Slaphappy Vol. 9

SlapHappy: Vol. 9 (DVD) Kings of Comedy: Masters of the Silent Screen

Released 2003. Originally produced in 2001. Includes clips from the following films:

Our Gang:

• The Sun Down Limited (no. 31)

• Get Out And Get Under (featuring Harold Lloyd, with Ernie Morrison)

• Dogs Of War! (no. 14)

• The Fraidy Cat (featuring Charley Chase, with Our Gang)

• Thundering Fleas (no. 51)

Comedy Directors:

• The Adventurer (featuring Charles Chaplin)
• The Butcher Boy (featuring Fatty Arbuckle & Buster Keaton)
• Sittin' Pretty (featuring Charley Chase)
• Get Out And Get Under (featuring Harold Lloyd, with Ernie Morrison)
• Blow 'Em Up (featuring Snub Pollard)
• The Iron Nag (featuring Billy Bevan)
• Max And The Statue (featuring Max Linder)
• Golf (featuring Larry Semon)
• The Goat (featuring Buster Keaton)

Hollywood Spoofs:

• The Masquerader (featuring Charles Chaplin)
• Big Moments From Little Pictures (featuring Will Rogers)
• The Daredevil (featuring Ben Turpin)

• Dogs Of War! (no. 14) (featuring Our Gang)

• A Movie Star (featuring Mack Swain)
• Roaming Romeos (featuring Lupino Lane)

Slaphappy Vol. 8

SlapHappy: Vol. 8 (DVD) Kings of Comedy: Masters of the Silent Screen

Released 2003. Originally produced in 2001. Includes clips from the following films:

Surreal Comedy:

• The Balloonatic (featuring Buster Keaton)
• A Trip To The Moon
• Dreams Of A Rarebit Fiend
• The Thieving Hand
• The Fresh Lobster (featuring Billy Bletcher)
• The Bath Chair Man
• Slippery Jim
• Dangerous Curves Behind (featuring Ruth Taylor & Jack Cooper)
• Hot Foot (featuring Bobby Dunn)

Charles Chaplin:

• The Immigrant
• Max Learns To Skate (featuring Max Linder)
• Dough And Dynamite
• The Rounders (also featuring Fatty Arbuckle)
• The Champion

Getting The Girl: Episode 24

• Hoot Mon (featuring Bobby Vernon)
• Be Your Age (featuring Charley Chase)
• Getting Gertie's Goat (featuring Dorothy Devore)
• Hooked (featuring Lloyd Hamilton)
• Pay Or Move (featuring Monty Banks)
• Bumping Into Broadway (featuring Harold Lloyd)
• Own Your Own Home (featuring Snub Pollard)
• The First 100 Years (featuring Harry Langdon)
• His Trysting Place (featuring Charles Chaplin)

Slaphappy Vol. 7

SlapHappy: Vol. 7 (DVD) Kings of Comedy: Masters of the Silent Screen

Released 2003. Originally produced in 2001. Includes clips from the following films:

Keystone Studios: http://licenseslaphappy.com/

• A Clever Dummy (featuring Ben Turpin)
• Teddy At The Throttle (featuring Bobby Vernon)
• A Scoundrel's Toll (featuring Raymond Griffith)
• Tango Tangles (featuring Charles Chaplin, Ford Sterling & Fatty Arbuckle)
• Mabel's Married Life (featuring Charles Chaplin & Mabel Normand)
• Love, Loot And Crash (featuring Charley Chase)
• The Waiters' Ball (featuring Fatty Arbuckle)
• Do-Re-Mi-Fa (featuring Charley Chase)

Great Gags 2:

• Dizzy Sights (featuring Billy Dooley)
• Late Lodgers (featuring Snub Pollard)
• Short Orders (featuring Stan Laurel)
• Get Out And Get Under (featuring Harold Lloyd, with Ernie Morrison)
• The Champion (featuring Charles Chaplin)
• The Misfit (featuring Clyde Cook)
• Buster's Skyrocket (featuring Buster Brown)
• The Battling Kangaroo (featuring Lige Conley)

Family Fun:

• Family Life (featuring Mark Jones)
• Every Man For Himself (featuring Our Gang)
• Sea Scamps (featuring Big Boy)
• It's A Bear (featuring Our Gang)
• Mister Wife (featuring Neal Burns)
• Smith's Candy Shop (featuring The Smith Family)

Slaphappy Vol. 6

Thrill Comedians: Episode 18

Special Delivery (1922) (featuring Al St. John)

Zoo-zoo's pedals!

