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His Ex Marks the Spot (1940) - Buster Keaton

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Offline Paul Pain

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The Damfino's notes are suspended whilst they redo their website.  They have deleted all Buster reviews and are slowly rewriting them from scratch.

HIS EX MARKS THE SPOT is a disaster.  They did it to Shemp Howard, and they first did it to Buster.  Yes, we are talking about the classic Columbia Shorts Department domestic situation comedy!  Out of all Buster short films reviewed to date, this one is, without question, in my mind, the worst.

I can't say anything good for this one.  This short start to finish is intolerable.  Dorothy Appleby and Buster give it their all.  However, Elsie Ames, whom we have to tolerate to the end, and Matt McHugh are just horrible and annoying.  Elsie Ames was only good for silent films because her voice is so damned annoying.  As in nails on a chalkboard.  i can't stand her voice with every ounce of my being.  I forgave Matt McHugh in PARDON MY CLUTCH just because the short was otherwise awesome.  This short has no other redeeming qualities except Buster and Dorothy.

The plot sucks.  The camera angles suck.  The verbal gags suck.  The situations suck.  The supposed-to-be-funny-ex and her supposed-to-be-funny-boyfriend suck.  The director sucks.   The writing sucks.  In short, it sucks.

This is the first, and only, Buster work to merit, from the great Paul Pain, the heartthrob of millions, the great banishment.

This short can... 

BURN IN HELLTM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2/10 [poke] [poke]
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Offline Umbrella Sam

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HIS EX MARKS THE SPOT is an example of the type of comedy that I absolutely hate: the kind of comedy where the main character’s misery comes from some type of relation that is forced to stay with him or her for a really dumb reason. Keaton had done this type of comedy previously as MY WIFE’S RELATIONS, and when he did it then, he was able to produce a barely passable effort. The problem is that this is Keaton at Columbia, and here he ends up producing the exact kind of effort I’d expect from any average comedian.

The problem with these kinds of comedies is that the relatives are often so annoying that you end up feeling too bad for the main comedian and the main comedian’s misery, which is supposed to be the main source of comedy, is not funny as a result. Now, don’t get me wrong; as much as I usually hate these kinds of comedies, there is a way to make it work. In order for it to work, the relative has to have a lot of charm that makes what he or she does funny, even if in real life, the person would be a pain in the neck. At the top of my head, there are two comedians I can think of who could play this kind of role and make it work: Charley Chase and Shemp Howard. Unfortunately, neither of them are playing this role; instead, it’s filled by Elsie Ames as Keaton’s ex-wife and Matt McHugh as her boyfriend.

Ames is pretty annoying in this, though it is definitely McHugh that really drags this short down, with his obnoxious laughter constantly coming up and just adding insult to injury and even the fight that Keaton ends up winning is not enough to make up for his irritating presence.

The gags themselves aren’t really all that interesting either. The bit with the trunks would be alright if it weren’t for McHugh’s laughter. Otherwise, the rest of it is just standard Columbia gags, like the ironing board that closes up or the family throwing food at each other, but weakened due to the presence of the annoying characters. Even the ending fight is obnoxious, even though Keaton and Appleby end up winning. Everything else is just so mean-spirited and intolerable that the payoff just feels way too delayed.

This is definitely down there with FREE AND EASY in my eyes. The two things that make me barely prefer it are that it’s much shorter and I liked the brief bit with the “Don’t you dare!” message.

3 out of 10
“I’ll take a milkshake...with sour milk!” -Shemp (Punchy Cowpunchers, 1950)

