Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

THE KNOCKOUT (1914/1916?):
This is a rare early Roscoe Arbuckle vehicle shrouded in mystery. Roscoe stars in it w/o Buster but w/ Al St. John in a supporting role and w/ Charlie Chaplin in a pivotal cameo. It's longer than most other Roscoe shorts (30 whole minutes!) and no one seems to agree on who was behind the camera. Some sources claim it was directed by Mack Sennett (who produced it and has a cameo) and some claim it was directed by a minor silent actor/director named Charles Avery, who also appears. Letterboxd claims that Chaplin wrote it, though he only appears in one scene and he didn't write any other films for Arbuckle. No one seems to think Roscoe wrote or directed it - though he wrote and directed almost everything else he starred in by 1916, which is why some sources claim KNOCKOUT was made in 1914. But the FATTY & MABEL movies from 1914 (w/d by Sennett) are incredibly primitive and uneventful/boring, and the Sennett/Chaplin project THE FATAL MALLET from 1914 is repetitive and moronic. THE KNOCKOUT, however, is complex, professionally assembled, and climaxes in 10 minutes of ambitiously staged sprawling chaos - all hallmarks of Roscoe-as-auteur.

Roscoe is a seemingly nice dude named "Pug" who has a hot girlfriend played by the cute and lively Minta Durfee. Because Pug is a heavier guy and his girlfriend's a hottie, he's constantly fighting groups of dudes for her honor. I'd say he's justified when they start hurling bricks at Pug and Minta, and Minta is hit in the face by one. Pug starts swingin' and even lifting dudes above his head and throwin' 'em. More bodies fly through the air in THE KNOCKOUT than in an average issue of Jack Kirby's "Tales of Suspense".

For complicated plot reasons that are elaborated upon in the film but really unimportant, tough Pug is enlisted to enter the ring against a heavyweight boxer. Little Charlie Chaplin is the ref and gets knocked around a lot in the process. In spite of the film's title, the boxing match itself doesn't end in a K.O. and really the boxing is wholly tangential. Because -

In its final third, Pug flies into a literal psychopathic/homicidal rage, pulls out two handguns (Chow Yun-Fatt style) in the ring, and proceeds to pursue his opponent out of the arena and through the city, dual-wielding the pistols while still wearing boxing gloves and firing hundreds of rounds but never reloading.      This kind of insane gunplay is a fixture in multiple Arbuckle films and somehow never gets less absurdly funny. (As usual, someone gets shot in the backside.) The police respond en masse, pursuing Roscoe to little avail. Innocent bystanders are inconvenienced and enraged (but not wounded by stray rounds). The chase escalates onto and over the tops of tall buildings - and watching big Roscoe participating in a classic thriller rooftop chase is a singular sight indeed. Things get even more ridiculous by the end. Well, this one's pure Arbuckle.

4/5    If other Sennett and Chaplin films were like this, I'd be watching dozens of Sennett and Chaplin films instead of dozens of Arbuckle films, wouldn't I?