Pest from the West

This is the first and indeed the best of Buster Keaton's ten Columbia shorts. Most of these suffer from Stooge-style slapstick and heavy-handed direction,

but this first effort is great fun to watch. (Buster himself liked this one best, according to the late Mrs. Keaton.) In this reworking of his 1936 feature "An Old Spanish Custom," Buster plays an international tourist who falls for a pretty senorita. But he has several run-ins with belligerent locals, each resulting in a hasty retreat, a quick change of costume, and Buster coming back for more.

Exhibitors and audiences loved this film in 1939, and it was the first Columbia two-reeler selected for re-release (in 1948). It's still a crowd-pleaser today; this writer attended a screening where the audience members didn't just applaud -- they cheered!

Aside from an amusing sequence in which Buster serenades the leading lady, this talkie two-reeler suffers from weak, tired material. The atmosphere is seedy and and the gags are uninspired (e.g. Buster repeatedly falls off a boat). This short was a reworking of a feature-length comedy Buster made in England a few years earlier, variously known as "The Invader" or "An Old Spanish Custom," and although the remake represents an improvement over the original it nonetheless falls far short of what Keaton could achieve in his heyday. Poor Clyde Bruckman, author of the screenplay, fell back on some desperate ploys to perk things along, putting Buster in a procession of exaggerated ethnic costumes for laughs. I guess they figured if that shtick started getting old, Buster could always fall off the boat again. The story limps along to a flat, anticlimactic ending, and viewers who've never seen the star in anything else could be excused for wondering what his legendary reputation is based on.

The serenade gives us a hint of Buster's vaudeville past and is certainly the comic high point. In this sequence he attempts to perform "In a Little Spanish Town" for the leading lady, singing in his croaky voice while accompanying himself on a ukulele. Her exasperated neighbor (comedy stalwart Bud Jamison) pummels him with flower pots throughout the number, all dropped to the beat. It's a cute routine, seen to best advantage in the documentary "Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow."

For me, the biggest problem here is that Buster is once more stuck playing the hapless lunkhead character featured in the worst of his MGM features, another "Elmer" type who appears to be sleepwalking, unaware that the leading lady is playing him for a sucker. This sure isn't the attractive, resourceful guy who was the hero of THE GENERAL. Keaton was still fairly young at this point and capable of better work than we see here (as he would prove on TV in the '50s), but the people in charge at Columbia Pictures didn't know how to use his abilities properly or else they just didn't care.

Fans usually assert that this was the best of Buster's series of short comedies for Columbia, and unfortunately that seems to be the case: some of the others are downright painful to watch. Such a sad waste of talent. Masochistic Keaton buffs will watch the Columbia shorts anyhow, but everyone else should stick with his silent work to see the man at his best.

According to several sources, "Pest From The West" is Keaton's best in the series of ten short films he made for Columbia Pictures. A remake of his 1934 feature "The Invader," it was directed by Del Lord instead of the awful Jules White.

One reviewer has written the same thing for the first six shorts in the set "Buster Keaton Collection" available from Sony. The first two paragraphs are virtually identical and contain several falsehoods. He writes Keaton was lousy with money, but the truth is, according to his wife Eleanor, when Keaton divorced he lost all his money. Plus he was the sole support of his mother, sister, and brother. When he signed on to Columbia, he made only $2,500 for each two-reeler, half of what he was paid at Educational.

This reviewer also compares Keaton to Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, but that is silly. Their circumstances were completely different, he repeatedly claims that he has "seen more of his (Keaton's) silent films than practically anyone one on the planet" which is ridiculous. I have seen, and others have as well, just as much as he has and I have seen Keaton on the stage a few years before his death In 1959 playing the king in "Once Upon A Mattress." 0 of 9 found his review helpful and that speaks for itself.

"The Pest from the West" has the honor of being considered the best of the short subjects that Buster Keaton starred in for Columbia Pictures. Perhaps that's partially because it was released first and got a lot of exposure, but while I'm not sure it's so many lightyears ahead of the other Keaton Columbia shorts, it it very funny, and allows the gags and comic situations to build throughout the short.

