Dummies

Larry Semon works for Colonel Quack's medicine show. When the Colonel is kidnapped for no particular reason, Larry does a bunch of gags involving the Colonel's monkey, a railroad track several miles high and the Colonel's collection of mannequins.

Semon's short comedies were very popular, despite their ever-expanding budgets that made them flops. Even today, if you see them in a show, you will hear a lot of laughter from the small children. More mature audiences, however, like a little story and character continuity in their comedy and Semon never offered much of that. Instead we have railroad tracks that lead to cliffs several thousand feet above a town and the unexplained activities of his boss. Yes, there are some spectacular gags, including the shot as Larry clings to the cliff and later swings to and from collapsing towers hundreds of feet in the air.

Yet, while they provide spectacular gags, the cartoon world that Semon lives in never captures me, the way that better cartoonists' did. Too bad.