Shot in the Excitement

This early Keystone, about the rivalry between two goonish suitors over goonish Alice Howell, starts out with with the suitors attacking each other with spiders and quickly escalates with attacks by rocks, water and soon, a Civil War cannon. It shows no subtlety in its humor ... all it lacks is a mushroom cloud at the end.

There is quite a lot of comedy talent on display, including Charley Chase, the forgotten -- and very funny -- Alice Howell, Chester Conklin and, to round out the pack, Al St. John. It won't make any fans, but if you enjoy the early Keystones or want to see these players in their earlier, rawer phases, it will be worth your time.

Shot in the Excitement (1914)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Partially entertaining film from Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios has a woman (Alice Howell) being kissed by a suitor (Al St. John) while another suitor (Rube Miller) shows up and of course gets jealous. Pretty soon the two men are throwing all sorts of objects at one another when shortly others start to join. SHOT IN THE EXCITEMENT is pretty much what you'd expect from a Sennett produced movie as there's all sorts of violence and it ends with a big chase. I think many people will probably watch this and find it to be rather childish but I thought this was part of the charm. The first half of the movie pretty much just shows the two guys getting mad at each other and throwing bricks and other objects at each other. Showing it's age, the woman is actually the one who takes the majority of the abuse as she has a rock banged over her head and she even gets punched in the face. Can you imagine this happening in a film today? I found most of this to be funny but I think the film runs out of gas towards the end when it turns into a chase picture. I will say that the effect used to show the cannon ball flying after the people was actually pretty impressive for the day.

Eccentric rube characters appear in this diverting number. The humor is all of the slapstick sort, varied by amusing tricks and antics. The photography is good and the close especially amusing for this type of film. - The Moving Picture World, October 31, 1914

Al St. John and Rube Miller are out to woo the same lady. Al gets there first and seems to be getting the upper hand, so Rube tries playing a trick on them. However, this quickly escalates to insane slapstick violence--and in spite of being rather low-brow, I did find myself laughing. However, this did not escalate like Laurel & Hardy's "Big Business"--the violence went on hold. Later, however, it gets really crazy, when Rube gets a cannon and begins lobbing cannonballs! The police try to intervene but mostly it consists of folks running about screaming and hitting each other.

In so many ways, this is a wonderful example of slapstick--good slapstick. They didn't just kick each other but the violence escalated and is pretty funny. Very food for 1914.