Top Five Gags: The Goat

May 15^th, 1921 – the day The Goat was released. While a little aimless, with the bare semblance of a plot not really kicking in until the second half, this is still a fun short. It includes some of Buster Keaton’s classic cop gags, right up there with Neighbors and Cops. Here are my favorite gags in the short (spoilers.)

 

The Traffic Cop

An easy gag, but always a classic. Buster has already gotten on the wrong side of a couple officers of the law, and he uses the old “hide behind the traffic cop” trick to try and evade them, mimicking the cop’s gestures and turns exactly to stay hidden. It only works for so long, but it was nice while it lasted!

 

Making a Fast Getaway

Iconic. Buster first ducks beneath a parked car in another attempt to hide from the cops that are after him. But when the car starts to pull forward, revealing him, what does an enterprising little fellow do? Why, he grabs a hold of the spare tire and catches a lift, letting the car drag him out of reach of the cops as it drives away!

 

The Moving Van

I do love me some clever Buster. Still running from the cops, Buster runs into the back of a parked moving van. As the cops follow after him, he climbs through the cab window, fastens it shut, and then hightails it over the top of the van to seal up the back, locking the police inside. The van drives off, but naturally, it comes to a stop a few minutes later right in front of Buster, with the cops tumbling out at his feet.

 

Man O’War

Oh man, this is a fabulous sight gag. Now in another town and on the run from a different cop (the police chief, no less!), Buster uses another timeless evasion method, posing as if he’s part of a statue. Unfortunately for him, the “Man O’War” horse he’s climbed onto isn’t a finished statue – it’s just the clay model, and the horse soon begins to sag under his weight. With the horse’s clay legs slowly buckling beneath it, the jig is up!

 

Elevator Chase

What a great climactic sequence. The police chief pursues Buster all through the apartment in a terrific series of escalating stair and elevator gags. We’ve got Buster accidentally stepping into the phone booth instead but pretending it’s an elevator anyway, shimmying down the shaft when the elevator is above him, and luring the police chief into the open shaft, only to have the chief picked up by the rising elevator a moment later. The pièce de résistance hinges on the gag that Buster can control the elevator by moving the arrow on the floor indicator. With the police chief riding the elevator down to him, Buster hammers a nail into the indicator just above the second floor. With the nail blocking the arrow, the elevator can’t get all the way down and the chief is stuck between floors. This whole sequence is packed with circular gags, mechanical gags, and, of course, police chases. In other words, Buster doing what he does best!

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.)