I'd never watched Andy Clyde in anything outside of his bits in compilations of Silent comedies; this, then, is one of his Talkie shorts considering that it was made contemporaneously with The Three Stooges vehicles (which I checked out earlier this year), for the same studio (Columbia) and by some of the same people, it's no wonder the styles are practically indistinguishable! The heyday of the genre produced innumerable comics: however, only those that managed to create a unique personality survived and Clyde is definitely one who has fallen through the cracks. This is because his only characteristic trait (at least, judging by this one short) is the fact that he's something of an elderly eccentric; otherwise, the gags he's involved in are mostly derivative of the work of other greater comedians in fact, given the film's revolution-south-of-the-border plot line, it's particularly redolent of Harold Lloyd's WHY WORRY? (1923)
Clyde is a bank clerk who's told by a doctor that he has only three months to live; a young girl from work he fancies tells him he should make the best of it and take a trip around the world
but before going, he 'avenges' himself on a couple of his male colleagues (which he says he'd been wanting to do for years!). He ends up in the Banana Republic of Paprika(!) where, typically, the people have risen against the tyrannical state. Following some shenanigans in a club, in which he meets a fiery dancer and also gets mixed up with a couple of insurrectionists, he's forced to flee the place with the latter (when the military turn up to arrest them). This is done, however, by way of a spectacular stunt, which sees Clyde violently thrown out of the joint, tearing the door clean off its hinges and sliding all the way down a hill on top of it! Eventually, the trio engage in 'combat' against the soldiers with Clyde forming mud-balls and firing them through a cannon!; at the end, our hero is brought before the firing squad which arouses his amusement, given that he was dying anyway
but the last laugh's on him, as a letter from home arrives just then bearing the information that the medical diagnosis had been wrong!
This is a harmless and occasionally pleasant short but, in the long run, it doesn't make one eager to seek out more of the comedian's stuff. Incidentally, HOT PAPRIKA was included as an (irrelevant) extra on Columbia's "Icons Of Adventure" 2-Disc Set comprising four atypical outings from Britain's famed horror stable, Hammer Films!
