The Sawmill

This is definitely a "lesser known" comedy short from the 1920s. The only reason I saw it was because it was on a DVD by Kino Films featuring non-Laurel and Hardy shorts featuring Ollie. They are interesting and historically important, but also generally average to below average for the style film. Compared to shorts by Chaplin, Keaton, Arbuckle and Lloyd, they are definitely a step below them in quality and humor. Also, the accompanying music was pretty poor by the standards of other silent DVDs. I ended up turning OFF the sound due to the inappropriateness of the music to set the proper mood. But, despite this, they are still worth seeing.

The star of this short is Larry Semon--a well-known and popular comic from the silents that is completely unknown today. Read his IMDb biography and you'll find out what an odd life he led and how he died when only 39 years-old.

Well, after seeing this film, I could rather understand WHY Mr. Semon isn't well-known anymore--the film was dreadfully dull. While this wasn't the only Semon short on this Oliver Hardy DVD, it was certainly the most uninteresting. Save yourself the trouble--try to find some other silent short--ANY other silent short!

In the 'teens and '20's, Larry Semon was a second-echelon comedian primarily in two-reel comedies. His comedies, while expensively mounted and populated with good comic actors, never quite made the leap to Chaplin, Arbuckle or Keaton standards.

It was set in (naturally enough) a lumber camp. Larry plays the "rugged he-man type" usually portrayed by Wallace Beery or Jack Holt. Semon's physical bearing makes this an amusing target.

The Sawmill was a very expensive comedy to make, more than some Chaplin pictures, but it just doesn't make it as a great comedy. If you like Ben Turpin, Lloyd Hamilton, or Charley Bower (You may have to look these names up) you'll like Semon.

Larry Semon was (at best) in the lower second rank of silent-movie comedians, more likely in the third rank. Buster Keaton, in his memoir co-written with Charles Samuels, commented that Semon tended to fill his comedies with all sorts of outrageous gags which had nothing to do with the plot or the characters. Consequently (said Keaton), audiences tended to laugh harder at Semon's shorts than at other comedians' work ... but afterwards they couldn't remember what they'd laughed at. It's hard to see how Keaton can have known this: did pollsters stop audiences on their way out of Semon screenings, and challenge them to synopsise what they'd just seen? But Keaton's observation was apparently made without malice, and certainly seems to be true.

I've sat through 'The Sawmill' twice without laughing at all, and I'm blowed if I can remember what it's about. Semon's in a sawmill, right enough, and he avoids the obvious gags such as tying the heroine to a log as it approaches the buzzsaw. But he doesn't do anything better than that, either. This is very much a run-of-the-mill Semon movie, and I'm not saying that to hang jokes on the word 'mill'.

As IMDb correctly notes, Semon expended a huge budget on this short comedy (and he spent only slightly smaller budgets on some of his others, such as 'The Counter Jumper'). Semon insisted on producing and budgeting his own films (with other people's money), but he was notoriously bad at budgeting and financing ... nearly as bad as Harry Langdon. Semon's eventual bankruptcy was undoubtedly a factor in his early death ... or disappearance, depending on which theory you believe. Anyway, you can definitely believe that 'The Sawmill' is worth a miss. I'll rate it, at absolute most, one point in 10. That sound you hear of sawing wood is the audience snoring.

The good L&H in a sawmill is the short film "Busy Bodies" (1933), worth watching.

I found this short, The Sawmill, on a Platinum DVD collection of Laurel and Hardy shorts. It stars Larry Semon as one of the workers. Oliver Hardy plays the foreman and chief tormentor of Semon who shares with him a rivalry for the owner's daughter's hand. Unlike the Laurel and Hardy classic Busy Bodies, not all gags take place in a sawmill, some also take place in the owner's house involving a dog and some dynamite. There are also gags involving logs, paint, falling off roofs, and water. All are perfectly executed. There's a cartoonish atmosphere that's infectious here and that would eventually serve Hardy's later partnership with Stan Laurel well. For fans of Laurel and Hardy, this is well worth seeking out!