Saturday, May 4, 2013

2002 - SLAPSTICK ENCYCLOPEDIA VOL 9, THE RACE IS ONE, VOL 10 TONS OF FUN THE ANARCHIC FRINGE.


Two discs in a row is a lot of silent slapstick comedy to watch in one sitting, still there is a lot of good stuff:

1.  Charlie Chaplin stars in Easy Street, one of his famous shorts.  This is fairly funny stuff with Chaplin appearing as his little tramp character, taking on a gang of bullies.  A typical but well done Chaplin short film.

2.  Laurel and Hardy star in Big Business a film with a very high reputation however it seems kind of overrated to me.  The film has some big Hollywood talent attached,  George Stevens photographed it and Leo McCarey directed.   Laurel and Hardy are Christmas tree salesmen who end up destroying the house of a potential customer.  It's supposed to be funny as the destruction slowly builds up but it seems to never end. 


3.  Monty Banks shows up in an excerpt from his film Play Safe.  The runaway train sequence excerpt is really something to see with some pretty wild stunt work.

4.  Probably the outstanding film in this collection is Buster Keaton's One Week.  Keaton and his new bride have a prefab home which they assemble incorrectly.  This setup allows for some incredible surreal sequences,  an amazing film.



For the Keaton and Monty Banks films alone these DVD's are worth checking out.

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