I'm not surprised it failed to restore Charley Chase to stardom. He starts out as dapper as ever, the image he revived with a guest appearance in Sons of the Desert, but doubts over his impending marriage cause him to take refuge in a travelling circus. He's a good deal less at ease as a trainee clown, and keeps giving the audience abashed glances that are contradicted by his painted grin. On the night he turns every act into a mass of pratfalls, but although he's finally chased away by the maddened ringmaster, the show is a roaring success. In an epilogue the circus returns to town and Charley takes his wife and children to see it. The ringmaster recognises him, and the last shot has Charley fleeing for the horizon, pursued by the deranged ringmaster and the rest of the performers, animals as well.
I wouldn't class the film as screwball. Smilemime was wrong again. On the other hand, Gimme Da Brain is certainly the most violent Stooges film I've seen, and the finale in which the trio juggle with the monster's brain and shy it at one another until Colin Clive as Frankenstein takes it like a pie in the face is hardly likely to have pleased the British censor. Hart's film with James Finlayson and Oliver Hardy, The Course-We-Can Brothers, seems innocuous enough until I nod off halfway through. I regain consciousness at the start of the credits of You're Darn Tuten, in which Laurel and Hardy play Egyptologists. Hart is credited with the intertitles, and surely it's my inability to stay awake that robs them of sense. I pinch my thigh hard so as to concentrate on Crazy Capaldi, the director's first fulllength film.
This is certainly the original uncensored version, before it was cut for a reissue. The grinning gangster's murders are played as black comedy, but I find it hard to enjoy on that level, though Guillermo audibly does. He's especially amused by the protracted dance performed by the silhouette of a machine-gun victim as the wall on which it's cast fills with holes. Capaldi's death in the electric chair is also mimed at length by a jittery shadow, and the projectionist thinks this hilarious too. I'm relieved the experience is over, but I'm still scribbling notes about it when yet another film begins. It's Ticklin' Feather, Orville Hart's unreleased swan song.
It opens with the Cherokee protagonist riding a donkey into the Western town of Bedlam. Once he's past the brawls and gunplay that fill the main street, he finds he has to lodge in the stable with the animal. He meets every situation with a grin that looks both resigned and secretive. Do I dream that he says 'Me meek. Inherit earth'? I waken to see him overcoming gunmen by chortling as he walks up to them and disarming them with the feather he wears in his headband. Perhaps the film was shelved because it was too silly to release, but I wonder how any filmmaker could have been irrational enough to think it would help his career. 'Me bring you peace,' the hero says, unless that's only in my sleep. When I next look he's the sheriff, but that's not the end. The film loses its grip on my attention, and I dream it has turned into a hardcore orgy, until I see that the woman grinning with orgasmic pleasure as she's mounted by a man while she manipulates two others is up there on the screen.
The air feels insubstantially but relentlessly invaded by the rhythm of the action. It's the throbbing of the generator, but I could imagine that the sensation is emerging from the image. I don't need to watch Willie's films, even if this one may be a homage to something older; did she choose the performers for their dated appearance? The only film I want to see now is Tubby Tells the Truth.
As I leave the auditorium Guillermo takes his time about withdrawing his hand from inside his baggy trousers. I pretend not to notice as I turn to the shelves, only to falter. The gap left by the film that's running is halfway along the lowest shelf of Orville Hart's work. I'm dizzy again by the time I succeed in reading the label on the reel. The title is She Screws to Conquer, in outdated type on yellowing paper. It's an Orville Hart film.
It's clear from the titles that all of his films on the bottom shelf belong to the same genre. I doubt they deserve more than a mention in my book. I can see nothing to distinguish She Screws to Conquer from the mass of hardcore films, except perhaps for the participants' grins, which look close to fixed. I'm overdue for a break. I open the door and emerge into the desert, and almost fall back into the shed.
The sun is above the house. It's brighter than white – so fierce that the sky is seared colourless. I squeeze my eyes shut and clap a hand over them, and hear a door open ahead of me. 'Finished at last?' Willie says.
I slit my eyes at her bleached image in the kitchen doorway. Today's shorts are even terser, and otherwise she's wearing just a singlet. 'Unless you've got Tubby Tells the Truth,' I say.
'I was thinking, but I'm sure I don't.' She blinks at the amplified groans in the shed. 'Is that me?'
'You,' I say without much sense.
'Not in the movie. I stay out of sight. Is it one of mine?'
'No, it's one of your grandfather's. I take it that's how he ended his career.'
'Those were his last movies, yes. Don't you think they're worth watching?'
I shut the door behind me to protect the films from the heat. Though the door muffles the girl's voice, I have the idea that the air is still vibrating around me, so imperceptibly that I can't be sure. As I make for the house the glare of the sun feels like a spotlight in an interrogation room. 'I think I've seen enough,' I say. 'Maybe I'm not qualified to judge.'
Willie looks more unimpressed than I find appropriate. 'How about you?' I ask as I sidle past her. 'Were you influenced by them?'
'By the way he moves the camera, sure, and the editing. And I try to bring in humour like he did.'
I'm abashed to have observed none of this. Before I can ask her to be more specific she says 'Need a drink?'
'I could certainly see off a coffee.'
She fills a large mug from a percolator and hands it to me, followed by a jug of cream from the refrigerator. 'So was it worth coming so far?'
I'm distracted by the cartoon frieze of fellatio and cunnilingus that encircles the mug. Until I regain control of my thoughts her question seems as uninterpretable as the intertitles in her grandfather's silent films. 'I'm sure it was,' I tell her.
'You don't take notes.'
'I do,' I say and lurch to my feet. 'I've left them.'
'It's okay, he's bringing them.' She opens the door to the heat and the projectionist, who has loaded the tray with my plate and plastic bottle and the clipboard. 'Gracias, Guillermo.'
'Yes, thank you,' I say before discovering that he has spilled drips, presumably from the bottle, on my notes. Scattered words are swollen and distorted, but at least they're comprehensible. I blot them with a blank page while he converses with Willie in Spanish. As he plods giggling out of the room she sits opposite me. 'Gee, you're some messy writer,' she says. 'Can I see what you wrote?'