Top Five Gags: The Haunted House

February 21, 1921 – the day The Haunted House was released. Probably middle-of-the-pack as far as Buster Keaton independent shorts go, but while it’s a little uneven on the whole, the funny parts are really fantastically funny. Here are my favorite bits from this “spooky” short (spoilers.)

 

Hand in the Glue

By far my favorite part of The Haunted House. This epic gag sequence kicks off when Buster the bank teller accidentally sticks his hand in a pot of glue while handling the money. From there, we’re off to the races as the glue gets all over the bills, the customers, the floor, and most other available surfaces. There are so many great moments from this sequence, but the crowning joke comes when the armed counterfeiters show up just after Buster has gotten his gluey hands stuck inside his pockets. His vehement effort to put his hands up knocks him off his feet, and he rolls around on the floor, bills stuck to his shoes, the seat of his pants, and his jacket. Once he staggeringly rights himself, he finally manages to extract his hands, tearing out his pockets with them.

 

The Getaway

Thanks to a case of mistaken identity, Buster is blamed for the counterfeiting. When the authorities come to arrest him, he’s just uncooperative enough that two of his captors handcuff themselves to each other instead of him, at which point he darts between someone’s legs and then slides out through the teller window. Classic Buster escape!

 

The Collapsing Stairs

This is a great recurring gag that gets a lot of use throughout the short. The counterfeiters have rigged up their hideout like a haunted house to keep people out, and Buster naturally blunders in. There’s a switch on the staircase that causes the steps to fold in on one another, turning it into an instant slide, and it repeatedly gets Buster. My favorite of these bits comes when he tries to just slide down on his bottom instead, only the stairs won’t collapse – not until he gets back up and stomps on them to see how solid they are, that is. Love it!

 

Unknown Assailants

Nice little string of gags here. Buster is beset upon by a number of spooky foes, some intentional (the counterfeiters dressed as ghosts,) others inadvertent (an actor in a devil costume who skipped out on a disastrous performance of Faust.) The timing is excellent, with each figure popping in and out at just the right time to keep Buster frightened and bewildered. I especially love Buster climbing up the banister to escape a ghost, wrestling on the floor with the devil’s cape (until he realizes there’s no one inside it,) and taking a twisting leap to literally play dead when he nearly walks into another ghost. (He flops down and is a corpse – hilarious visual!)

 

Taking Out the Ghost

Simple but hilarious. Having realized that the “ghosts” are really the counterfeiters, Buster stalks one with the aim of smashing a vase over his head. But when Buster can’t find an ideal smashing angle, he instead tosses the vase in the air and then grabs the ghost’s head and positions it to be under the vase when it comes down. Knockout!

The Haunted House (1921)

Objectively, I’d call this a fairly good midrange Buster Keaton short.  Subjectively?  I just love it.  Even while I know the plot has some clunkiness and “being scared of fake ghosts” is a pretty flimsy theme to hang a story on, I have such a good time watching this short.

Buster is a well-meaning but disaster-prone bank teller who finds himself on the wrong side of an accusation of counterfeiting (because of course.)  Unjustly on the lam, he winds up fleeing to the actual counterfeiters’ hideout, which they’ve rigged up to seem like a haunted house – ostensibly, it’s so the police won’t poke around, but it feels like they’ve put way more effort into this than the idea strictly warrants.  Anyway, Buster has his hands full dodging “ghosts,” trying to expose the real crooks, and maybe even saving a pretty girl along the way.

For me, the absolute zenith of this short is the first 6-7 minutes, while Buster is still working at the bank.  It’s true that the connections between this sequence and the haunted house stuff are tenuous at best, but it’s so fantastically funny that I’ll never complain.  I adore Buster accidently getting glue on his hands, which in turn gets on the money, the customers, and basically everything in the nearby vicinity.  It’s such a simple concept and, compared to some of Buster’s other work, a pretty obvious gag, but he does it masterfully.  When I think of The Haunted House, the first thing that pops into my head is invariably Buster trying to “put ‘em up” while his hands are glued to the insides of his pockets.  I die.

Compared to that, the haunted-house portion of the short isn’t as memorable to me.  The fact that Buster is genuinely scared of all these shenanigans is kind of cheesy, and the gags tend more toward the disjointed-running-around variety, not building as organically.  Still, there are some incredibly fun gags to be had.  There’s a set of disappearing stairs that Buster just works comic wonders with – I think he comes up with an entirely new hook every time it’s used.  He has a fabulous method for knocking one of the bad guys out, he plays around with some fun camera trickery, and he fights a fierce battle against a red cape.  And for all that his being scared of the haunted house is silly, his acting scared is wonderful.  Even with the stone face, he does such terrifically funny “frightened” acting.  The ending is just sort of there, but it’s immediately prefaced with a delightfully off-the-wall comedic tangent about Buster’s misadventures in trying to reach the afterlife.

The short also features old Buster favorites Big Joe Roberts as the head counterfeiter (what can I say?  The guy gives good heavy) and Virginia Fox as the girl, charming but pretty underdeveloped.

Warnings

Slapstick violence and a little gunplay.