"The Gold Ghost" isn't the best of Keaton's sound-era shorts (that would be "Grand Slam Opera") but it's well above average for this grim period in his career.
Buster and a motley group of people end up out West in an old mining town. The gold mine has long since been tapped out, and the town is deserted ... a "ghost town" in the figurative sense, but also a ghost town literally when Buster has a brief encounter with the ghost of a saloon-girl. (This movie really has nothing to do with spooks.)
Buster appoints himself sheriff, but then he has to deal with a crook on the lam, played by Warren Hymer. Hymer is one of my favourite supporting actors. He had an extremely narrow range -- he nearly always played dim-witted crooks -- but he never failed to give a funny performance, and he's quite good in this film.
Watch out in "The Gold Ghost" for an actor named Joe Young, who looks and sounds exactly like ROBERT Young (of "Father Knows Best") hiding behind a moustache. Film historian David Shipman has written that this actor *is* Robert Young, using an alias. That's not true: the actor Joe Young in this film is Robert Young's lookalike brother, a movie-star wanna-be who had to grow a moustache in order to look different from his brother and have any sort of acting career at all. I'll give "The Gold Ghost" 7 out of 10 ... and two of those points are for Warren Hymer's deft performance.
Buster and a motley group of people end up out West in an old mining town. The gold mine has long since been tapped out, and the town is deserted ... a "ghost town" in the figurative sense, but also a ghost town literally when Buster has a brief encounter with the ghost of a saloon-girl. (This movie really has nothing to do with spooks.)
Buster appoints himself sheriff, but then he has to deal with a crook on the lam, played by Warren Hymer. Hymer is one of my favourite supporting actors. He had an extremely narrow range -- he nearly always played dim-witted crooks -- but he never failed to give a funny performance, and he's quite good in this film.
Watch out in "The Gold Ghost" for an actor named Joe Young, who looks and sounds exactly like ROBERT Young (of "Father Knows Best") hiding behind a moustache. Film historian David Shipman has written that this actor *is* Robert Young, using an alias. That's not true: the actor Joe Young in this film is Robert Young's lookalike brother, a movie-star wanna-be who had to grow a moustache in order to look different from his brother and have any sort of acting career at all. I'll give "The Gold Ghost" 7 out of 10 ... and two of those points are for Warren Hymer's deft performance.