The Scarecrow (1920)

US 19m, Silent, B&W
Directors: Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton; Cast: Buster Keaton, Sybil Seely, Joe Keaton, Joe Roberts

The Scarecrow is one of Buster’s best shorts. It contains a trick house full of mechanical gadgets that would make Pee Wee Herman envious, and a marvellously choreographed and very funny dinner scene which looks to have inspired Charlie Chaplin’s eating machine in Modern Times (1936). The Scarecrow also contains a Fatty Arbuckle look-alike, complete with an acrobatic dog which chases Buster for most of the second half of the film. Joined by his father Joe, Buster is at his acrobatic best in this very funny and fast paced production (Klaus Ming February 2012).