A Merry Mix-Up

The stooges are government agent entrusted with protecting professor Sneed, who has invented a super rocket fuel. Larry is mistaken for the professor by foreign agents who kidnap the trio and take them to the country of Anemia where they are ordered to produce the rocket fuel or be executed. The boys come up with a concoction they try to pass of as the real stuff, but are exposed when the real professor and his daughter are also kidnapped. The stooges help them escape, using their secret formula to fuel a jeep.

A pair of young ladies cause trouble at the cinema with their lavish hats.

A blind man begging for change tries to outsmart a cop.

Cops chase a pair of burglars on the rooftops of the city.

An illusionist makes a woman disappear in thin air.

Some men get into hijinks at a sidewalk cafe.

Gentlemen get into a misunderstanding over absinthe.

A machine churns out sausages on one side and spits out hats on the other.

George Mélies made a version of this a few years later, often titled Une Indigestion, but Guy-Blaché’s earlier film Chirurgie Fin de Siecle (1900) is more widely available. And it’s not one to watch the night before an operation. In this clinic, a sign pleads “On est prie de ne pas crier/Please do not cry”, and the doctors set about the patient with saws, cheerily hacking off limbs, and then slopping them into a bucket, all the while arguing ferociously with each other. They then reattach arms and legs from a bucket of “exchange pieces” (using glue) before re-animating their victim, I mean patient, with bellows. (from http://silentlondon.co.uk/2015/01/23/10-disgusting-moments-in-silent-cinema/)

A fighting couple gets interrupted by the landlady.

A woman shows off her trained dogs.