The Gold Ghost

Gold Ghost, The (1934)

** (out of 4)

Wally (Buster Keaton) is expected to marry Gloria (Dorothy Dix) but she finds him to be a wimp and refuses his hand. Wally, depressed, decides to drive out West where he ends up in a ghost town in Nevada where he pretends to be the sheriff but ends up with the job just in time as a gangster comes to visit as well as some looking for gold. After Keaton's contract was destroyed by MGM he moved over to Educational Pictures and this was the first film he made for the ultra low-budget studio. I've heard many reviewers say this was the best of the group and if that's true then I'm really not looking forward to the future films. As many other reviewers have stated, the first portion of this movie features a long silent sequence and many fans seem to feel this was a great return for Keaton. However, in my opinion, just because you make something silent doesn't mean that the quality of the work is any higher. I really thought many of the jokes fell flat on their face simply because of how straight many of them were. The majority of the silent segment features Keaton falling over things. He goes to sit in a chair but it breaks and he falls. Keaton goes to lean against a table but it collapses and he falls. He puts his foot on a bar and, you guessed it, he falls. There are a couple funny gags later on in the film including the best one where Keaton is washing his clothes and is somewhat nude when all these cars start pulling up and he must frantically run off. Another nice gag is when he and the gangster are playing cards on a desk full of dust that goes wild each time one of them moves. THE GOLD GHOST isn't a horrible film because it did at least keep me mildly entertained but at the same time there simply weren't enough laughs to call it a winner.

In his first Educational comedy Buster Keaton touches and mannerisms are back in abundance after years of the creative straitjacket that was MGM. I find his Educational shorts liberating despite the low budgets that were imposed upon the brilliant comedian. After five years of being told what was funny by studio executives Keaton is back in charge and calling the shots as evident by the delightful first reel of THE GOLD GHOST, which is played basically silent. Buster roams around a deserted, ram-shackled ghost town where chairs and tables collapse, doors fall off their hinges and wooden walkways disintegrate when used. Warren Hymer eventually turns up so Buster has someone to play cards with in a rising cloud of dust.

None of these gags are truly ingenious on their own but they are all engaging as a whole as Keaton gets his feet wet returning to the two reel format that he began his film career in supporting Roscoe Arbuckle. Who else but Keaton would throw a deck of cards at a gang of assailants and then stand and watch as the cards scattered with the wind?

It's nice to have Buster back.

I've mostly ever known Buster by his short features in the late 1910s and early 1920s as well as his great feature length movies throughout the 20s but little did I know of his 1930s short comedies for Educational Pictures, the first one of them being The Gold Ghost.

It's a rather simple story of a man who just wanted to prove himself worthy to this world and to the girl that he liked, and he ends up in the ghost town in Nevada and decides to take over as its sheriff. The narrative is rushed and doesn't get much time for development of the character - instead it utilizes as many gags as it can, and it gives plenty thanks to the setting.

Buster is a master when it comes to slapstick and physical comedy and he does the job pretty well in this short, earning more than a chuckle not once. Sadly he loses it by the end of it and when there comes the time for a final brawl it feels awkward and not very well choreographed. Add here bad sound editing and dialogue delivery - people seem to be talking from the far end of the room when they are right in front of us on the screen and most of the times their lips move but the sound is inaudible - and you'll get a fine 20 minute comedy flick that could have easily been one of Buster's best if it was silent and was made in the year 1920. But as of 1934 it is just ok.

Keaton's first screen work after his career collapsed at MGM due to drunkenness, the breakup of his marriage and frustration is a pleasant little piece. True, it lacks the absurdity bordering on surrealism of his great silent shorts, but it does have Keaton at work in a sound film doing what he had always thought was his best mode of operation: interpolating his silent stuntwork in a long sequence in which the only 'ghosts' appear: a dance hall girl and some ghostly bandits, whom he kills -- although they may only exist in his imagination. The sequence includes some fine pratfalls. Not a great work by any means, it is certainly worthwhile for anyone who loves Keaton's work, as do I.

Well, maybe Fool's Gold... No it's not "vintage" Keaton, but it's pretty dang good! Educational Pictures gets slammed all the time for being so low-budget, but here is a whole broken-down frontier's town for Buster to play with, complete with ghosts, mobsters, and a dang hell of a lot of extras! It's a quickie-film, as if Buster were trying out sound for the first time to see what he could do, and on a very smallish experimental level I think it works pretty good. Of the entire 16 Educational shorts he made, my vote for best of the bunch is "The Chemist". ("Grand Slam" has been over-rated for years, and doesn't come close, in my opinion.) Buy the set from Kino and check these out for yourself!