Buster Keaton Short Films Collection 1917-1923 Blu Ray

[Richard M Roberts]

Got a look at this set tonight, ehhhh, typical Lobster Film production, speeds not as slow as usual, but still slow, unfunny translations of foreign intertitles into English.

However, one major bit of sloppiness that I haven't noticed anyone else point out, the re-did opening titles from several of the First National released shorts, THE PLAY-HOUSE, THE PALEFACE, COPS, THE ELECTRIC HOUSE, THE FROZEN NORTH, DAYDREAMS, THE BALLOONATIC and THE LOVE NEST, all show Metro Pictures as the distributing company.

This is especially odd and sloppy, as there are surviving prints of both THE PLAY-HOUSE and COPS with original First National opening titles, the print of COPS is even rather common. It's obvious that they just took a title card from one of the Metro released shorts and computerized the title of each First National short they were recreating a title for. Why couldn't they have taken the original title card they have for THE BOAT and used that?

C'mon Messr's Bromberg and Shepard, as long as you've been messin' with these films, you should at least know who originally distributed what.


RICHARD M ROBERTS