Buster Keaton On Blu-ray: GO WEST/BATTLING BUTLER Review

This week's look at Buster Keaton on Blu-ray will focus on Kino's recent double feature of the Great Stoneface's two films leading up to his landmark The General. First up is 1925's Go West, a rather lackluster outing by Keaton standards, but still a solid comedy, followed by a significantly better outing, his 1926 boxing film, Battling Butler. The two of these films are both very entertaining, but when looking at them in terms of the oeuvre from which they emerge, they are minor works.  Kino's double feature of Go West and Battling Butler also feature the least impressive of their restorations I've seen yet, apart from Three Ages. While the films themselves are not my favorite Keatons, Kino makes up some of the difference with some stellar bonus material that makes them well worth checking out.

GO WEST (1925): In this hilarious classic Buster Keaton plays a hapless young man (aptly named ''Friendless'') who idealistically hops a freight train westward to meet his destiny, first in a teeming metropolis (where he is roundly trampled by rush-hour foot traffic) then into the ranchlands of Arizona. In the side-splitting course of his attempts at bronco-busting, cattle wrangling, and even dairy farming, Friendless finds himself enamored with Brown Eyes, a particularly affectionate bovine beauty from whose hoof he removed a painful pebble.

Go West is the least of these two films, mostly because the film seems to be more a collection of gags than a proper cohesive narrative. There is some loose plot about Friendless (Keaton) not being able to fit in as a ranch hand, but mostly he just falls down and is followed by a cow.  There are a number of really good sight gags, but the film is also unfortunately held back by a large amount of stock footage that very obviously doesn't match the on set footage, and therefore removes some of the immediacy of the danger involved.

If there was anything that both Keaton and Chaplin were good at, it was weaving solid and empathetic characters into these comedies, but Go West is more about pratfalls than plot.  There are a few very clever gags, including a couple of "bull's eye view" camera shots in which the camera chases Keaton down, but as far as the rest of the film goes, it's a bit of a slog. All of the major characterization is finished in the first 15 minutes, and the rest just relies on gags to move the story forward.  Even at a brisk sixty-eight minutes, Go West seems a bit long.

BATTLING BUTLER (1926): Keaton stars as Alfred Butler, a fragile young man whose father sends him into the country where he hopes masculinity will blossom. Ironically, he is there mistaken for ''Battling'' Butler, a renowned prizefighter of fiery temperament. To impress a young lady (Sally O'Neil), Alfred carries on the ruse by engaging in a laughingly inept training regimen, but his harmless charade is soon complicated by the untimely arrival of the true contender (Francis McDonald). When the long-awaited opportunity to prove himself a man finally comes, it is before the gloved fists of the boxer, who initiates a locker-room brawl. There, in a sequence of agonizing tension and delightful surprises, Battling Butler reaches its unforgettable climax.

The far more impressive of the two films is Battling Butler, wherein Keaton again finds his groove and creates an empathetic character and a solid love story with plenty of chills and spills along the way. Keaton plays millionaire sissy-boy Alfred Butler, who goes on a hunting trip with his manservant, Martin, and falls in love with a mountain girl on the trip. The girl loves him back, but her he-man father and brother want nothing to do with the wimpy Alfred. Through a miracle of chance, Martin finds that there is a prizefighter named Alfred "Battling" Butler and convinces the girl's family that his liege is no weakling, but instead an up-and-coming boxer!  This can only end one way.

In addition to a clever and charming love story between Keaton and the girl, Battling Butler is filled with clever sight gags and physical comedy of the sort we love from Keaton. Eventually, as these things are wont to do, things go wrong and Alfred is forced into fighting after the real Battling Butler becomes convinced that the wimp has been hitting on his wife.  This leads to a very cleverly choreographed boxing match in a training room in which love conquers all, which I don't think is much of a spoiler.

Battling Butler is one of the great early sports films.  While there isn't a whole lot of actual boxing on screen, the film certainly takes it's subject seriously, even when someone is falling down. There is quite a leap forward in terms of ambition from this film to The General, but it is nice to see that Keaton didn't need huge complex sets and stunts to make a film work.

The Disc:

As I mentioned above, Go West and Battling Butler are the least impressive of the restorations from Kino I've seen.  The bump in resolution and clarity to Blu-ray is evident, but there is significant print damage spread throughout both features.  After a few minutes it is relatively simple to look past the damage and enjoy the film, but the damage is there and well worth noting.  The audio tracks aren't as evenly matched.  Both films get LPCM tracks, but they music itself is of vastly different quality.  Go West gets a synth track that doesn't do the film justice at all, whereas Robert Israel's score for Battling Butler far more successfully recreates the organ styled score of the silent era.  As far as sound quality goes, they are about equal, but the actual score of Battling Butler is much better.

There are several very interesting extras on this double feature, but none quite as interesting as the 60 minute audio recording of Keaton pitching a TV show. This recording gives a very vivid picture of Keaton thought process and why his films were so successful when he was in control.  There is genuine care in making the stories work, rather than simply stringing gags together. Keaton was one of the most successful comedians in the move from shorts to feature length films for this very reason. It is a fascinating listen.

Also included among the extras are some very cool and some sort of mediocre features.  The most fun of the remaining features is the 12 minute short version of Go West played entirely by a cast of monkeys in costume. Why don't they do that stuff anymore? Another interesting tidbit is the included excerpt of a proposed remake of Battling Butler penned by Keaton to be set in Mexico. The included script pages recreate a dinner sequence almost action for action, but it is cool to see, nonetheless. There is also a set of photographs from the stage show of Battling Butler, along with production photos from Keaton's film.

I tend to look at this set as Battling Butler with Go West among the extras.  Neither film reaches the heights of Sherlock, Jr., The General, or Steamboat Bill, Jr., but they are solid diversions.  Hell, any Keaton is good Keaton in my book, and this brings us a couple of steps closer to completing the collection of Keaton on Blu-ray. 

Don't forget to check back next week when we'll have an overview of the Buster Keaton Shorts Collection 1920-1923.