Author Archive: Retro

With the collection agency after his furniture, Errol’s solution is to disguise himself as a bearded crystal gazer.

Pop’s noisy mechanical clock is driving Edgar crazy.

Only the second reel of this 1918 Jester comedy is known to survive. The first half, in which it is established that Marcel Perez (known as “Twede-Dan” here as opposed to his other numerous screen aliases,including “Tweedie, Tweedledum”, “Bungles”, “Robinet” and, I suspect, Julia Swayne Gordon) is a private eye who has decided that Nilda Baracchi is a German spy. He follows her hither and yon and the gags are mostly about his ability to disguise himself as a railroad porter, an armchair or a pile of discarded newspapers at a moment’s notice.

Not wishing to see their nephew marry a hotel manucurist, Leon and his wife decide to stop the wedding plans. At the hotel, Leon mistakes Maizie (Dorothy Granger), the gold-digging girl friend of the house detective (Tom Kennedy), for his nephew’s intended. He invites her up to his room and promises her a trip to Havana if she will jilt the nephew. Enter Maizie’s boy friend, followed by Leon’s wife, both of whom are sure Leon is up to hanky-panky and Leon, as usual, is up to…and in it.

Edgar decides the 4th of July fireworks celebration in town is too much for his nerves, and he and his wife Sally and her brother will take a nice drive out into the countryside and have a nice, peaceful picnic. His first mistake is inviting the sons of his neighbor to go with them, and his second is picking an Army artillery firing range as the location of the picnic.

Tweedledum is a farm hand that wants to elope with the farmer’s daughter, but the family is violently against it, and chase him off. So he gets revenge on them by pranks like throwing bricks at them from the roof, setting fire to the mother sleeping on the porch. He and his love eventually escape by using a an old iron bath tub as a boat.

Marcel Perez here appearing in the United States under the name of “Tweedy” tries to pick up Dorothy Earle. She has him arrested, but once in the police station, she changes her mind.

Musty wakes with a toothache and goes to a painless dentist who offers to pull it out without charge. That’s when the sadism starts as we descend into a George Melies world where Musty is almost drowned, beaten and then roasted for the rest of the movie.