Keystone Hotel

My specialty in the comedy shorts field are those produced by Columbia Pictures, however, "Keystone Hotel" (Warner Brothers-Vitaphone Corporation), is perhaps my all-time favorite of any comedy short from any studio. What more could one ask for in a two-reeler paying homage to the early slapstick comedy of Mack Sennett? There's plenty of everything Sennett made famous...The Keystone Kops, car chases, bathing beauties (well sort of...there is a beauty contest), pie fights, and a dream cast of former Mack Sennett players still doing what they did best some 10-20 years earlier. I highly recommend this film. It's funny, fast-paced, and a real delight to see old timers like Ben Turpin and Ford Sterling at the top of their game.

It's too bad that a series wasn't developed from this terrific crowd pleaser.

Worth watching only as a curiosity. The cast is composed of famous silent comedians who are no longer famous. It's pretty bad but mercifully short.

This is not the best sound comic short ever made (I would give that to either Laurel & Hardy or WC Fields), but it is a very good one, and perhaps the best illustration that much of the best of the Three Stooges really was handed down from Keystone, as the first two thirds of this really do resemble a particularly good Del Lord Stooges short. The gags surrounding cross-eyed Ben Turpin, in particular, are superb, as are the gags around a shaking reducing machine, and naughty old Keystone stalwarts gazing through keyholes.

The giant pie fight and Keystone Kops scene leave me a bit cold, though I suppose they were deemed essential in a short using old Keystone people. But, frankly, if you're the type to seek this kind of short out, you've seen all these gags before in better silent versions.

So -- definitely worth seeing, and its unfortunate (and a little odd) that Warners did not follow this one up with a series with this crew.

I actually thought this one was done in 1932, but that doesn't really matter. This has to be the best all time comedy short. We have here some of the very best actors & actresses of comedy from the silent years. Here we can finally hear them speak. I caught it about 15 years ago on TNT when it was a much better station not constantly showing that dog gone logo in the corner of the screen and managed to tape it. I have watched it 100's of times and never tire of it. Although many of the great old comedies has scenes that are politically incorrect which offends many these days w/ chips on their shoulders, but this one seems to be completely without. This one can never taken for real which seems to be the norm these days. This is total fun from start to finish. Starting out w/ some of the cool sappy dialogue leading into some great sight gags. Then we have the BEST pie fight I've ever seen and the great classic slap-stick of the Keystone Kops. It has all of the elements of the earlier Max Sennett silent comedies but w/ the sound, it ten times better. It may be only ten minutes in length, this short has more great belly laughs than any feature picture. See this one if you can. It may be available on tape or DVD; buy it if you can. It a classic & clean comedy from the days when we could laugh at something without foul language & sex as in today's films.

In 1935, somebody came up with a brilliant idea: make a talking short that would epitomize the slapstick comedies of the silent era. Silent comics, pushed into obscurity by the advent of talkies, were readily available.

Never mind about the plot; it only exists as a framework on which to hang new renditions of classic silent gags. The finale, of course, is a massive pie fight in the hotel ballroom while the Keystone Kops rush to quell the riot. Segments of the pie fight are frequently used as stock footage; it's likely that everyone has seen portions of it at one time or another.

Altogether, a nostalgic short that captures the flavor of the silent era. Good fun.