The Rough House is another Fatty Arbuckle silent comedy, co-diected this time with Buster Keaton, and starring pretty much the same cast as The Butcher Boy.
The first half of this is very similar to the first half of The Butcher Boy, being as it is a near ten minute ever-escalating food fight with the exact same cast of actors, but this time in a nice posh house rather than a butcher’s shop.
In the second half, Fatty Arbuckle has to make dinner for some new guests who turn out to be crooks. This section is surprisingly tedious, although there’s a nice bit where he slices up the potatoes using an electric fan (see above).
Later on there’s a chase, and a gunfight, and Buster Keaton executing an amazing overhead kick to a man’s face that Jackie Chan would have been proud of (see below). And yet it’s still all a bit boring for some reason.
(The reason is there’s no Luke the Dog at all)
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Notes
1. I watched this on blu-ray again, but took the screenshots from this version on youtube.
2. The restored version on the blu-rays looks much nicer than that. You can actually see their faces, for one thing.
3. So I apologise for the poor quality images above.
4. Maybe one day I will learn how to take screenshots from blu-rays, but I doubt it’ll be anytime soon.
5. I’ve said this before, but I love the way old silent films shot on static cameras like this have the feel of some strange 80s/90s adventure games, each room in the house a separate screen.
6. I don’t know if anyone’s ever made a silent comedy adventure game but someone definitely should at some point.
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Film Information
Title: The Rough House
Directors: Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton
Year: 1917
Duration: 20 minutes
Watch: youtube