The Great Pie Mystery

Wow, I stumbled onto this online, great stuff. This is the best film I have watched with Harry! Actually I've been watching Mack Sennett, Del Lord and even one or so Harry Gribbon shorts online and I also saw that it had pies, lol. Del Lord I think did the live oyster in the soup skit with Sennett and Billy Bevan in the silents, I only knew of The 3 Stooges and Abbott and Costello versions until very recently, and its actually more funny! I would say that the same here applies with the pie gag, it's funnier then when The 3 Stooges did it, although I kind of figured out it was a parody of films then, the spelling it out here was more of a lightbulb moment, lol. I like the pies here, because they explained it was a parody of 1930s era mystery films which I've also been watching a ton of recently, its making me laugh with each pie hit! Maybe I've been transported to a 1930s mindset while watching this which is why my rating is so high. I'm giving it a 10 also for it's kind of rarity, not many people will ever watch this. Thanks all involved, I love comic film history.

A master criminologist examines clues which may lead him to a missing diamond necklace, or to whoever is throwing pies. A clue leads to a subplot about Harry Gribbon selling eggs and getting married at shotgun.

It's an absurd piece that looks like it was edited down to be too short, then more stuff was shot and edited in from another failed movie. As such, it comes out as extremely silly. I will state that the key player here is not the director, Del Lord, nor any of the four credited writers, nor the performers, but the editor, William Hornbeck. Hornbeck began as a film winder in the editor's room about 1915, then went to work for Sennett as an editor. After a dozen years there, he went over to England to be the chief editor for Korda, then returned to the US to work for Capra. He worked for George Stevens, until he became editor-in-chief for Universal until his retirement in 1976. In 1977, the American Cinema Editors voted him the best editor ever. He died in 1983, aged 82.

Harry Gribbon made quite a few comedy shorts and I must admit, I don't enjoy them very much. So when I saw he starred in "The Great Pie Mystery", I wasn't anxious to see it. Fortunately, it turned out to be worth my time.

Harry plays a rube who has a sweetheart. However, when he goes to town to sell his eggs, a shifty woman seduces him in order to lay her hands on his fortune. Can Harry realize he's being made into a chump?

The film is pretty silly. I liked seeing the flashback as to how he met the woman in the big city as well as the insane randomness of having a pie-throwing guy in a cloak pelting folks with little provocation. Funny stuff even though it's pretty low-brow.