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"The Mishaps of Musty Suffer" (1916-17) will be released on DVD exclusively on Amazon on April 22, 2014 ($19.95). Curated by Steve Massa and Ben Model. Produced for video and scored by Ben Model. Films preserved by the Library of Congress; new digital HD transfers by the LoC National Audio Visual Conservation Center Film Laboratory. DVD companionn guide written by Steve Massa will be published on same date, sold separately ($5.95). From Undercrank Productions. www.mustysuffer.com.

The Mishaps of Musty Suffer is a cartoony and surreal silent comedy film series produced in 1916 and 1917. Wildly popular during its release it has been oddly overlooked and neglected ever since. Chronicling the misadventures of put-upon tramp Musty Suffer, who lives a slapstick version of the Story of Job in which he bears the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the series was an American descendant of the zany and anarchic early European comedies of Pathé and Gaumont. Its star is the equally forgotten Harry Watson, Jr., a very popular stage clown and who had graduated from vaudeville and Ringling Brothers' Circus to become a headliner of the early Ziegfeld Follies, where he rubbed elbows with legends like Fanny Brice, Bert Williams and Leon Errol.

Rediscover these inventive films and enjoy the antics of Musty Suffer, with an ensemble of zanies, as he tries his hand at a variety of jobs, gets subjected to medical treatments, and even marries a lemon from the garden of love. This DVD contains 8 of the funniest of the 30 Musty Suffer films that were made, newly transferred in HD from master materials preserved by the Library of Congress, with new musical scores by Ben Model.

The DVD was curated by Steve Massa and Ben Model, and was produced for video by Ben Model/Undercrank Productions. The project was funded by a Kickstarter campaign of 126 backers.


THE FILMS on the DVD:

GOING UP (1916) - 12 mins - itinerant tramp stumbles upon old pal Dippy Mary, who allows him to spend the night at the home she is caring for, but a beer bath and a serenade by a German band make for a difficult night.

THE LIGHTNING BELLHOP (1916) - 13 mins - Musty gets a job in a hotel where his duties as bellhop include being the elevator's counterweight and the hotel's maintenance man.

JUST IMAGINATION (1916) - 14 mins - when the Fairy Tramp appears before Musty, he wishes for a job, but is instead treated to a series of mental experiments in one of the most surreal films in the series.

BLOW YOUR HORN (1916) - 12 mins - this "whirl" finds Musty working as a bike messenger in the wilds of either the Bronx or Fort Lee, where he delivers building supplies and lingerie items. In the final third of the film Watson recreates a routine with two mannequins that was original a circus "walkabout" gag.

WHILE YOU WAIT (1916) - 14 mins - still looking for work, Musty tries an employment office and winds up with three different jobs…all at the same time for the same employer.

LOCAL SHOWERS (1916) - 12 mins - Musty must brave a dentist's office to have an infected tooth pulled in a bizarre film that anticipates the mania of Bob Clampett's WB cartoons.

OUTS AND INS (1916) - 12 mins - Musty works at a large indoor arcade, the set-piece of which involves his culinary and strangely sadistic work on the kitchen side of an automat.

SPLICED AND ICED (1917) - 12 mins - Musty tries to finally settle down at long last, and prepared to marry the woman of his dreams, but life with wifey and her father turn out to be a nightmare after the wedding.

EXTRAS:

CAPTURING CHICAGO (1916) - 10 mins - producer George Kleine made sure to have newsreel footage taken of Watson/Musty being feted during a motion picture exposition in Chicago in July 1916, and released it as this promo film.

HOLD FAST (excerpt) (1916) - 6 mins - the second half of this Musty "whirl" is basically a reenactment of Bickel & Watson's famous boxing routine from the Follies. (Look for ensemble player Snitz Edwards in the background!)

IMAGE GALLERY - rare photos, stills, and clippings of Harry Watson, Jr. and the rest of the cast.

Thoroughly enjoyed seeing Blow Your Horn at Cinefest, what a surreal, screwy delight! Can't wait to have my DVD machine play Musty for me.

