The Spook Speaks

Poor Buster Keaton -- he has to be married to the irritating Elsie Ames in this Columbia short comedy. Unfortunately it's my least favorite so far of the Columbia shorts that Keaton appeared in. Buster and Elsie are hired as caretakers of a magician's house, and that means the film will be filled with all sorts of contrived prop comedy and shots of the featured players looking scared. It becomes monotonous, as every attempt at humor is spoiled: the reason for the incongruous element of every gag is telegraphed way ahead, and there's no surprise when it is revealed. Anything can happen, because it can be explained away as a magic trick. The scare reactions don;t even work as well as they should (which isn't too well) because it's hard to believe anyone could be scared by what we're seeing.

As a Laurel and Hardy fan, this film reminds me of one of that team's worst pictures, "A-Haunting We Will Go:" both early-forties films where the stars are stuck with doing endless reactions to unfunny magic jokes. Buster Keaton plays everything well, but there's absolutely nothing that feels specific to Buster Keaton in the material. Actually, my favorite moment came with Buster's delivery slightly stunned reaction when a jug of alcohol seems to be playing music: "Oh, it's just a musical... jug?" Sadly another opportunity for comedy is lost when the prop turns out to be an actual musical jug, apparently a trick designed by the magician.

It's not actually painful to watch and doesn't last long, but Keaton fans could probably do better with, well, any other Buster Keaton film.

This is one of 10 films that are included in the two DVD set "The Buster Keaton Collection". It's a sad set of films Keaton did later in his career with Columbia Pictures and the films bore more resemblance to Three Stooges films than Keaton's classic silents. Of the 10, eight were directed by Jules White--a man who had absolutely no understanding or appreciation of Keaton's subtle humor. As a lady said in the documentary included with the set ("Buster Keaton: From Silents to Shorts"), White's idea of funny was dropping anvils on people's heads! His totally unsubtle and dopey humor made all the films he directed with Keaton a chore to watch at times--especially with the silly Stooge sound effects and timing. In addition, this film also co-starred Keaton with Elsie Ames--a completely obnoxious and untalented lady in every film she did with Keaton. Her overly exaggerated facial expressions, mannerisms and yelling made Patsy Kelly look subtle in her shorts for Hal Roach!! So already from the start, Keaton had two major disadvantages in the film, so you certainly cannot expect magic.

This film is sort of like a haunted house comedy, but this time the house is more like a carnival fun house. It's owned by a magician who hired Keaton and Ames to watch the house and protect his tricks from theft by his competitors. They are clearly told to guard the house and let no one in, so only moments after the magician leaves, they invite a couple inside. While it turns out the couple are harmless, two thieves enter the house and use a variety of tricks built into the house to scare everyone. None are all that funny and the film is pretty dull, but there is a cute penguin in the film as well, so I'll at least give it a point for the bird! Overall, a pretty dull time-passer with a very weak ending.

Buster is a hapless temp, hired as caretaker at a magician's house. Of course the heavily gadgeted house plays all sorts of tricks on Buster for fifteen minutes. Buster's partner here is Elsie Ames, whose willingness to do rough, physical

comedy landed her leads in several Columbia shorts. (In this one she gets a

boxing glove in the face six times in a row.) This is a typical Columbia "spook" comedy with the usual quota of unsophisticated, tried-and-true laughs, but this kind of broad, scared-reaction comedy was better left to The Three Stooges.

Keaton goes through the motions and snares some laughs, but "The Spook Speaks" is not one of his shining achievements.