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The Cook and Other Treasures

The Cook and Other Treasures

List Price: $24.99
Your Price: $22.49
Product Info Reviews

Features:
  • Black & White


Description:

A long-lost two-reel comedy starring and directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and costarring Buster Keaton, The Cook (1918) has been reclaimed from nitrate materials found in Norway and Denmark in 1998-99. A few seconds' worth of footage remains lost, but the minor burps in continuity can't dim the two comic geniuses' balletic precision and freewheeling inventiveness. Keaton, new to the flickers, is more devil-may-care than in his own films, but the careening dynamism perfected in two decades of vaudeville knockabout is fully in play. Arbuckle's trademark fat is 95 percent muscle, and his no-sweat juggling rivals W.C. Fields'--though the image viewers will carry to their graves is his kitchen-pan jeu d'esprit as Cleopatra, clutching a link-sausage asp to "her" bosom. All this--plus a ladder-climbing dog named Luke!--makes for a comedic tour de force. Milestone has filled out the package with another Arbuckle rediscovery, A Reckless Romeo (1917), and Harold Lloyd's characteristically zippy Number Please! (1920)--all three shot on glorious amusement-pier locations. --Richard T. Jameson
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