Summary
Domestic ennui curdles into slapstick anarchy when a door-to-door bibliopole—Jimmie Adams, all elbows and dental enamel—invades the breakfast nook of a marriage already souring under the wife’s lethal cuisine. A poodle fails as palace guard; a bulldog succeeds, hurtling the agent into a pastoral labyrinth of straw stacks where two Keystone-flatfooted patrolmen join the hunt. The first reel is pure kinesthetic frenzy—clouds of chaff, sun-dappled terror, zero punch lines. A narrative ellipsis later we surface at a scout camp whose moral compass is as lost as its neckerchiefs, and the whole ragtag caravan sinks into a swamp that swallows both dignity and plot. Somewhere between the bubbling mud and the mosquito drone, the film forgets to be funny yet keeps sprinting, like a gag reflex with no joke to trigger it.
Synopsis
Interrupting the marital troubles of a man whose wife's cooking was not conducive to longevity, comes Jimmie Adams in the role of a book agent. His call is unwelcome and the housewife first calls the poodle dog, then the bull dog. The latter puts the book agent on the run. Two policemen take up the chase and all scamper through a field where straw is heaped in piles and the pursued endeavors to hide, without much success. There is considerable action without humor in the first reel. The second has something to do with the title, since it takes place in a "scout " camp and ends in a swamp, where there are splashes of action, again without humor.
Director
Cast
