In the world of physical comedians, Buster Keaton was always in the highest rank. This is one of my favorite of his shorts, even though he wasn't satisfied with it. The newspaper alone is worth the price of admission.
I have been living in fear of the Blinking Buzzards since I first saw this forty years ago.
Why doesn't he just tie the string to the bell? Well, that wouldn't be funny. And it wouldn't have the same payoff.
For a silent film, it's got some nifty verbal humor, like the oath joke.
I love that incidental hat toss onto the rack. How many times did they have to film to make that happen? And that tricked up house is one big set: this was Buster's first independent short, according to Wikipedia. Obviously he had some money to put into it.
I started thinking about this when I read How Did Slipping on a Banana Peel Become a Comedy Staple? Garrison's comment about the banana there isn't true: is there a different version of the film out there? There's no question that the peel is set up in the film above, but is the point simply that the high sign is Buster's protection? Whatever. The article is interesting, in any case, given the ubiquity of the banana peel in the comic mindset. And I'll take any excuse to spend some time with the Great Stone Face.
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