Directed by: Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle
Starring:
The great Stone Face, Buster Keaton. Photo copyright: Paramount Pictures (1918)
The movie opens with a scene of a drunken Arbuckle trying to light a cigarette in the rain. The scene drags on as a proprietor won't let him stand in his doorway. A woman with an umbrella blows by. A policeman shows up. The scene drags on with Arbuckle trying to make cute expressions, but it just seems like filler.
Arbuckle eventually goes home to his wife drunk, who immediately sends him to a sanitarium to have a surgery that supposedly fixes alcoholics. Keaton makes a great entrance as a blood splattered surgeon carrying a butcher knife. Arbuckle gets chased. He tries to hook up with a girl. He even gets so desperate for a gag that he again goes drag. He seemed to get into women's clothing every other film. Here he dresses like a nurse and he and Keaton flirt with each other in an awkward yet somewhat funny way.
Arbuckle wrote and directed his films but his creativity seemed a bit limited. Unless he could have been able to come up with some new inspiration for his work, his career, based on films like this, seemed destined to dissolve away.
Photos © Copyright Paramount Pictures (1918)