tavm This was another early Charlie Chaplin film that he also directed. Since it's for the Mack Sennett Keystone Studio, expect lots of punching, slapping, and throwing of bricks. In Laughing Gas, The Tramp is a dentist's assistant who sometimes acts like he's his boss. One of the ways he takes advantage of that is when he steals kisses from one of the lovely female patients by using one of those tweezers to pull her face toward his. And she seems to like it! That was one of the funniest scenes for me. There's also a funny fight/chase between him and Mack Swain that causes Swain to go guess where! So on that note, Laughing Gas is recommended and is available on a DVD collection called "American Slapstick".

Michael DeZubiria It is no secret that Charlie Chaplin spent most of his first year in film-making churning out simple short comedies for Keystone Studios, in which he spent most of his time either kicking, punching, and throwing bricks at people or planting kisses on uncomfortable women. Laffing Gas is kind of a cross section of Chaplin's first year in film because it has all of those elements, as well as about the same ending as most of the other Keystone films, but it also shows a lot of Chaplin's most brilliant talents, the tricks that he does with his body and his cane and his hat.Also, I am not sure if it was just the copy that I watched, but part of the film plays in regular motion, rather than the slightly fast motion of most of the other short films, so you can see pretty clearly what it actually looked like when they were filming the fight scenes. Early in the film, Charlie walks into the dentist's office where he works and immediately has a fistfight with another guy, the receptionist, I guess, in the office. And this guy is tiny, by the way .Chaplin was a little guy himself, but this other guy makes Chaplin look like a giant. Anyway, they have a fight scene that is in normal speed, so it almost looks like slow-motion.The film is also one of the more violent of the Keystone films; at one point a guy gets hit in the face with a brick and then seems to spit out some teeth, soon landing himself in the dentist's office and being worked on by Charlie, who threw the brick in the first place, with a pair of what looks like bolt-cutters. There is a brief use of laughing gas in the film, but most of it is another ten minute slapstick fight scene interspersed with some genuinely brilliant moments.Also note that one scene in the film is filmed on the sidewalk in front of a place called the Sunset Pharmacy, which I imagine was a real place somewhere on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles. If anyone knows anything about that, please let me know!

wmorrow59 Viewers accustomed to the Charlie Chaplin of City Lights and Modern Times may be startled to see just how rowdy his early Keystone comedies could get. In some cases these movies amount to little more than 10 or so minutes of wild slapstick, and when the prints are in poor condition even rudimentary plot-lines become incoherent. A few of the Keystones display a degree of finesse and are well worth watching (I'd put The New Janitor and The Masquerader on the short list of Charlie's most enjoyable early films), while others are of interest only to Chaplin buffs determined to see all his work, even the scrappy and unpleasant stuff—which brings us to Laughing Gas. Charlie plays a dentist's assistant in this one, more of an office helper than an actual dentist, though he takes an active role in anesthetizing patients. This short presents Charlie at his most violent: hurling bricks, kicking butts, and fighting with practically everybody, especially Mack Swain. I enjoy good slapstick, but I found this short exasperating to watch. Admittedly, the print I saw was in bad shape and thus difficult to follow, especially towards the end, but I suspect that even if a pristine camera negative of Laughing Gas turned up in a vault somewhere it wouldn't make much difference, quality-wise. For audiences of 1914 it was an exciting novelty to see the knockabout action of vaudeville and burlesque transferred to the new medium, but nowadays it's difficult to find genuine humor in something like this, for me anyway.Chaplin was still in his apprenticeship at this point and had only recently started directing his films. He obviously didn't care whether viewers liked his screen character or not, but just wanted to keep the tempo fast and frantic. (Or was he trying to please his boss, Mack Sennett?) It's clear that the action in this film, like most of the Keystones, was loosely improvised from scene to scene, without any larger sense of purpose. On that level, buffs may be interested to compare this early, "unedited" Chaplin with the later perfectionist who demanded multiple takes. Typical gag: Charlie, pretending to be the dentist while his boss is away, flirts with a pretty young patient, then takes a pair of pincers, pinches her nose, and yanks her face over for a kiss. Okay, it's a little on the rough side but a decent gag. But overkill sets in rapidly as Charlie repeats the business three or four more times to diminishing returns. (Maybe it got a big laugh on the set?) Early on, however, there's a nicely performed bit of physical comedy: Charlie follows his employer's wife up some stairs, stumbles, attempts to steady himself by grabbing her, and yanks her dress off. It's startling and cleanly performed without looking over-rehearsed, and is perhaps the funniest bit in the film. Otherwise, it's non-stop fighting. Silent comedy fans with a special interest in Chaplin's work will want to see Laughing Gas, but there's no strong reason to seek it out otherwise unless you crave slapstick in its most chaotic form.Incidentally, the actress playing the dentist's wife (i.e. the one who loses her dress) is Alice Howell, who went on to star in a series of her own. Stan Laurel later cited her as one of the finest comediennes of the silent screen. I haven't seen enough of her films to form an opinion myself, but the nice contribution she makes to Laughing Gas whets my appetite to see more of her work.

MartinHafer I've seen quite a few Chaplin shorts from early in his career and I've noticed that his early stuff (done for Keystone Studios) is pretty dreadful stuff. Unlike his wonderful full-length films from the 20s and 30s, the films from 1914-1915 are incredibly poorly made--having no script but only vague instructions from the director. In most cases, the films had almost no plot and degenerated to people punching and kicking each other.This short is quite a bit better than the norm. While at times the plot degenerates to a lot of punching and kicking for absolutely no reason at all, the film also has a few decent laughs as Charlie pretends to be a dentist. Nothing outstandingly funny, but compared to the generally boring stuff he did for the studio, it's a big improvement.