Great obscure movies?

[Cyberman]

Any of Harold Lloyd's movies. Some of my all time favorite comedies are his movies. Most of them are silent but he did a number of talkies. Almost all his stunts he did himself.

He actually climbed this building with his bare hands. No special effects. He didn't even have a safety net or ropes.

Well yes and no. He did climb the building and he didn't use ropes, but the building isn't quite what it seems. In actual fact, it was a piece of Hollywood magic, a huge false setpiece which was built on an already existing skyscraper roof, with careful camera angles to give the illusion of death-defying height. So yes he was as high up as he looks, but there was a comforting rooftop underneath him never more than three stories away, albeit still a nasty drop.

Early Hollywood films are notorious for their total disregard for what we now call Health and Safety practises, but apart from the less-than-acceptable risk to the star's life, there was an eminently practical reason for not doing the stunt for real.

On a Sunday in August of 1919, Harold posed for a photographer. The set-up called for him to light a cigarette with a prop bomb -- the round, black, type you might see in the cartoons. The bomb wasn’t a prop at all; it exploded in his hand. It ripped open the sixteen-foot ceiling and left Harold blind and with most of his right hand missing. Doctors told him he would never see again. His career was over.

But the doctors were wrong. Eventually, his sight did return, the scars healed, and a glove was crafted to hide his handicap from his public. The comedian, known for doing all his own daredevil stunts, felt his audience would be concerned for his safety and not laugh at the movie if they knew about his injury. So he wore the glove in every movie he ever made after the accident.

So even if he'd intended to climb that building for real, only having one complete hand would have ruled it out.

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My contender for the thread would be any of the films of Will Hay, comic actor and amateur astronomer, who specialised in pompous headmaster and similar befuddled authority figure roles. Although any of them would qualify, arguably he hit his stride when he teamed up with Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott, who played a Billy Bunter-type cheeky youngster (Albert) and Clive Dunn-esque old man (Jeremiah Harbottle) respectively. As a matter of fact, the Dad's Army classic trio of Captain Mainwaring, Private Pike and Corporal Jones was inspired by these three characters.

The films of this era typically follow the same basic theme wherein the three thoroughly incompetent characters are faced with having to investigate and sort out some gang of ne'er-do-wells.

I love 'em all but my particular favourites would be, in ascending order:

• the gleefully politically incorrect 'Windbag the Sailor';
  
• the boys as the entire police force for the sleepy village of Turnbotham Round in 'Ask A Policeman' (when they try to arrest someone for speeding, the driver sees Harbottle carrying the 20MPH signpost. "What's that?" "Ah, that's evidence!");
  
• as the similarly-ineffectual fire brigade in 'Where's That Fire?' ("The petrol station next to the Town Hall's on fire!" "Is is a big fire?" "Give it a chance, I've only just lit it!");
  
• and, listed as one of Britain's greatest comedy films time and again, 'Oh, Mr Porter!' ("The next train's gone!")

And the real beauty of all these is they are all in the public domain and thus freely available from the Internet Archive!

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

Any of Harold Lloyd's movies. Some of my all time favorite comedies are his movies. Most of them are silent but he did a number of talkies. Almost all his stunts he did himself.

He actually climbed this building with his bare hands. No special effects. He didn't even have a safety net or ropes.

Well yes and no. He did climb the building and he didn't use ropes, but the building isn't quite what it seems. In actual fact, it was a piece of Hollywood magic, a huge false setpiece which was built on an already existing skyscraper roof, with careful camera angles to give the illusion of death-defying height. So yes he was as high up as he looks, but there was a comforting rooftop underneath him never more than three stories away, albeit still a nasty drop.

Early Hollywood films are notorious for their total disregard for what we now call Health and Safety practises, but apart from the less-than-acceptable risk to the star's life, there was an eminently practical reason for not doing the stunt for real.

On a Sunday in August of 1919, Harold posed for a photographer. The set-up called for him to light a cigarette with a prop bomb -- the round, black, type you might see in the cartoons. The bomb wasn’t a prop at all; it exploded in his hand. It ripped open the sixteen-foot ceiling and left Harold blind and with most of his right hand missing. Doctors told him he would never see again. His career was over.

But the doctors were wrong. Eventually, his sight did return, the scars healed, and a glove was crafted to hide his handicap from his public. The comedian, known for doing all his own daredevil stunts, felt his audience would be concerned for his safety and not laugh at the movie if they knew about his injury. So he wore the glove in every movie he ever made after the accident.

So even if he'd intended to climb that building for real, only having one complete hand would have ruled it out.

---

There were two movies in which Llyod climbed a sky scraper. The second time was a talkie if I remember. Do you know which one it is that you're describing? I know the second later one he did had some some shots that were obviously trick photography but the first one I thought was entirely real. I have almost all of his movies recorded on VHS when TCM devoted a whole month to him in 2003. At the beginning of each movie they had interviews with Llyod's grand daughter and I thought I remember that she said that the building climbing in the first movie was real, even despite the injured hand.

[Cyberman]

I never realised he did two films around skyscraper climbing; I only knew of the (probably more) famous one, which I learn was called "Safety Last!" and came out in 1923. It's a testament to his tenacity and professionalism that he shot that just over four years after the bomb incident, actually.

The climbing itself was done for real, inasmuch as he climbed the front of a building hundreds of stories above ground level. As the above link recounts:

“Safety Last!” was the story of an industrious fellow who climbed a skyscraper to win his girl. It’s the ultimate thrill comedy. Harold performed the hair-raising comedic stunt all by himself with only one complete hand. There were no fake backgrounds or computer graphics back in 1923. Strategic camera angles created the dizzy drops. At no time in filming could Harold have fallen more than three stories, but as Harold liked to remind his critics, “Who wants to fall three stories onto a mattress?”