El mazo de Charlot

Weber and Fields have made millions laugh with the aid of just such comedy business as is employed in this release and the picture, purporting to be nothing other than a melange of rough-house happenings, will prove acceptable on the majority of programs. This one-reeler proves that hitting people over the heads with bricks and mallets can sometimes be made amusing. - The Moving Picture World, June 13, 1914

The Fatal Mallet is full of unexplained, unnecessary, and gratuitous 1914 violence, like most of Chaplin's films for Keystone, but at least the plot is very easy to follow because it stays simple and doesn't try to tell more of a story than the technology of the time would allow. It begins with a lot of brick throwing between Chaplin and a man and wife (the wife does most of the throwing), until ultimately Charlie and the man are engaged in a brawl. Meanwhile, the wife finds another man, a huge brute of a man who is unaffected by Charlie and the first husband hitting him on top of the head with bricks. When he fails to notice that anything is happened, the two love scorn men are forced to regroup and come up with a new plan while the new guy makes his affections known to the woman.

The two enemies now working together allows Chaplin to do some of his usual tricks and pranks but to actually have a reason to do them this time, and ultimately it turns into a brawl that is every man for himself, since they are all enemies to begin with. Chaplin's love of falling into the lake and throwing other people into the lake is certainly not forgotten here, but among the films of the time, I think this one stands out as one of the clearer and more entertaining ones, even though so much of it is the same as so many others.

Also of note here is what I think might be the first appearance of a small boy in an important role in one of Chaplin's films. I say important role, however, only to mean that there is a kid in more than a background role. I am not sure if it is more disturbing than amusing, but I would lean toward amusing just because, even though the kid shows up just long enough for Charlie to punt him off screen like a football, he is clearly having a great time and his imitation of Chaplin's backwards fall is uncanny. Certainly not the best, but this is among the better of Chaplin's Keystone comedies.

One of Charlie Chaplin's early shorts features him as a man vying for a woman's attention. Mack Sennett's movie is nothing sophisticated. In 1914 most movies were shorts, and "The Fatal Mallet" is the typical enjoyable silly thing. Worth seeing.

They probably never imagined that the director would get played in a movie by a man best known as both a Blues Brother and a Ghostbuster (with Chaplin played by Sherlock Holmes/Iron Man).

'The Fatal Mallet' is pretty much a movie about hitting people in the head. In the center of the story is a woman (Mabel) and three men fighting over her. After throwing pricks constantly at each other's head, one has to wonder - does it really take only one mallet blow to take a person out? Then again - it is a FATAL mallet.

I noticed that when Mack Sennett and Charles Chaplin worked together to take out the third suitor they formed a nice dynamic duo - their on-screen chemistry seemed something like between Abbott and Costello, or Laurel and Hardy.

Not among the best of Chaplin's Keystone pictures but as the film is only 12 minutes long it's not a huge time waster.

Rather to my surprise, I actually quite liked this one. Considering that I don't care for slapstick, that the entire plot of this film consists of people hitting each other, and that I'm not Charlie Chaplin's greatest fan, this was extremely unexpected; but in fact, there are good things to be said for a film that consists of nothing whatever but a single, simple gag ingeniously elaborated. Mack Sennett gets better and -- dare one even suggest it in such a context? -- more subtle results here by simply staging repeated variations on a theme than he would have done by throwing in the semblance of a plot (or what passes for one in Keystone territory), let alone by introducing more characters or invoking the Keystone Kops...

Despite or even because the whole film is occupied by hitting people over the head, there is scope for some finer detail, such as the shifting alliances of convenience between the various opponents as old grudges are overlaid by more immediate opportunity, and moments of realisation: my favourite was the sequence where Mack Swain comes to and realises that he has been locked in with a Mack Sennett who is going to be *very* angry when he wakes up... and the way that his knees (all that is visible) shake beneath the sackcloth while he tries to hide. But I felt that the player who really shines in this film is Mabel Normand, who has the advantage over the men of being on the receiving end of less constant violence, and thus can really milk her outraged reactions when her suitors' attacks accidentally spill over. The little sequence at the beginning where she sweet-talks Charlie into a close approach after he kicks her in error -- only to knock him unexpectedly flying with the full strength of her diminutive frame -- is laugh-out-loud funny, which is more than can be said for much of Keystone's standard fare.