My blog: https://talk-about-cinema.blogspot.com


Offline Big Chief Apumtagribonitz

The slapstick and stunts are well done by all concerned,  but yes, the sit-com aspect is bad from the writing ( my ex can come and live with us? )  onward.  I continue to be impressed with Dorothy Appleby in this series, she not only pitches in with gusto on the rough stuff but she and Buster work well together, at times seeming like an actual ( if dysfunctional ) married couple.  And in this dysfunctional unit, Buster, being an idiot, is at fault.  This is, as someone said, the Columbia Way, but Dorothy remains human in these idiotic circumstances.
     Having now seen, in the last couple of years, the Columbia solos by  Shemp, El Brendel, Buster, DeRita, Andy Clyde, a couple by Charley Chase, and for some reason remembering  even the Glove Slingers,  I take this as rock-solid proof that the Stooges were at this point Columbia's cream of the crop, and that this was known at the time. Their shorts were generally made with more care (including, specifically, better and more imaginative writing at least until, say, 1949 ) and the Stooges themselves were, in 1940, in a great groove and the funniest guys on the lot.
     I'm sure I mentioned, many moons ago and somewhere on this site that I am old enough to remember the earliest  ( say, '59 ) smash that the Curly stooges made on TV.  I have read that the original release of ( I believe  ) 90 was so successful that they released all the other Curlys and Shemps, which were also very successful. Well, as I remember it, in Boston, anyway, where I lived as a kid, they also released all these solo Shemps and Busters and Langdons and Glove Slingers, etc.  That's where I saw all these, maybe in '60 or '61.  My point being that these other guys' films didn't stay on TV  for very long, the Stooges smothered them, even though they were not in competition, they were all on the same channel.  Buster and them just faded away.  I am sure that the Stooges had a lot more product than the other guys, so the others would have started rerunning a lot earlier,  but what the hell, we watched the Stooges in reruns for ten or twelve years.  So, here's acknowledgement of the historic achievements of Keaton, Langdon and Chase, but, from the filmed evidence at Columbia circa 1940, the Stooges were kicking everybody's ass.  Now here I am watching these same Columbias sixty years later, and coming to the same conclusion: for whatever reasons you yourself or I myself would care to invent, the Stooges, in 1940, are just funnier.
     Oh, yes, and BTW,  I remember to this day that The Glove Slinger series was utterly wretched.  They were not comedies: the plot ( and there was only one ) concerned two tween boys arguing about something stupid like splitting a bag of candy evenly, and some adult lummox who ran a gym or was involved in boxing somehow, telling them that the only way to settle this is to "put on the gloves".  The finale was always a pee-wee boxing match.  The adult lummox under any normal circumstances should have been arrested.  I don't remember Shemp's role in these - I may have seen these even before I saw Shemp as a stooge.  I'm doing the best I can, it was 58 years ago, and I was too young to be taking notes.


Offline Big Chief Apumtagribonitz

And incidentally, Andy Clyde generates zero, truly zero laughs at all.  Given his character, his might have been a series for rural audiences, maybe ( remember though, Stix Nix Hix Pix ), but it's amazing how few jokes and schtick are there.  I mean really nothing.  It would be difficult to add a laugh track even in desperation to these since there really are no jokes.  Andy was still performing on TV on Lassie twenty years later when I was a kid,  and I was amazed to see him, and remembering him from the few Columbias that I'd seen in the Great Columbia Dump of 1960, I gave him a try.  Even at age seven,   I wasn't terribly amused.  As I remember, his bit was registering agitation at other people.  I've tried watching one or two of the Columbias, but have always given up.  Consarn it, dagnabbit,  yeah yeah, bye.


Offline Paul Pain

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My pasting of this short is now finished.

And incidentally, Andy Clyde generates zero, truly zero laughs at all.  Given his character, his might have been a series for rural audiences, maybe ( remember though, Stix Nix Hix Pix ), but it's amazing how few jokes and schtick are there.  I mean really nothing.  It would be difficult to add a laugh track even in desperation to these since there really are no jokes.  Andy was still performing on TV on Lassie twenty years later when I was a kid,  and I was amazed to see him, and remembering him from the few Columbias that I'd seen in the Great Columbia Dump of 1960, I gave him a try.  Even at age seven,   I wasn't terribly amused.  As I remember, his bit was registering agitation at other people.  I've tried watching one or two of the Columbias, but have always given up.  Consarn it, dagnabbit,  yeah yeah, bye.

I hope you join me then when I review the Andy Clyde shorts that have Shemp in them, should they still be online then.
#1 fire kibitzer


Offline metaldams

This will be a response to Big Chief stating The Three Stooges kicked everyone's ass in 1940.  The answer is they kicked everyone's ass at Columbia.  AT COLUMBIA being the key words.  Keaton, Langdon and to a lesser extent, Chase, were forced to be molded in the Columbia style that wasn't always a natural fit for them.  These men had established characters way before Columbia and worked at this point in their career strictly for a paycheck.  The Columbia style was knockabout comedy with cheap laughs, and The Three Stooges made the cheap laugh an art form.  A simple door slammed on the head or a needle on the ass gets a great Stooge reaction.  Keaton's too subtle and witty a comedian for that humor and with Langdon, his humor is based on slow, almost non existent reactions, not Curly Howard type barks.  The majority, if not all the films, are written in the same style at Columbia, so it seems that the Columbia style is more important than the character itself.  Fortunately for The Three Stooges, their characters fit the Columbia style perfectly.

