Cheap Slapstick Encyclopedia, Vol. 4 - Keaton, Arbuckle, and St. John (Video) (Charles Chaplin, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle) (Charles Chaplin) Price

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Customer Reviews of Slapstick Encyclopedia, Vol. 4 - Keaton, Arbuckle, and St. John

CLASSIC SHORTS RESTORED
This collection of 6 short films showcases the talents of the three main players. THE ROUNDERS from 1914 features Arbuckle and Chaplin playing off each other superbly as a pair of drunks in a series of misadventures. This is one of the best Keystone comedies to feature Chaplin before he went out on his own. FATTY AND MABEL ADRIFT (1916) is a genuine classic that shows Roscoe and Mabel Normand at their most endearing. This short helped to establish Al St John as a top "second banana", a role he would continue to play well into the sound era as "B" Western sidekick Fuzzy Q. Jones. 1917's OH DOCTOR! is my least favorite of the set. The characters lack appeal and the gags are especially vicious and painful to watch. It's great though to see Buster Keaton's overreactions to everything. THE GARAGE (1920) was the last of Arbuckle's Comique shorts before he went into features and turned the company over to Keaton. Though not the best of the series (see Kino's ARBUCKLE & KEATON VOLS. 1&2), it demonstrates how far Buster had come with him providing the lion's share of the gags. THE BOAT from 1921 is a true classic that was almost lost to decomposition. It chronicles the adventures of Buster and his family with the one and only "Damfino". The last short THE IRON MULE (1925) has rarely been seen. It is a take off on John Ford's classic western THE IRON HORSE of the previous year and gives St John a chance to more or less play it straight as the engineer of the train that Keaton used in OUR HOSPITALITY. The film was directed by Arbuckle and Buster shows up as one of the Indians. Thanks are due once again to Kino International and Film Preservation Associates for restoring and making these shorts available once again. A must for film lovers as are all 8 volumes in the SLAPSTICK ENCYCLOPEDIA series.

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Early Efforts of Three Great Filmmaking Friends
This charming video program, made up of six short films featuring three popular performers of the late 1910's and early 20's, shows a level of quality that easily outclasses most of the broad, sprawling physical comedy common in contemporary efforts by other producers. Buster Keaton and Roscoe Arbuckle (aka Fatty), and often in the company of their mutual close friend Al St. John, produced some of the funniest and most original silent comedy of the period.

On balance, Roscoe Arbuckle is probably the least well-appreciated comedy talent of the silent era, owing in no small part to the famous scandal that unjustly overtook him in 1921 and totally drowned his career. In this collection, his talent is well represented by four short films. In "The Rounders" he is teamed with Charlie Chaplin as half of a drunken duo, and while the comedy is not up to the best that either can do, it is revealing how easily Roscoe can match the mythical Chaplin gag-for-gag in portraying a comic inebriate. In "Fatty and Mabel Adrift" he shows his talent for not only comic acting but also directing, combining hysterical comedy with touching romance. Starring with his popular leading lady Mabel Normand, a great comic in her own right, he lends a three dimensional quality to a role that, played by almost anyone else, would be little more than a flat caricature. Mabel is as good, his buddy Al St. John is laughably reckless as his foe, and even his dog Luke gets a workout as the noblest example of man's best friend.

When Arbuckle teamed up with Buster Keaton, the results were always joyful and occasionally breathtaking, bringing life to the madcap world of dream and shamelessly mocking all that was moral or pretentious. All manners of profession - doctors, police officers, firefighters - were fair game for this team. In "Oh, Doctor," a short film only recently found intact, Arbuckle plays a lascivious doctor at a horse race who cruelly uses his son (Buster) to gain the attention of another man's wife, only to find that she is interested in Doctor Arbuckle's wife's jewels. It is hilarious to see Buster, aka The Great Stone Face, liberally mugging as a mistreated mama's little boy. With frenetic Al St. John as the other man, there is action aplenty, and the novelty of seeing a long lost film is ample reward in itself.

A much stronger film is "The Garage," jam packed with laughs and comic action that became more subtle and quirky as Keaton became more involved with the writing and production. Arbuckle and Keaton are a bonafide comedy team, as both the local mechanics and volunteer fire department in the sleepy little town they inhabit. There is one delicious sight gag after another as this duo exploits the business of fixing, washing and renting cars, changing tires, messing with oil, and finally racing away from the garage as firemen to a false alarm, only to return to discover that their own garage has been ignited by a reckless lustful fool. A true masterpiece of early slapstick.

Keaton's "The Boat" is one of his best short masterpieces and so well known that little more need be said about it, except that in this video the print is exquisite (as are all the prints in this series) and that makes the watching a breathtaking study in what Keaton was capable of. There is a slight video glitch in one short scene near the end, probably a digital transfer problem, but it does not disturb the film when the rest is so perfectly transferred.

Finally, there is a later example of one old friend doing something for another. In "The Iron Mule" Al St. John throttles a small 1828-style steam locomotive through a rural period landscape, complete with inadequate trackwork, low tunnels, a makeshift barge and a raid by angry Indians. The locomotive is Keaton's model of Stephenson's engine "The Rocket" from "Our Hospitality," one of his feature films, and Keaton himself does a brief bit as an Indian. The humor in this comedy is more understated and subtle than the raucous rabble St. John usually inserts, and is a testament to his maturity as a comic actor, as well as to his long friendship with Keaton. In any case, it is a delight of charming sight gags from start to finish.

If it were not for the glitch in "The Boat" and the relative weakness and one-dimensionality of "The Rounders" I would give this video five stars. At any rate, it is an excellent value for the really superb films that it does present, and a look at Roscoe Arbuckle, a grossly underappreciated talent and, sadly, a scapegoat for an industry and society that was eager to find fault with the burgeoning 1920's Hollywood.

Bruce Jensen