Directors: HAROLD LLOYD, FRED NEWMEYER. Screenplay: Sam Taylor, Harold Lloyd. Story: Sam Taylor, Hal Roach. Photography: Walter Lundin. Film editor: T.J. Crizer. Producer: Hal Roach.
Copyright 28 September 1921 by Associated Exhibitors (Hal Roach). U.S. release through Pathé: 22 October 1921. 3 reels. 29 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Three stories, somewhat thinly joined: (1) Young man tries to drum up business for a doctor when his receptionist is in danger of losing her job. (2) Young man tries to commit suicide when he wrongly thinks his sweetheart has jilted him. (3) Young man find himself precariously balanced on a girder at a construction site. NOTES: Third of Lloyd's dizzy height themed movies: The others: Look Out Below (1919), High and Dizzy (1920), Safety Last (1923), Feet First (1930), The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).
COMMENT: Suicide has been used as a laugh-getter in a few film comedies, but generally it doesn't work unless it's clearly established right from the start that the perpetrator is such an inept clown, his efforts will have absolutely no chance of success. Unfortunately, Mr Lloyd does not meet this requirement, so the laughs here are at best rather uneasy. Some of the sequences also run too long. Fortunately, there are plenty of genuine thrills in store in the girder episodes, even though these were later well and truly upstaged in Safety Last and Feet First. And we must commend producer Hal Roach for casting acrobat Mark Jones in a decent part for once. (Heavily disguised, Jones later played the old witch in Grandma's Boy).
Copyright 28 September 1921 by Associated Exhibitors (Hal Roach). U.S. release through Pathé: 22 October 1921. 3 reels. 29 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Three stories, somewhat thinly joined: (1) Young man tries to drum up business for a doctor when his receptionist is in danger of losing her job. (2) Young man tries to commit suicide when he wrongly thinks his sweetheart has jilted him. (3) Young man find himself precariously balanced on a girder at a construction site. NOTES: Third of Lloyd's dizzy height themed movies: The others: Look Out Below (1919), High and Dizzy (1920), Safety Last (1923), Feet First (1930), The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).
COMMENT: Suicide has been used as a laugh-getter in a few film comedies, but generally it doesn't work unless it's clearly established right from the start that the perpetrator is such an inept clown, his efforts will have absolutely no chance of success. Unfortunately, Mr Lloyd does not meet this requirement, so the laughs here are at best rather uneasy. Some of the sequences also run too long. Fortunately, there are plenty of genuine thrills in store in the girder episodes, even though these were later well and truly upstaged in Safety Last and Feet First. And we must commend producer Hal Roach for casting acrobat Mark Jones in a decent part for once. (Heavily disguised, Jones later played the old witch in Grandma's Boy).