As for this week's short, a fascinating film even though it doesn't work.  Keaton doing his darndest to be Keaton, but the world around him is not his comic world.  Mashed potatoes in the face, women fighting, a very loud and obnoxious rival, and plenty of door knock and needle on the ass gags I'd much rather see Curly be the recipient of.  Buster is being thrown into another world, but to his credit - the iron board on the wall gag we've all seen a zillion times, though sped up, is really Buster taking the fall.  Buster in these Columbia shorts appear with varied results, and unfortunately, this is not one of the better ones.
- Doug Sarnecky


Offline metaldams

Example of a Columbia gag, given to just about anyone, which works best for a Stooge - Elsie Ames, looking at a floppy piece of asparagus, cross eyed, saying in a wooden fashion, "Oh, mercenary, eh?"  Curly Howard would have breathed life into that bit.
- Doug Sarnecky


Offline Big Chief Apumtagribonitz

This post is utterly worthless except to announce that as of this post I now have 800 posts !  Yay, me !  Perhaps a cocktail...


Offline Paul Pain

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This will be a response to Big Chief stating The Three Stooges kicked everyone's ass in 1940.  The answer is they kicked everyone's ass at Columbia.  AT COLUMBIA being the key words.  Keaton, Langdon and to a lesser extent, Chase, were forced to be molded in the Columbia style that wasn't always a natural fit for them.  These men had established characters way before Columbia and worked at this point in their career strictly for a paycheck.  The Columbia style was knockabout comedy with cheap laughs, and The Three Stooges made the cheap laugh an art form.  A simple door slammed on the head or a needle on the ass gets a great Stooge reaction.  Keaton's too subtle and witty a comedian for that humor and with Langdon, his humor is based on slow, almost non existent reactions, not Curly Howard type barks.  The majority, if not all the films, are written in the same style at Columbia, so it seems that the Columbia style is more important than the character itself.  Fortunately for The Three Stooges, their characters fit the Columbia style perfectly.

As for this week's short, a fascinating film even though it doesn't work.  Keaton doing his darndest to be Keaton, but the world around him is not his comic world.  Mashed potatoes in the face, women fighting, a very loud and obnoxious rival, and plenty of door knock and needle on the ass gags I'd much rather see Curly be the recipient of.  Buster is being thrown into another world, but to his credit - the iron board on the wall gag we've all seen a zillion times, though sped up, is really Buster taking the fall.  Buster in these Columbia shorts appear with varied results, and unfortunately, this is not one of the better ones.

This sounds much like what I said in one of my previous short reviews and what Umbrella Sam said about this one.  There are those that have their strong opinions of Jules White, and, while he was great for the Three Stooges, those claims are founded.  He really was useless beyond coordinating senseless violence, and the only reason any Columbia comedians were funny with such things was because they already had experience with it.  Watch any Columbia team: Schilling and Lane, Vernon and Quillan, etc... they all have a lineup of shorts that consist of Jules White's favorite things: domestic situations, senseless violence, and reproductions of Stooge shorts. Laurel and Hardy could make a door slamming on the head funny.  That's not Buster.
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Offline Umbrella Sam

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I think it’s also important to note that this is the first of the Keaton Columbia shorts to not be co-written by Clyde Bruckman. While Bruckman had his problems, I think it’s interesting that the short that’s the most unlike Keaton’s silent work so far was the first one written by someone who did not work with Keaton in the silent era.
“I’ll take a milkshake...with sour milk!” -Shemp (Punchy Cowpunchers, 1950)

My blog: https://talk-about-cinema.blogspot.com


Offline metaldams

I think it’s also important to note that this is the first of the Keaton Columbia shorts to not be co-written by Clyde Bruckman. While Bruckman had his problems, I think it’s interesting that the short that’s the most unlike Keaton’s silent work so far was the first one written by someone who did not work with Keaton in the silent era.

You know, I never looked into the whole lack of Bruckman thing, but that's a great point you made, Sam.
- Doug Sarnecky


Offline Dr. Mabuse

Along with "The Spook Speaks," the worst of Keaton's Columbia two-reelers. Buster simply doesn't belong there.

2/10


Offline Kopfy2013

Pretty darn boring ... Elsie Ames does some great pratfalls ... Appleby has alot of screen time but the comedy does not work ... found myself being anxious .. watching this you really appreciate the 3 Stooges ...

3 out of 10


Offline metaldams

watching this you really appreciate the 3 Stooges ...


I like Columbia Keaton, but it’s not Three Stooges level and more importantly, it’s not Keaton at his best.  Check out silent Keaton shorts like THE GOAT, NEIGHBORS, ONE WEEK, COPS, etc. on YouTube before fully judging Keaton, they’re much better.
- Doug Sarnecky