Half-hour movies of Chaplin causing havoc a hundred years ago. Guess I’d assumed they’d be better with more planned-out gags, like my favorite Keaton shorts, since Chaplin had creative control at Mutual. Fun stuff though, and the HD restorations look great.

The Floorwalker (1916)

Charlie wanders into an awful department store, with abusive employees, a thieving manager and shoplifting customers. He swaps place with lookalike Lloyd Bacon (later director of Footlight Parade and 42nd Street), and fights both manager Eric Campbell and a confounding escalator.

The Fireman (1916)

Charlie is a very bad fireman who should not rightly be in the business of saving lives. Chief Campbell is supposedly corrupt, letting Bacon’s house burn down for insurance money in exchange for Campbell getting to wed Bacon’s daughter Edna Purviance. But there are two fires and Edna is caught in one of them and I lose track of what happens but Charlie scales the building, saves Edna and they run off.

The Vagabond (1916)

Good one – Charlie (more Tramp-like than in the previous two) plays violin for spare change, gets chased out of a bar and comes across a gypsy camp where poor Edna is being cruelly mistreated, so he rescues her with speed and violence. But the plot goes on – Charlie helps her clean up and she’s discovered by painter Lloyd Bacon, whose portrait of her wins a prize, attracting the attention of Edna’s real mom, who races to rescue her presumably-kidnapped daughter. Charlie refuses payment for his part in all this, is left sad and alone as usual.

A. Vanneman:

For the first time he “saves” someone, Edna, kidnapped by Gypsies as a child and kept as a virtual slave ever since. In real life Chaplin wanted to save his mother Hannah Chaplin, first from poverty and then from madness, which he was never able to do.

One A.M. (1916)

Wrote this up back in the public-domain DVD days.

The Count (1916)

Chaplin and Campbell are tailors who crash Miss Moneybags’ society costume party hoping to hook up with a rich countess, or at least get some free booze. It doesn’t go well. By the end there’s cake and punch bowls flying into faces, flip kicks and ass beatings (also an unaccountable scene about stinky cheese). Charlie gets the hell out of there, running for his life.

The Pawnshop (1916)

Pretty bad, mostly padding with fight scenes and ladder gags. Chaplin and John Rand work for pawnshop owner Henry Bergman (later Chaplin’s assistant director). He knocks around with Purviance, destroys stuff, threatens the customers and incidentally foils a robbery.

Behind The Screen (1916)

Charlie works for Campbell in movie sets construction. There’s some business with a lever-operated trap door, striking workers and Edna pretending to be a boy to find work, then this all devolves into a pie fight. Ends with Campbell being blown to bits! Poor Eric didn’t have a mustache to twirl in this one, though all the other actors with big fake beards couldn’t stop playing with them.

The Rink (1916)

From working at a restaurant to roller skating and back again (Charlie was both a skater and waiter in Modern Times as well). There’s an attempt to add extra plot and characters (Eric Campbell and his wife are both cheaters) but mostly it’s Charlie hurting people and causing gleeful chaos.

Easy Street (1917)

Elevated by the local mission (actually by missionary Edna), Charlie decides to get his life together and become a cop. He’s assigned to the worst street in town, run by ultraviolent wife-beater Eric Campbell. Charlie defeats Campbell (twice), an angry mob and a needle junkie. Some good moves in this one.

The Cure (1917)

Back to the rich drunk character from One A.M. (“Alcoholic Gentleman” in the credits). This time, Rich Drunk heads for a spa, with hot springs (which he pollutes with booze), a frightening masseur and a confounding revolving door. Eric Campbell is a short-tempered lout with a bad foot (“Gentleman With Gout”).

The Immigrant (1917)

Seen this before. Charlie and Edna immigrate to the U.S., he helps her out a few times, they somehow get jobs and evade Eric Campbell as a sadistic waiter, then Charlie marries Edna by force.

I’ve noticed Albert Austin before (a cook in The Rink), especially liked his reactions here:

Used this same shot last time, but it’s a favorite:

The Adventurer (1917)

Watched before. Charlie is an escaped convict evading police across a beach and mountain, then an endless succession of watery rescues featuring Edna, her mother and her loser fiancee Campbell, and finally Charlie and Campbell have an ass-kicking contest at a society party.