The Fatal Mallet

This is typical Keystone with lots of butt-kicking, and the added bonus of skulls being smashed with big hammers. How strange were audiences in those days. Anyhow, we have in this film just about the best casting combination Keystone could muster. We have the coming genius Charlie, the divine Mabel, oafish Mack Swain, and the more than oafish Mack 'The Hick' Sennett. We may wonder why the latter cast himself in so many pictures, but he was there (according to Mack) by popular demand! We might unkindly ask 'Why?', but the truth is that he needed to keep an eye on naïve Mabel and the young and virile Charlie. Would the Englishman procure Mabel for another studio, and lure her from her aging Svengali? Mack was the first producer to realize Chaplin would go through actresses on the lot like a fox in a chicken coop. Charlie could do what he liked with Peggy Pearce, Peggy Page and Virginia Kirtley, but Mabel was Mack's personal property — touch at your peril.

As usual Sennett is acting the part of Mabel's boyfriend, and the opening scene makes this amply clear. While they stand in what seems to be some sort of a grove, Mack clumsily goes through the amorous stuff. Then, who should come along but the licentious Charlie, someone Mabel seems to know. She introduces Charlie to Mack, but the former takes exception to the latter, and begins to push him around. Suddenly Charlie points off-camera, and while the stupid country boy looks away, he runs off with the fair maid. Behind a shed, Charlie starts to impress the stunningly beautiful Keystone Girl with a range of comical tricks, but Mack creeps up on them, and slyly kicks Charlie in the rear. Charlie is shocked, and obviously thinks Mabel did it, so kicks her in the derriere. Mabel is equally shocked, but soon recovers her composure, and, smiling sweetly, she beckons Charlie forward, then smashes him in the face. Predictably, Mabel runs off, but Charlie soon finds her being pushed on a swing by Mack. As he approaches, Mack, of course, rams the swinging Mabel into him, and all-out war begins. Charlie throws a brick at the couple, hitting Mabel in the face, while Mack gallantly ducks behind a tree. Plucky Mabel throws the brick back, and an angry Charlie confronts the couple. Of course, Mack has to take some action, and Mabel is delighted when her hero pushes up his sleeves ready to knock Charlie out. Unfortunately, it's Mack who gets knocked out, prompting Mabel to run off into the arms of Mack Swain, who has conveniently arrived on the scene. It is highly amusing to see Chaplin mock defeated Sennett by imitating his trademark spewing of tobacco juice.

To cut a long story short, the film now enters mallet mode where Mack and Charlie first dispose of Swain with a whack on the head, then try to kill each other with mallets and bricks, while Mabel suffers collateral damage. An unusual scene then occurs, when a boy discovers Mabel alone, and takes the opportunity to manhandle (boyhandle?) the forlorn beauty. This is surely the luckiest kid in Edendale, for in no other film has any actor got to fondle the fair Mabel without getting a slap in the face. In any event, Charlie makes short work of the kid by drop-kicking him into performing a 108. Unfortunately, both Chaplin and Swain then end up in Echo Park Lake, while Sennett gets the goods in the form of Mabel the enchanting.

There is plenty going on in this film, which was clearly padded out with numerous gags from the talented and experienced quartet – the audiences would have certainly have got their money's worth. As for Mabel she gets something of a respite in the picture, although she clearly collected a few bruises. In an interview many years later she said 'I am glad to report that many of those that kicked me and abused my person down through the years, have now been consigned to oblivion'.The lovely dress Mabel wore in the film, seems to be the one worn by Eva Nelson a few weeks earlier in Twenty Minutes of Love (with the bow on the front rather than on the back).

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

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.

A man, Charlot, throws a mallet against a couple near a tree. The girl raises the mallet to the first pitcher who reaches the couple, for a moment of slapstick between men. The girl goes to another man with whom she sits on the swing. From the tree the two men go towards the swing and one of them pushes the one on the swing, which launches a mallet to the other two, who take refuge in a nearby shack. The character played by Chaplin goes to take with the other who is with the girl and take him to the shack. Chaplin hits the other two and goes to the girl, chasing a child who had arrived just before. The two men free themselves and one of the two chases Chaplin, who duels on the edge of a pond with one of the two while the other is with the girl. Chaplin drops his opponent into the lake but the other makes him fall too and goes for a walk with the girl.The movie focuses on the mechanism of slapstick and chase in this struggle between rivals in love.

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).