What are the chances of working out a side deal through PayPal? The shipping rates Amazon.com charges to ship to Canada are ridiculous. Let us know, either way.

I need to look at the details re selling through Amazon.ca which would involve me shipping them product for order fulfillment and take a hit on royalties from Amazon fees et al.

Ben

I was all set to order the Monty Banks feature at its discount price of $15.95. But when the exchange rate and shipping charges to Canada were factored in, it added up to over $25. So I figured I would wait for Musty to be released and then order both films at the same time to reduce some of the shipping fees.

As Stephen says, it's a killer for Canadians. Any effort to alleviate the costs for us will be greatly appreciated.

Jim

I'm working on it and am starting to gather info on doing business with amazon.ca. About to play 8 shows April 2-6 so may not get to more of this till next week...

Thanks for the reminder, eh?

Ben

BenModel wrote:I'm working on it and am starting to gather info on doing business with amazon.ca. About to play 8 shows April 2-6 so may not get to more of this till next week...

Thanks for the reminder, eh?

Ben

If you can pull it off, we'll make you an honourary hoser and treat you to a Timmy's. Maybe even a rrrrrrroll-up the rim Timmy's.

Jim,eh.

The other option is selling it through Amazon.ca's Amazon Marketplace. You wouldn't have to ship anything directly to Amazon, only directly to the customers. You might have to jack the item price up by a couple of dollars to cover your shipping cost (the customer is charged a nominal $3.49 for shipping but I'm guessing the actual cost would be more), but I'd much rather get it through USPS than some overpriced courier service, which is how Amazon.com now ships to the great white north, eh?

It seems a trifle bizarre to me for Ben and Bruce to do this lovely thing and people to hold him responsible for the vagaries of the Canadian Amazon. Is there a Nitraevillain up in Canuckistan who's willing to act as a central distributor? Presumably it would work out to a smaller amount per disk for an order of 10.

Bob

Amazon Marketplace is not an option for me. I do not have the time to be the person doing order fulfillment, especially if it means filling out customs forms for every order and waiting in line at the post office.

Selling on Amazon.ca is the best option, and what I've now figured out is that I just need to get the duplication done in Canada, and thence to Amazon. I'm already on it. Give me a few weeks...April is a busy performing month for me plus I'm releasing Musty Suffer and doing press/promo for it.

This is actually an interesting challenge...

Thanks.

Ben

BenModel wrote:This is actually an interesting challenge...

And we are forever in your debt for looking into it! Many thanks again, Ben.

But I was truly happy to get Accidentally Preserved from your own fine self at Cinefest, it always feels great when you can just give money directly to the publisher/artist!

Never heard of this series. Any chance of there being a similar collection of Lonesome Luke films?

TheyHadFaces wrote:Never heard of this series. Any chance of there being a similar collection of Lonesome Luke films?

The Musty Suffer films are drastically different... in every sense of the word.

I remember seeing one back in the 1970s, either on TV or as part of some college anthology of comedy, and it seemed to be a bizarre modern parody of what a bizarre silent film comic character would be like. The picture quality on the one I saw (can't remember the title) was so sharp and clear that I thought it must have been made within the past few years as a sendup and couldn't have been an actual original silent era film, much less from the 1910s. in the decades since that time, I've found out otherwise. I've seen only a few others, but they're all on the surreal side. Some are quite funny, others fitfully funny, and others make you wonder what they could have been thinking.

It's great that there's now a collection of some of the best from this series now available for everyone to discover this long-forgotten character of American comedy!

TheyHadFaces wrote:Never heard of this series. Any chance of there being a similar collection of Lonesome Luke films?

Have you seen Tex Avery's Dumb-Hounded, the first Droopy cartoon? That sequence in which the wolf has a plastic surgeon work on him with a had-drill and a file rasp might have been lifted from Musty Suffer. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll seek therapy.

Bob

I understand that some of the Musty shorts were shown when PBS ran the BBC series "Flickers" as filler to round out the hour of TV. Of all the things to show…!

I'll leave it to someone else to do a disc of Luke shorts. I have other (and funnier) fish to fry.

