Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Go West

(1925)

Some of Buster Keaton’s most memorable craziness involved large numbers of something chasing him. In Cops it was, as you might have guessed, the entire police force of a large city. In Seven Chances it was a thousand fat ladies in bridal gowns, hoping to marry him. In this one it’s a thousand cattle. They’re not really chasing him, they’re following him from the railroad station to the stockyards, and they cause a lot of mayhem as they are herded down the streets of Los Angeles. This part is funny, but the build-up to it is slow and not as funny as I’m used to in a Keaton movie.