Buster Keaton: The Short Film Collection (1920-1923)

One Week – Buster and his new bride are given a house kit that guarantees it can be built in one week. His rival messes with the instructions and the resulting house, that even spins on its axis, becomes a giant prop for all sorts of antics. It’s a quick and tight spectacle that shows plenty of Keaton’s stunt work.

Convict 13 – Buster is a golfer who knocks himself out with a golf ball and finds his clothes have been exchanged with those of an escaped convict while he was unconscious. He finds himself as a convict in a prison, but circumstances soon find him promoted to assistant warden who must quell a prison riot. There’s lots of gags involving an elasticized rope and the ending reveals that it was all a dream, resulting in a middling Keaton.

The Scarecrow – This is one of many of Keaton’s works where the action moves smoothly and nonsensically from one scene to the next. It’s fun, but on the lower end of the Keaton spectrum. Buster shares a tiny home, rigged to make the best of the small space with his friend and love rival Joe. One of my favorite gags includes Buster being chased around the top of a brick structure by an extremely talented dog. At some point, he has to pretend to be a scarecrow to escape detection. In the end he wins the girl, despite the efforts of his friend and her father.

Neighbors – In this retelling of Romeo & Juliet, Buster has fallen in love with his neighbor who lives in a tenement across a courtyard from his own, separated by a fence. Much of the action takes place in the courtyard, utilizing the fence and clotheslines and the buildings themselves to perform an array of stunts. After a failed wedding day, Buster still manages to rescue his girl from her third floor room with the help of two trapeze artists. A tight story and plenty of stunts makes it on the higher end of this set.

The Haunted House – Buster is a bank teller who is mistaken for a bank robber. After he, and separately an acting troupe, take refuge in the actual robbers’ rigged hide-out, the titular house, where many shenanigans ensue. There are ghost, devils, furniture and staircases that moves on their own, and a cartoon hallway with much of the same going in and out of its doors.

Hard Luck – After a day filled with disappointments, Buster makes a number of unsuccessful attempts at suicide. This is another where the story meanders from one silly situation to a next. Buster’s attempts lead him to a search for rare animals, then finds himself joining a fox hunt and getting in the way of bandits. He’s again rejected in love so he performs a high jump only to land in China where he finally finds a love that stays. It’s another middling Keaton, though I did just discover that wikipedia seems to have the footage missing from the version I first watched.

The High Sign – Buster finds himself working at a boardwalk shooting gallery, owned by the Blinking Buzzards gang. The gang hires him to kill a man who has been hired by Buster to protect. Luckily the man was smart enough to also rig his house with various traps to bamboozle the Buzzards. Most of the wonderful hijinks occur in this house, though there is an earlier gag with Buster using a dog to prove he’s a better shot than he is. This is a fun short, particularly in the home scenes, that gets to show of Keaton’s athleticism.

The Goat – Buster’s photo is mistakenly used instead of Dead Shot Dan’s on Wanted posters for the latter. Unfortunately for Buster, he has fallen in love with the police chief’s daughter. Buster finds himself on the run from cops in one town and then throughout the chief’s apartment building in another. These chases are the most fun parts of this short and once again, Buster ends up with the girl.

The Play House – There’s unfortunate vaudevillian minstrel blackface early on in this short, especially since there’s the clever premise of having Buster performing all the roles, including the audience, in a variety show. It turns out all to be a dream and the action moves seamlessly between front and backstage. There are additional bits where Buster replaces the monkey in one act and where he recruits some laborers to perform with him. He falls in love with a performer with a twin, though very often grabs the wrong one. It’s definitely one of the better shorts sadly marred by the blackface.

The Boat – This short memorably has Buster with an entire family including a wife and two sons. They work together to restore the boat called the Damfino, which they must intend to live on forever since they take out their house and car in the process. They are plenty of other lovely gags that make great use of the tight space, especially when the Damfino encounters a storm. Unfortunately the boat was made as well as the house in One Week and the family find themselves adrift in the bathtub that replaced the lifeboat destroyed earlier in the film. This one is one of my favorites in the entire set.