Author: F Gwynplaine MacIntyre from Minffordd, North Wales

25 April 2006

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

After the scandal that drove him off the screen, Roscoe Arbuckle continued to work behind the camera as a director and gag constructor under the pseudonym William Goodrich. By coincidence, he directed two unrelated movies -- a short and a feature -- both called 'Special Delivery'.

This is the first, and it's hilarious. Al St John is a bicycle courier for the Swiftfoot Messenger Company. He is given an envelope containing a valuable postal order, to deliver to a fair damsel. Off he goes on his bicycle. But a gang of thieves are determined to steal the postal order, and they place every conceivable obstacle in his way.

SPOILING SOME GAGS. St John (a former Keystone Cop, and Arbuckle's nephew) had perfected his trick bicycle act in vaudeville. Here, he performs a dazzling repertory of tricks aboard his velocipede. Just occasionally in this short film, there is some camera trickery that enables St John to perform an impossible gag. When he whistles for his bike, it gets up and comes to him all by itself (courtesy of stop motion). Although this gag is well-photographed, I resented its presence: when camera tricks are inserted, the audience naturally begin to wonder if any of St John's daredevil stunts were faked too. (They weren't.) Later in the film, we get another camera trick that genuinely impressed me, when the leader of the thieves coshes St John. The rest of the screen image continues to move normally while St John and his bike remain stock-still in freeze-frame, heeled over at an angle that St John couldn't possibly maintain without trickery. The join between the freeze-frame and the moving image is seamless. There's also a clever streetcar sequence, anticipating the climax of Harold Lloyd's 'Girl Shy'.

Eventually, St John careens into a packing case outside a shopfront called the Lion Cleaners, which I assumed was a laundry. ('For cleaning lions', I muttered to myself.) Got it in one! There are three freshly-cleaned LIVE lions inside the case with St John, and his frenzied reaction is a sight to behold. There are several gags involving a lion's tail or a lion's paw: it's quite obvious that these are really props manipulated by a stagehand, but the gags are funny anyway.

This movie rates a 10 out of 10. Why can't modern comedians do this sort of thing?

The Butcher Boy  (featuring Fatty Arbuckle & Buster Keaton)                          

ALSO IN Episodes 14 AND 26

The story involves Arbuckle working as the butcher boy in a country store. He falls in love with the cashier, who is the daughter of the store owner. He follows her, disguised as a female cousin, to an all-girl boarding school. This was the first in Arbuckle's series of films with the Comique Film Corporation, and Keaton's film debut.

The Paleface (1922) (featuring Buster Keaton) - ALSO IN Episodes 14 and 26

A butterfly collector unwittingly wanders into an Indian encampment while chasing a butterfly. This tribe has resolved to kill the first white man who enters their encampment because white oil tycoons are trying to force them from their land. The Indian warriors give chase to Keaton, who ingeniously escapes their efforts to kill him. As a result, Keaton eventually becomes accepted by the tribe and given the title, "Little Chief Paleface". He subsequently leads the tribe's effort to stop the oil tycoons from displacing them from their land. (From Wikipedia)

Pay Or Move (1924) (featuring Monty Banks) ALSO IN Episode 24 

and in the DVD collection The Films of Monty Banks

Play Safe (1927) (featuring Monty Banks) ALSO IN Episodes 03 and  Movie  

IN Slapstick Encyclopedia 9  AND Slapstick Masters as Chasing Choo-Choos

A gang of bad guys menace a feller's gal. She hides in a freight car and a misstep sends the otherwise-empty train out of the station with the lever pushed to full speed. As the train gains speed, the captive's boyfriend must board the runaway train, repel the pursing gang, get his girl out of the box car, and somehow get the two of them to safety. Tunnels, a water tower, a steep grade, and a frayed rope complicate the hero's task. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>

Ask Father (1918) (featuring Harold Lloyd) – ALSO IN Episode 04

Lloyd is a serious young middle-class guy on the make, who wants to marry the boss’ daughter. The problem is getting in to see the boss so that he can ask for her hand in marriage; the office is guarded by a bunch of comic, clumsy flunkies who throw everyone out who tries to get in. When Lloyd gets into the boss’ office, the latter uses trap doors and conveyor belts to expel him; Lloyd then goes to the costume company next door, tries to get in wearing drag (no success), and then in medieval armor – that works, since he bangs everyone over the head with his club, but then he finds out that the daughter has eloped with another suitor. Lloyd decides to be sensible and he settles for the cute switchboard operator (Daniels) instead. The film includes a brief wall climbing sequence. Light-hearted, short, fast-paced. (From Wikipedia) 

