Cast: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton, Erwin Connelly, Ward Crane
Running Time: 44 mins.
Vault: FEATURES

Buster Keaton's masterpiece is a delightfully surreal fantasy of a film projectionist and amateur detective who climbs into his movie screen. Like Daffy Duck in the famous cartoon "Duck Amuck," Buster is at the mercy of sudden scene changes, sent from desert to snowstorm to lake in simple cuts while he remains helplessly fixed onscreen. (Even more astounding is that he accomplished this engineering marvel with nothing more than surveyor's tools and an exacting eye.) Settling into his dream role as a master detective and society bon vivant Sherlock Jr., he chases the dastardly villains in a world as wild and unpredictable as the French serial "Les Vampires": bombs are hidden in billiard balls and Keaton leaps through the torso of a peddler woman and into nothingness! No other silent film turns logic on its head with such grace and comic hilarity.