While the material gets to build in a satisfactory way, though, this is somewhat oddly contrasted with the fact that the short seems a little contextless as a whole. Buster plays some kind of odd, moneyed man who seems to travel around the globe in a small boat with a large collection of local costumes and three loyal servants, and then falls instantly in love with a Mexican waitress. Maybe it feels like we're missing a good bit of what is going on here because much of the material for "The Pest from the West" was pulled from an earlier Keaton feature film.

It certainly LOOKS the best of all the Columbia shorts, with sets nicely dressed up as Mexico, and plenty of location shots at a dock. The outdoor scenes at the water accent the humor of the great rule-of-three gag with Buster's sailors pushing off when he's only gone back to the boat to fetch something. There's the subtle advantage too of some background music -- rare in Columbia shorts but, like it did in a lot of great Hal Roach films, enhancing the pleasant, comedy atmosphere -- coming from the Mexican band in the café. Unfortunately, the supporting players in this film are quite terrible and wooden, especially Richard Fiske as Ferdinand the Bullfighter, who it's almost shocking to think was ever allowed to deliver a line again.

This all isn't too much of a problem, though, since Buster himself gets most of the material. He handles it very well, of course, with his standout physical bit involving trying to dance while his shoes are stuck to the ground. Also the novelty of hearing Buster Keaton sing is certainly, well, a rare one -- and it is part of a well-timed gag sequence.

There's a lot of very funny material here, though slightly let down by the weak support Buster has to play off of, and the setup leaves us a little bewildered.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the great Buster Keaton was out of work and in desperate need for money so he made a string of forgettable short films for Columbia Pictures. Although he was a comic genius during the silent era, his career in sound movies was mostly horrible due to the industry's unwillingness to simply let him do what he did best and they insisted in trying to force him into uncomfortable molds that just didn't work. Sadly, because Keaton was lousy with money, he was so hard up for cash and unwilling to balk with the studios that he made some dreadful film and TV appearances that probably made him ashamed to look in the mirror. This is a stark contrast to Chaplin and Lloyd who made far fewer sound films but chose them much better. Plus, they knew when to walk away and retain much of their dignity. This is particularly true of Harold Lloyd, who never would have appeared in American-International movies such as BEACH BLANKET BINGO or a particularly wretched episode of "The Twilight Zone" like Keaton did.

As for the Columbia shorts, they were mostly directed and produced by Jules White who was also responsible for the Three Stooges shorts--though this is one of the two made by Del Lord--another Stooge director. This is very, very obvious when you watch the Keaton shorts as the plots look indiscernible from the Stooges' films--with the same gags, sound effects and style. In fact, in some cases, Keaton does the same plots the Stooges had first done and this isn't surprising. That's because Columbia OFTEN repeated plots and many of the Stooges' later shorts for the studio are remakes of their earlier films! While Stooges die-hards might excuse this and think ALL of their films are gems, this is definitely NOT true--the remakes are definite duds. As for Keaton fans (and I am definitely one--having seen more of his silent films than practically anyone on the planet), they will also usually admit that his sound films were pretty poor and the Columbia films were at best passable entertainment. Plus, the Stooges' style is a horrible thing to try to fit the great Keaton into. It's akin to putting Greta Garbo in a Marx Brothers film!!!

One reviewer described this as being "one of Keaton's worst" and I am in total agreement, though the film had one thing doing for it. The awful and untalented Elsie Ames (who co-starred with Keaton in most of these films for Columbia) is not in this one! This first film for Columbia Pictures was still a dud from start to finish and mostly looked like Keaton and the writers just didn't care. Why else would they repeat the exact same gags again and again--especially when it wasn't funny the first time? After the third time Keaton falls into the water, if you look at the pretty lady who plays lead you'll see she has a very bored look on her face--this says it all! In addition, in one scene there is clearly a reflection in the glass of the boom microphone that they didn't even bother re-shooting. So if they didn't care, why should we?! Despite the jealous boyfriend who vows to kill anyone looking at his woman, despite the duel at the end and despite the great Keaton appearing in this film, it's about as bad as you can get and I don't recommend you waste your time with it.