Movie buffs have had reason to rejoice over the past year or so, as there have been many more great old movies and TV shows of every thinkable genre showing up on DVD than we had any right to expect.
Including quite a few that have never before been on home video.
One of the most unusual of these has to be "Industrial Strength Keaton" (Mackinac, 1921-65, not rated, b/w and color, $24.95, two discs). As in Buster Keaton, of course.
It's a double-disc set with a rather narrow target audience. Which, naturally, includes me.
Packaged in a unique and amusing red box, designed to resemble (I'm guessing not by accident) a box of Tide detergent, there's a yellow sunburst in the upper left-hand corner that shouts, "Now with More Deadpan!" and in the center is a stern, older-looking Keaton, surrounded by bubbles.
"Industrial Strength" indeed. Obsessive Keaton fan that I am, how could I not buy it?
I just happened to stumble across this DVD set recently at a retail store, and I confess to feeling as if I had found something rare during an archaeological dig.
It's a no-frills affair. There is no narration, there are no introductions (although there are several informative audio commentaries); it's basically just one piece of material after another.
But there is an informative 20-page booklet inside the box that lists all the films on each disc, followed by essays that put them into historical context.
Most of the material here is comprised of short films and even shorter skits and commercials.
The odd man out would seem to be "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath," a Keaton sound feature, and far from his best (though it has its moments).
It's in the public domain on a number of video labels, but here it has an audio commentary and is immediately followed by a mini-documentary about "Parlor" being shot at Keaton's massive Italian Villa in Los Angeles. This lends the film new significance and makes it well worth another look. (By the way, "Parlor" also has a Mormon joke ... about polygamy, naturally.)
The first disc begins with a 1921 silent Keaton short, "The Playhouse." This is followed by "Character Studies," which does not have Keaton, but it does have an impersonation of Keaton by Carter De Haven, who also does impressions of other silent stars, such as Fatty Arbuckle, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, etc.
Then, after "Parlor" and its featurette, comes "Seeing Stars" (1922), a promo film that shows Keaton with Charlie Chaplin — 30 years before their first onscreen pairing in Chaplin's "Limelight."
There are also a couple of newsreels, and the 1935 British feature-length (55 minutes) film "An Old Spanish Custom" finishes up the first disc. The latter is really terrible (making "Parlor" look much better), though true Keaton buffs will want to watch it anyway.
What I found most interesting, however, was on the second disc.
First, the "Can of Molasses Sketch" in the 1917 Fatty Arbuckle short "The Butcher Boy." A very young Keaton and Arbuckle get a great deal of mileage out of a can of molasses in a variety store, with Arbuckle as the store clerk and Keaton as a hapless customer.
And then, up comes the same skit performed three more times by an aging but no less agile Keaton.
These versions are kinescopes of performances in front of live-TV audiences. The first is with Ed Wynn from a 1949 episode of Wynn's show, the second is from "You Asked For it" (1957), and the third is with Billy Gilbert from "The Ken Murray Show" (1952).
Classic pantomime performances, each with subtle differences.
Then comes a clip from "The Martha Raye Show" (1956), with Keaton, and Raye dressed as Chaplin, re-creating the "Limelight" skit.
After another live bit, with Keaton and his wife Eleanor doing a vaudeville bit on the "Circus Time" (1956) variety show, Keaton is shown in a bevy of television commercials and industrial films from the '50s and '60s.
What's remarkable about all of this is to see how funny and witty — and still as deadpan as ever — Keaton was in his later years.
This is classic stuff, the kind of material that was played on vaudeville and burlesque stages in the 19-teens and '20s.
It's history. It's classic comedy.
But best of all it's Buster Keaton.
Which means, it's still funny.
E-mail: hicks@desnews.com