His Private Life (1926) (featuring Lupino Lane) ALSO IN World War I Comedies

Reggie Hemingway is a rich broker who continually bullies his valet. World War I breaks out and the valet enlists immediately. Reggie goes to the army later and arrives at the training camp to find that his valet is now a tough sergeant in charge of the recruits. Written by Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>

The Grocery Clerk  (1919) (featuring Larry Semon)  ALSO IN  Episode 08

Slapstick Encyclopedia, Vol.  – ON YOUTUBE

Big Ben has the largest store in the town of New Ralgia. His chief clerk is in love with the post mistress. The three of them get involved in a series of mishaps with their customers and with the town ladies' man, whose advances conceal a more sinister purpose. Written by Snow Leopard

Slaphappy Vol. 5

SlapHappy: Vol. 5 (DVD) Kings of Comedy: Masters of the Silent Screen

Released 2003. Originally produced in 2001. Includes clips from the following films:

Funshops:

• Lonesome Babies (featuring Jack Cooper)
• The Sawmill (featuring Larry Semon)
• Oh, What A Man! (featuring Larry Semon)
• The Cloudhopper (featuring Larry Semon)
• The Adventurer (featuring Charles Chaplin)
• Danger Ahead (featuring Jack Cooper)
• Open House (featuring Johnny Arthur)
• Air Pockets (featuring Lige Conley)

Buster Keaton: http://licenseslaphappy.com/

• The Goat
• Neighbors
• The Butcher Boy (featuring Fatty Arbuckle)
• The Balloonatic
• The Paleface

Dynamite Teams:

• Hello Sailor (featuring Lupino Lane & Wallace Lupino)
• Dear Ol' Pal (featuring Snub Pollard & Marvin Loback)
• 3 Missing Links (featuring A Ton Of Fun)
• Stick Around (featuring Bobby Ray & Oliver Hardy)
• Thick And Thin Snub' Pollard, Marvin Loback
• The Rounders (featuring Charles Chaplin & Fatty Arbuckle)
• Whispering Whiskers (featuring Billy Bevan & Andy Clyde)

Slaphappy Vol. 4

Vaudeville Greats: Episode 12

Be My King. (1928)  (featuring Lupino Lane) ALSO IN Episode 01 ON YOUTUBE

The Rink (1916) (featuring Charles Chaplin) Slapstick Encyclopedia, Vol 9

Dr. Pyckle And Mr. Pride (1925) (featuring Stan Laurel) ALSO IN Episode 28

Sally Of The Sawdust  (1925) (featuring W. C. Fields)

The Ropin' Fool (1922) (featuring Will Rogers)

Natural Born Gambler (1916) (featuring Bert Williams) Slapstick Encyclopedia, Vol 1

Saturday Afternoon  (1926) (featuring Harry Langdon) Lost and Found: The Harry Langdon Collection (1924) Slapstick Encyclopedia, Vol 3

Cops (1922) (featuring Buster Keaton) Slaphappy Movie

Slaphappy Vol. 3

Supporting Comics: Episode 9

The Cure (1917) (featuring Charles Chaplin, with Eric Campbell) ON YOUTUBE

The Star Boarders (1916) (featuring Lloyd Hamilton, with Bud Duncan) 

ALSO IN SlapHappy: Vol 1. Ep. 1

Hello Sailor (1927) (featuring Lupino Lane, with Wallace Lupino) 

ALSO IN  Slaphappy Vol 5 Ep. 15

Post No Bills (1923)  (featuring Paul Parrott, with George Rowe)            

ALSO IN  Slaphappy Vol 4 Ep. 11 ALSO IN American Slapstick

Don't Shove (1919) (featuring Harold Lloyd, with Bud Jamison & Snub Pollard) 

ALSO IN American Slapstick

Thick And Thin Stars (1928) 'Snub' Pollard, Marvin Loback 

ALSO IN  Slaphappy Vol 5. Ep. 15

Neighbors (1920) (featuring Buster Keaton, with Joe Roberts) 

ALSO IN  Slaphappy Vol 5 Ep. 14

The Best Man (1928)(featuring Billy Bevan, with Vernon Dent)

ALSO ON Forgotten Funnymen - Billy Bevan, Volume 2

The Waiters' Ball (1916) (featuring Fatty Arbuckle, with Al St. John) 

ALSO IN SlapHappy: Vol. 3,Ep. 9  Vol. 7 Ep. 19 & Movie