Out West

This is a pretty weird parody of Westerns by Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. Unlike some of their other films together, Keaton actually plays a larger supporting role.

The film is full of bizarre and violent jokes that kind of work but are a bit atypical of what you'd expect from these usually sweet comedians. At one point, a guy is obviously cheating at poker and bystander Keaton shoots the guy about 5 times and then opens a trap door and kicks the body inside and slams down the lid! THAT was certainly unexpected! Later, Fatty displays gunsmanship that would make anyone proud--if we'd have had him in WWII, the war might have only lasted a week! All in all, a strange but funny departure and worth seeing just for its weirdness.

Leaving NYC behind for the first time in their partnership, Arbuckle and Keaton turn a satirical eye to the wild west. Out here, amongst the dusty plains and ramshackle abodes, Fatty plays a penniless, train-hopping drifter who's chased into Buster's rowdy cowboy saloon. Taking a job as the barkeep (after a timely disposal of the bullet-riddled previous employee), Arbuckle quickly acclimates to the environment and encourages further chaos in an already out-of-control situation. Keaton doesn't seem to mind, so long as the bodies don't stack so high as to impede his liquor sales.

The change in scenery serves this duo well, inspiring a rush of fresh ideas and cinematic creativity. They're experimenting again, with a greater tendency to explore new locations. Where, in the past, they'd typically pick a room and sit in it, Out West sees them stealing lunch aboard a moving locomotive, exchanging fire with dim-witted outlaws on the street, raiding a kidnapper's home in search of a fair damsel and pouring alcohol into an over-served horse at the bar. Clearly, the horizon is expanding for this pair; they're testing their limits, beginning to appreciate the nuances and advantages of working on-screen, rather than on-stage. Maybe not their best collaboration so far, but it constantly hints at greater things to come.

This short silent comedy starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle with Buster Keaton and Al St. John in support is a mixed bag as a spoof of westerns. In begins on a train where Arbuckle ingeniously steals some food from three men one of whom was Buster's father, Joseph. After being thrown off and getting chased by Indians (or in today's parlance, Native Americans), Roscoe stumbles into the town saloon where he foils robber St. John's holdup and takes his guns. This is when he and Buster meet and become teaming acquaintances. There are many very funny gags up to this point to where they tickle St. John victoriously but then there's a racist gag involving one Ernie Morrison Sr. (the father of original "Our Gang"s Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison who would also occasionally appear in Harold Lloyd shorts) that threatens to put things to a halt. Fortunately, there's still some decent laughs after that. Oh, and there's a woman involved as well. So on that note, I'd recommend Out West. P.S. The version I watched was on the Image Entertainment "The Best Arbuckle-Keaton Collection" DVD.

The best part of the whole short--Roscoe's routine: the famous one-handed cigarette roll, striking the match on the train, then leaping into the caboose as the train speeds by--in less time than it takes to read this. Worth the price of admission alone!

Once they started working together Buster Keaton and Roscoe Arbuckle made their first half-dozen short comedies in New York, from spring through autumn of 1917. Late that year Arbuckle relocated his "Comique" production company to Southern California, and the gang celebrated the move with an elaborate two-reel comedy called Out West, a satire on the hard-bitten variety of Westerns cranked out by William S. Hart and Broncho Billy Anderson in the early days of motion pictures. The result is a distinctly harsh comedy that doesn't hold up as well as most of the other Arbuckle-Keaton Comique collaborations. This is the sort of movie in which our hero spikes a horse's water supply with liquor just for laughs, someone gets shot in the butt in almost every scene, lots of Injuns and Mexicans get killed, and a dozen bottles are smashed over the villain's head without effect, at which point a six-shooter is emptied into him, also without effect.

The comedy in Out West is so violent some of it actually works as parody -- which, after all, is how it was intended. When a cheating gambler is fatally shot, grim-faced saloon proprietor Buster coolly disposes of his body through a convenient trap-door, and this still works as a jab at actual Westerns where violent death is treated as routinely as the ringing of the phone. Next, when the bartender is shot down and Buster instantly puts up a sign reading "Bartender Wanted," it's darkly funny although the joke is starting to wear a bit thin. But the joke is ruined when a gang of sadistic cowboys torment a black man by shooting at his feet to make him dance, and Buster & Roscoe join right in. They only stop when stern Salvation Army lass Alice Lake enters and puts a halt to the rough-housing, saying "Aren't you ashamed?" They are, and they put away their guns, but the mood has soured. (I first saw this comedy at a public screening during a Keaton festival some years ago, and although it had been going over fairly well up to that point this sequence totally killed the laughter for the duration of the running time.)

Even allowing that Out West is a parody, a lot of the material -- and not just the racial humor -- is in surprisingly poor taste for these guys, although fortunately it's a lapse that was not repeated in their subsequent careers. There are some good gags here, even some clever ones, but they're practically lost in the shuffle, weakened in impact by the prevailing callous tone.

Out West is currently available on video and DVD in two releases, from Kino and from Image Entertainment, and it's worth noting that the two versions differ significantly. The Kino print is badly tattered and missing several bits that survive in the Image release, which looks better in general. Also, the two prints have been edited differently, and several dialog titles and a couple of character names differ in the respective versions; this isn't unusual with films from the silent era, which were frequently altered for foreign releases or even to suit local taste in various locales within the U.S. The Image version features jaunty period music well selected for individual sequences, while the Kino release features music by a group called the Alloy Orchestra that I find mostly jarring and inappropriate, to put it politely. Over all I'd say that anyone interested in seeing this film should seek out the Image Entertainment version, but be forewarned that Out West does not show off either Buster Keaton or Roscoe Arbuckle to best advantage.