprayed, and we're forced to wait 7 minutes before the pup in the title appears and shows off his speed, agility, and acting skills. Midway in the film, with no lead-in or link, the Rescued By Rover adventure finally begins, and the star shines with his dope speed, jumps/climbing, and enthusiasm. No doubt about it: Luke was The Dog. In addition, we get “special” effects that add the cartoonish touch that later characterized the Comique works.
William S. Hart (director/lead)
Robert Doran (cinematographer)
Thomas H. Ince (writer)
J.G. Hawks (writer)
C. Gardner Sullivan (writer)
Clara Williams (lead)
John Davidson (lead)
When Hart's character rides up he's introduced as “reformed gunfighter” so we can relax: this ain't yet another one of Hart's No-More-Mister-Bad-Guy yarns. In its place, zoophilic fantasizers are treated to a stunningly explicit shot of big horse booty, center screen. Then, in a scene reminiscent of Broncho Billy And The Greaser (1914), he immediately gets in a rumble - even before he's flirted with the Big Butt that hangs out at the post offices of the cinematic Old West. All this has nothing to do with the story. Maybe it's just to let you know that the reformed gunfighter still can duke it out. But after the first four minutes of testosterone flow, he gets suited up and goes pussyfooting around Chicago, so you'll have to wait another 15 minutes before he gets a-rootin' and a-tootin'. But he's no Yosemite Sam: doesn't say a word until the last minute of the film!
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Norma Nichols (lead)
Edgar Kennedy (lead)
Louise Fazenda (lead)
Josef Swickard (lead)
Frank Hayes (lead)
Keystone Cops (lead)
Keystone 4-step Porch (location)
Keystone 5-step Porch (location)
Keystone (production)
Part One starts out with some routine mother-in-law bits but ends with strikingly dark comedy: a large man on an alcohol-fueled rampage threatening a small elderly woman is an unlikely source of humor. Part Two is an inversion of the standard invasion-call-rescue pattern made famous by a slew of Griffith films (and other Keystone parodies). But here the “invasion” is unwitting - as is the distress call - and the race to rescue is made by the wife to save the husband. It works as a clever parody, effectively using closeups, even though laughs are few.
Luigi Romano Borgnetto (director)
Vincenzo Denizot (director)
Agnes L. Bain (writer)
Giovanni Pastrone (writer)
Bartolomeo Pagano (lead)
Leone Papa (lead)
Amelia Chellini (lead)
Itala (production)
Maciste smoothly steps out of his loincloth and dark skin into spats and double-breasted suit to hit the streets of 20th century Turin, where he is lured by a girl with a sob story straight out of your spam mail folder. A truly straight-up righteous dude, he bails on the dame, kicking a stray dog on the way. Things get worse for the hound when the studio nixed plans for his own spinoff series. Who needs a dog when you've got Maciste?
Cecil B. DeMille (director/producer)
Alvin Wyckoff (cinematographer)
William C. deMille (writer)
Prosper Mérimée (author)
Geraldine Farrar (lead)
Wallace Reid (lead)
Pedro de Cordoba (lead)
Jeanie Macpherson (lead)
Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play (production)
“Carmen For Dummies”, completely ditches character development. Instead of the tortured soul of Don José, we just get a handsome-but-lifeless-turned-pissed-off Don Juan. Instead of marveling at the fiery young willful beauty of Carmen, we're left to assume that all the young dudes have the hots for an ordinary-looking 33-year-old (who looks over 40) simply because she's the only dame in town putting out. In place of character, we get extended realistic fight scenes - better than the average Western or swashbuckler. In short, a Carmen suitable for an American audience.
Charles Chaplin (director/lead/writer)
Roland Totheroh (cinematographer)
Prosper Mérimée (author)
Edna Purviance (lead)
Essanay (production)
Maybe not the funniest, but the silly-walks, patty-cakes, hairy-eyeballs, and Ali-shuffle make this a catalog of creative nuttiness.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead)
Mabel Normand (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Frank Hayes (lead)
Glen Cavender (lead)
Joe Bordeaux (lead)
Luke the Dog (lead)
Keystone (production)
This bloated one's for audiences that never tire of watching two hard-boiled city slickers play country bumpkin lovers, as in Those Country Kids and Fatty and Mabel's Simple Life. For the rest of us, there's always Al St. John, whose mugging, crying, violent pettiness, and rubbernecking when being strangled always gets a laugh from me.
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