BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

MissSimonetta The Electric House (1922) is often not considered one of Buster Keaton's better short format efforts, and the most you'll ever hear about it is how he broke his ankle during shooting. It's a shame, because I think there's a lot more to it. We may not see much in the way of Buster's physicality and grace, but we do get to see his imagination at play with the multiple contraption his character concocts for the wealthy man who hires him to modernize his mansion.The escalator stairs, dining room train set, and book shelf of doom are all charming, and its fun to see Buster's creative methods go so fabulously wrong. I'm sure you could write a paper on potential social commentary on man's over-reliance on technology, but even without all that, this is great fun and worth more praise than it receives.

calvinnme Graduation day at P.U. finds Buster Keaton's character graduating with a degree in botany. He is seated next to a girl graduating with a degree in cosmetology and a man with a degree in electrical engineering. The dean (Big Joe Roberts) asks for someone to take on the job of wiring his house for electricity while he is away on vacation. Just prior to this the diplomas get scrambled and Keaton winds up with the engineering one. Thus, the job winds up going to him. The dean drives away from his home with Keaton sitting at the curb diligently reading "Electricity Made Easy". When the dean returns Keaton has wired the house in only a way that Buster could devise making heavy use of automated trains - Keaton's favorite prop. The plot is complicated when the guy with the actual engineering degree shows up at the dean's house in search of revenge.Buster always said that if he hadn't been a comedian he would have liked to have been an engineer, and shorts like this one show he had a real talent for both. Highly recommended.

ccthemovieman-1 It's funny; the other day I watched Buster Keaton's "College," which starts off with a high school graduation. My next Keaton movie, this one, begins with a college ceremony. Yes, once again, the graduates look more like their fathers than 22- year-old people.The degrees get mixed up somehow and the Dean thinks Buster has graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree and hires him to wire his house while he and the family go on vacation. Buster knows nothing about that sort of thing but reads a quick how-to-do-it book. The next thing we know, we see the house with all the gadgets.This was pretty amazing stuff. I didn't think they even had the technology in the early '20s to do this sort of thing. Shows you what I know. Anyway, we see all kinds of James Bond-type tricks from swimming pools that drain and refill within seconds to mechanical billiard tables to train tracks feeding the family. There too many of these crazy things (a bathroom on tracks going right to the bed was one of my favorites!) to list them all.Suffice to say they are fun to watch. Unfortunately, the real engineer gets wind of what happened, sneaks into the house and sabotages the gadgets while the family is showing them off to guests. Unfortunately (again), justice is not served in this film....or is it? There's a strange ending to this film, too, and makes me wonder if Buster wasn't a bit suicidal. I guess not, since he lived a fairly long time.There is no real plot in here; just gags....which is fine for a short film, except I found this was so fast-paced in the first half that by the 15-minute mark it seemed almost too long, if that's possible. It seemed like a long 22 minutes.

Snow Leopard A lot of Keaton's comedies feature a scene or two filled with creative and wacky gadgets that make you laugh and make you marvel at his inventiveness, all at the same time. This short comedy is entirely devoted to this kind of eccentric gadgetry, and while that means there isn't much of a plot, it's fun to watch. There's a subtle, funny mix-up at the beginning that results in Buster being entrusted with filling up a man's house with whatever electronic devices he can think of, and he really goes to it. "The Electric House" is a funny place to visit.