The Paleface – With such a title, I had fears that this would be a bit racist in its portrayal of Native Americans. Indeed, it does include caricatures that were rife in early films and includes more than a few instances of redfacing. Butterfly collector Buster stumbles across a tribe and impresses them when he survives being burned at the stake by using a suit of asbestos. Through various hijinks, Little Chief Paleface saves the tribe from oil barons trying to steal their land. It’s a cute vehicle for Buster to stumble from one bit to a next and again winning a girl in the end, but just a middle quality short for the set.

Cops – Through various machinations, Buster finds himself in charge of a ramshackle horse towing a house’s worth of furniture. He takes the horse to a goat gland specialist and they end up enraging an entire giant parade of police. Buster once again finds himself being chased by throngs of cops. There are lots of great gags with the horse and some fantastic stunt work as Buster tries to allude the police. It’s definitely classic Keaton work and one of the highlights of the group.

My Wife’s Relations – Buster is a taffy puller in the ‘foreign’ section of town and finds himself accidentally married to a woman trying to sue him. Her family is less than impressed by their newest member until they erroneously believe he is the heir to a fortune. There are a number of funny elements as Buster is somewhat of a fish out of water in this large-bodied family and he has to use the best of his evading skills when they discover he doesn’t have a dime. It falls somewhere in between the highlights and the middle levels of these shorts.

The Blacksmith – Buster is an assistant blacksmith and much hijinks ensue, including the shoeing of a horse and the utter destruction of a Rolls Royce. It’s a tight short based on a singular premise which tends to be the pattern of my favorite shorts. It also has a clever ending with a train and Buster ending up with a new wife and baby.

The Frozen North – I’ve never seen any of the William S. Hart’s films that this is a parody of, so some of the gags may be lost on me. It’s a bit like Keaton’s Gold Rush, where he’s a much darker character in the Alaskan wilderness. He shoots people, robs a saloon, and tries to steal another man’s wife. In the end, we luckily discover that our hero was just dreaming again. The unique setting offers different gags and makes this another high-middle short.

The Electric House – Buster’s correspondence school diploma gets changed in a mix-up and he’s hired to electrify a mansion even though he’s a Botany major. The sad part of this short is that I would have enjoyed seeing more fanciful electric devices. Interestingly the bit with the dinner-serving train I later saw to lesser quality in a Joe McDoakes short. It’s a bit repetitive but some of the repetition makes for some of its funnier bits. I enjoy the uses of houses as part of the gags so this also ranges in the high-middle category.

Daydreams – Buster is forced to find a job in order to marry the woman he loves. Unfortunately there’s a lot of missing footage in this short that compares the fantasy of his letters to his girl to the reality of his circumstances. It’s very episodic in nature, but hard to rate with so much missing film. I did particularly love the bits where Buster is working at an animal hospital and an overly long but incredibly athletic run in a paddle wheel.

The Balloonatic – Finding himself on a solo balloon ride after a trip to the amusement park, Buster lands in the wilderness where he discovers his love interest has already set up camp. They must learn to fend for themselves amongst bears, bulls, and waterfalls. Many of the gags revolve around Buster’s attempts at being an outdoorsmen. Absent much athleticism, but still a fairly quick story makes this a middle quality short.

The Love Nest – Buster sets sail, attempting to put aside his broken heart. He’s taken on to a ship with a captain who throws his crew overboard for any infraction. He manages to escape the same fate though sinks the ship in order to get away on a lifeboat. In the end, it was again just a dream and Buster’s boat had never left the dock. Being at sea makes for some good gags, but it’s not fresh enough to rise above middle quality.

Character Studies – Not a Keaton short per se, this was included on the DVD set I watched and I’m glad I did. Carter DeHaven shows off his ‘impressions’ by transforming seamlessly into famous actors from the time. It actually shows some clever camera work where Carter bends down and the actual actor pops up. Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, and Jackie Coogan are all included.