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Misadventures of Buster Keaton [VHS]

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An interesting item in Buster's career. Not quite a film. It's actually one of two pseudo features compiled from episodes of Life with Buster, his shot on film TV series, and follows Buster's misadventures running a sporting goods shop, and a local theatre company.

Before "Life with Buster", Keaton had starred in a live show "The Buster Keaton Show" and the surviving episode of that is a knockout, simply because Buster thrived on a live audience and could improvise freely for minutes at a time. "Life" was more of a situation comedy with slapstick and as a result Buster is much more constrained here.

Reputedly Buster didn't enjoy this series, missing the live audience. Buster and CLyde Bruckman (his writer)found it hard to come up with a half hour's worth of original material each week and in future would do only guest spots.

You can sence his discomfort in the variable quality of the material here, some of which is corny in a way Buster has never been before. It reaches a low point with a lengthy on stage sequence with Buster as an idiotic suitor, one of 3, who come a courting the beautiful young lady of their fancy.

Despite the patchiness, Buster is always a pleasure to watch and he has some very funny moments, notably a reprise of the piggy bank gag from Cameraman, an entertaining poster sticking scene, in which Eleanor Keaton makes a brief appearance, and a climactic scene where he attempts to perform the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet and the set falls forward on him just like in Steamboat Bill Jnr.. Eleanor appears as Juliet, a nice touch.

Well worth a look.

Keaton fans who thought they knew every movie he made, every silent including alternate titles, every foreign language picture, every newsreel segment he directed, every compilation film, every industrial film meant only to be shown in house, the one art film he appeared in, the Canadian travelogue film, the documentary of the making of that travelogue, and every minor role and cameo he made in every film including his possible inclusion in a crowd scene in the silent version of Ben Hur, even those Keaton fans are stumped when they hear the title "The Misadventures of Buster Keaton". Many would suspect that it was merely a new title given to an old Keaton movie by a video company, perhaps even a movie that buster was not even in. But real, real, real die hard fans know exactly what this so called movie is.

While Keaton's fame had faded in the States, over in Europe he was still very popular. Foreign distributors were still eager for any Keaton movie they could get their hands on. Back in the United States Keaton had turned to the new medium of Television and his own television series "Life With Buster". It only lasted a year as Keaton did not like the pace that new shows had to be churned out ( a half hour a week as apposed to 20 minutes a month with his silent shorts )and felt the quality was suffering because of this pace. After the show was cancelled it was offered for sale overseas where a movie distributor decided to edit two episodes together to create a new feature length movie. Only shown in Europe it was rarely included on any Keaton filmographies as it was looked at as simply a retitling of "Life With Buster".

Since "Life With Buster" is still unavailable on home video, this is the only way to view the show. It appears the series is just as good as "The Abbot & Costello Show" and "The Honeymooners", two slapstick shows both filmed within a few years of Keaton's. Had Keaton agreed to a second season then enough episodes would have existed for syndication and he probably would have become famous as a classic television star. But from viewing the shows you can see where the quality was compromised. One example has Buster repeating the old gag where he is in an apartment with a woman when her jealous husband comes home. Buster hides under the couch which the husband sits on. Pulled off correctly the gag would go like this: The husband suspicious of his wife but with no idea that Buster is there lights a cigarette and then drops the lit match on Buster's face, who then has to blow it out. A simple throwaway gag, but the actor playing the husband blew it. Instead of dropping a lit match the husband lights the cigarette and puts the match out himself. A moment later the actor, realizing he blew the gag, lights a second match and puts it to the lit cigarette pretending to need to light it again, and then drops the lit match. Watching this you can practically see the exasperation in Busters otherwise stone face. While shot on film, early television shows did not have the budget to do retakes should an actor blow a line or make a mistake. Even episodes of "The Honeymooners" made five years after the Keaton shows had plenty of gaffs during the episodes.

From this aspect this movie is very interesting, however most of the gags here are old and were pulled off much better in earlier Keaton movies. In one case he reprises a stunt from "Steamboat Bill Jr." where the facade of a house drops on buster but he survives because he is standing where the window on the facade is located. Only instead of a facade of a two story house it is a much smaller piece of stage scenery that drops around Buster and is less effective. Without home video in the 1950's this would have been the first time that generation saw most of these gags so it did not matter much if they were done better before, but for today's Keaton fans who already own a complete set of all Keaton's movies, these gags may seem anticlimactic at best. Perhaps in the earlier episodes of "Life With Buster" there were more original gags and towards the end of the series they had to resort to the old gags, a casualty of having to come up with entirely new material every week. On the bright side, although Buster was entering his late 50's by the time this series was made he still had the body and mindset of a 20 year old and did not shy away from the physical stunts. At any age Keaton was willing to run into a wall, fall off a balcony, or slip on a banana onto the side of his neck doing a couple of somersaults before he lands on his back. Most slapstick comedians were unable to do this in their prime.