Format: Internet video on laptop.
If you want to talk about silent movies, I’m much more likely to want to talk about comedies than any other genre. The reason for this is simple: a lot of silent comedies still work in the sense that they are still funny. That’s simply not the case for a lot of other silent genres. The dramas are more melodrama than drama, for instance. But a guy falling on his hinder is still just as funny when it’s soundless as when we hear the thump. When it comes to that, Keaton was among the best of them. I’ve seen enough Keaton to know he’s my favorite of the silent comedians, but until recently, I hadn’t seen The Haunted House.
Truthfully, while this is classified as both a comedy and a horror movie, it’s really just a comedy. In fact, nothing in the remotest way resembling horror appears for at least the first half of the running time. Essentially, Keaton is a bank teller who, through a series of misadventures involving a pot of glue, ends up looking like he tried to rob the bank. In fact, it was the bank manager who planned the heist, and then planned to hole up in an abandoned house rigged to appear haunted.
