Summary
Piping Hot is a chaotic, two-act descent into the surrealist logic of early silent slapstick, beginning with a drunken game of William Tell that spirals into a somnambulistic tightrope walk. Al Alt stars as a man whose inebriation grants him a terrifying sort of grace, allowing him to traverse high-wire urban landscapes and descend from buildings on industrial safes without a scratch. The narrative takes a sharp pivot in its second half, trading the dreamlike rooftop escapades for the domestic carnage of a plumbing disaster. As Al and his companion attempt to fix a leak in a high-society home, they find themselves at odds with a bathing resident who demands the water stay on, leading to a hydraulic catastrophe that literally washes the neighborhood into the street. It is a film of two halves: one a bizarre exploration of drunken equilibrium, the other a masterclass in the 'destructive professional' trope that would later define the genre.
Synopsis
After an all night session with the bottle, Al plays William Tell with his fat buddy and awakens him by shooting an apple off his head. Then, being in a trance, he walks a wire rope to a building across the way. His buddy dashes out and meets an undertaker on the way. The two climb up the building which is on the opposite side of the street and behold Al seemingly step off. They are horror-struck until they peer over and see him safely riding on a safe which is being lowered. Then, they see him step out of a barber-shop and walk down the street, shaving himself. He gets on a truck, switches to another, and finally winds up the day in a bed that covers the show space of a furniture store. The next day he drives up with his buddy, in their limousine, to repair the plumbing of a large house. They break a pipe and when they start to turn off the water, a bathing woman demands that they keep it running. Other efforts on their part cause increased destruction until a number of the residents enter in anger, after having been, washed into the street, and kick them out.
