The Goat (1921)

This is a middle-of-the-pack Buster Keaton short for me, in no small part because he had so many stellar ones.  Although it possesses some really inventive bits and wonderfully funny moments, the cohesiveness is a bit thin and meandering.

A down-on-his-luck Buster (I wonder how many of his shorts start with that description?) is really in for it when a bad case of wrong-place-wrong-time ends up putting his face on someone else’s wanted poster.  All of the sudden, he’s believed to be notorious murderer Dead Shot Dan, with a $5000 price on his head.  We’ve got bread line misunderstandings, creative cop evasion, tricky train maneuvers, a pretty girl with a little dog, and top-notch elevator gags.

Like The High Sign, the throughline of this short doesn’t quite feel organic.  Instead of the gags building and coming effortlessly to a head, it’s a bit willy-nilly.  Very funny – don’t get me wrong – but it feels more like 20 minutes of terrific gags than a well-crafted comedic short.  For instance, it stands to reason that Buster’s life on the lam begins when he’s mistaken for a murderer, but by that point, he already has several cops chasing him for completely unrelated reasons.  It just feels a little haphazard.

But while it’s not put together as carefully, it is packed with excellent humor.  In some ways, this seems to have been Buster’s warm-up to Cops, because he pulls off some fantastic moments in the chase scenes.  The shot of him being dragged away by a moving car is an iconic one, and I love when he springs onto the spare tire of another departing car, only to realize it’s not actually attached.  To facilitate his escape, he also employs a horse-and-cart, a train, and a delivery truck.

The comedic climax comes once Buster’s made it into the crosshairs of the police chief, played by frequent costar Big Joe Roberts.  I previously highlighted the scene in which Buster vaults over Big Joe and through a high window, but the real crowning achievement is the chase that follows.  While Buster (and Fatty Arbuckle) played with elevators in The Bell Boy, Buster’s work with the elevator here is just scrumptious.  I love the sheer number of different ways he concocts to evade Big Joe using both the elevator and the stairs, and the finale elevator gag is a hoot.

The girl this time around is supplied by Virginia Fox, another regular in Buster’s work.  She doesn’t have a whole lot to do here; her most memorable scene, wherein a passerby gets spectacularly tangled in her dog’s leash, doesn’t have much to do with her.  However, there’s just something that tickles me about the fact that Buster is mistakenly wanted for murder and he still takes the time to put the moves on a pretty girl.  That Buster, folks – I tell ya.

By the way, I’ve seen this short a number of times, and I’m still not sure what the title refers to.  Scapegoat maybe, since Buster is being blamed for someone else’s crimes?  Search me.

Warnings

Slapstick violence, including plenty of tricky moves against officers of the law (Buster’s lucky he was a white guy, or this short would’ve been a lot shorter.)