A Lover's Lost Control (1915)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Gussle (Syd Chaplin) takes the wife (Phyllis Allen) he hates to a department store where she shops while he causes a riot while trying to hit up on a pretty young woman there. Leave it to Keystone to come up with such a wild brand of comedy and everything the company is known for is on full display here. It's funny watching a film like this because it's clear in Keystone's world that nothing needs to make sense as long as someone is either falling over or getting punched in the nose. It's true Mack Sennett thought that as long as everything was fast enough and wild enough that no one would stop and ask questions. That might have been true but at 22-minutes this film has enough flat moments where you can stop and thinking about how nothing here makes any sense. This is far from a good movie but I think Chaplin makes it worth viewing because of how strange this little character of his is. You can see elements of his brother's Little Tramp but Gussle probably would have been better as a stalker. He at least gives us some funny scene including a physical one early on where he's sitting on a stool in between an annoying woman and his wife. This annoying woman gets some of the biggest jokes after Gussle puts a tail on her. A LOVER'S LOST CONTROL ends with about a ten-minute fight sequence that drags on in spots but it's the perfect example of Keystone.
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Gussle (Syd Chaplin) takes the wife (Phyllis Allen) he hates to a department store where she shops while he causes a riot while trying to hit up on a pretty young woman there. Leave it to Keystone to come up with such a wild brand of comedy and everything the company is known for is on full display here. It's funny watching a film like this because it's clear in Keystone's world that nothing needs to make sense as long as someone is either falling over or getting punched in the nose. It's true Mack Sennett thought that as long as everything was fast enough and wild enough that no one would stop and ask questions. That might have been true but at 22-minutes this film has enough flat moments where you can stop and thinking about how nothing here makes any sense. This is far from a good movie but I think Chaplin makes it worth viewing because of how strange this little character of his is. You can see elements of his brother's Little Tramp but Gussle probably would have been better as a stalker. He at least gives us some funny scene including a physical one early on where he's sitting on a stool in between an annoying woman and his wife. This annoying woman gets some of the biggest jokes after Gussle puts a tail on her. A LOVER'S LOST CONTROL ends with about a ten-minute fight sequence that drags on in spots but it's the perfect example of Keystone.