SLAPSTICK ENCYCLOPEDIA Disk 2.1

Disc 2 contains the programs “Sennett in the Twenties” and “Funny Girls: Genders and Their Benders.”

3- `Sennett in the `20s' - More madcap mayhem from one of the kings of silent movie producers. Because it's Sennett, coherence and continuity are going to take a back seat - or asked to take a walk - over speed and visual gags. In the 20-minute `Circus Today' (1926) Sennett favorites Bill Bevans and Andy Clyde play a couple of bumbling circus hands. Beauty Madeline Hurlock plays the circus bare-back rider. Bevans is the competent, if unmemorable, knockabout comedian with the brush moustache. Not unusual for a comedy of this era, the stars are gleefully put in harm's way every 2 minutes or so. At one point a cage full of lions escape and, naturally, chase all the main players. In one very memorable scene, the tutu-clad Ms. Hurlock is seen flat on the ground with a 400-pound male lion sitting on top of her. No process shot in this one, and I'd imagine no second take, either. 

Saturday Afternoon (1926) with Harry Langdon. Harry escapes his controlling wife (Alice Ward) to spend a weekend afternoon with a friend and two women. From an excellent 35mm print. The same transfer as is available on DVD from Kino. Piano music by Donald Sosin.

Super-Hooper-Dyne Lizzies (1925) with Billy Bevan and Andy Clyde. An inventor designs a series of radio-controlled cars that tend to misbehave. From a very-good, and slightly worn, 35mm print. Pipe organ music by Ken Rosen.

Wandering Willies (1926) with Billy Bevan and Andy Clyde. Two tramps get into a series of manic scrapes. From an excellent 35mm print. Small orchestra music by Robert Israel.

Circus Today (1926) with Billy Bevan and Andy Clyde. Billy and Andy are part of a series of mishaps in a travelling circus. From a sepia-toned Blackhawk preservation print, with replaced intertitles, prepared from a very-good but worn 35mm print. Synthesizer music by Eric Beheim.

Two Harry Langdon films, previously available on DVD, have been added to this program: His Marriage Wow (1925) with Langdon and Vernon Dent as a spooky pessimist, transferred from a very-good sepia-toned 16mm print, with synthesizer music by Eric Beheim; and All Night Long (1924) with Langdon and Vernon Dent, transferred from an excellent 35mm print, with piano music by Philip Carli.