Ben

This Musty backer can't wait to get his mitts on that DVD (should be any day now!), as well as what looks to be a very substantial companion booklet; it actually looks more like a book. Incredible cover art too. And the postcard is currently adorning my fridge. Ben and Steve, thank you so much for putting this together!

I received my disc a couple of days ago, and have watched three shorts so far. I'm enjoying the set enormously. Such a bizarre, cartoon-y style, sort of like live-action Fleischer cartoons. And I look forward to reading Steve's booklet, for the background info on this crazy series.

Congratulations and many thanks, Ben and Steve!

Thanks, Charlie! Glad you're enjoying these. Waver, yours should arrive Mon or Tues…

I've just finished looking at the DVD and I enjoyed it greatly. My thanks to everyone involved, from Ben, to Steve Massa to the people who contributed money to getting this one out.

Bob

Here is the first review, with clips.

Last year at Cinecon dealers room the fine folks from Nile Essanay Film Museum had dozens of DVDs for sale including Accidentally Preserved, The Crackerjack and Silent Comedy Mafia collections. Hope they will have these new releases this year.

No arrangements with any dealers for this year thus far.

Ben

Jim Roots wrote:As Stephen says, it's a killer for Canadians. Any effort to alleviate the costs for us will be greatly appreciated.

Jim

So now "54-40 or fight" doesn't look so bad after all ;-} Start taking over government buildings and demand a referendum to become a part of the U.S. to lower shipping charges on "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer." Now there's a campaign every Canadian can get behind! Except maybe the Newfies who voted agin it in 1948 after being "bribed" by Ottowa

Today's Sunday NY Times DVD column from J. Hoberman includes "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer". Click here to read.

Ben

silentfilm wrote:Here is the first review, with clips.

I enjoyed these video clips. I should jump on it now since it's on sale. I missed the sale window on Ben's last project.

Bob Birchard wrote:

Jim Roots wrote:As Stephen says, it's a killer for Canadians. Any effort to alleviate the costs for us will be greatly appreciated.

So now "54-40 or fight" doesn't look so bad after all ;-} Start taking over government buildings and demand a referendum to become a part of the U.S. to lower shipping charges on "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer." Now there's a campaign every Canadian can get behind! Except maybe the Newfies who voted agin it in 1948 after being "bribed" by Ottowa

I suggested we could turn the tide back on the 100th anniversary of the War of 1812, but nobody listened...

Mind you, our current Prime Minister's policies are more like Bush than beaver, so it may happen yet.

Here's the trailer for the DVD!

Bob Birchard wrote:

Jim Roots wrote:As Stephen says, it's a killer for Canadians. Any effort to alleviate the costs for us will be greatly appreciated.

Jim

So now "54-40 or fight" doesn't look so bad after all ;-} Start taking over government buildings and demand a referendum to become a part of the U.S. to lower shipping charges on "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer." Now there's a campaign every Canadian can get behind! Except maybe the Newfies who voted agin it in 1948 after being "bribed" by Ottowa

Uh, Bob, in Canada, we believe the USA won the Oregon dispute. The British negotiators sold us down the river.

It was tit-for-tat over us whipping your ass and burning the White House to the ground in 1812-14.

Now give us back our Stanley Cup and we'll call it quits.

Jim

Today is the official release day for "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer"!

Amazon currently has both the DVD and companion guide booklet at a (slight) discount. Amazon's listing is HERE, and if you scroll down to "Frequently Bought Together" you'll find a button to buy both at the same time for $23.32.

Ben

BenModel wrote:Today is the official release day for "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer"!

Amazon currently has both the DVD and companion guide booklet at a (slight) discount. Amazon's listing is HERE, and if you scroll down to "Frequently Bought Together" you'll find a button to buy both at the same time for $23.32.

Ben

Funny, just a couple of hours before you posted this, I placed my order for Musty, the booklet, and the Monty Banks film, together to reduce Bob Birchard's Royal Postage Screw-the-Canadians charges.

And if y'all be wonderin' ... that order totalled over $68. American bucks, that is. Works out to somewhere around $79 Canadian.

Jim

A few nice write-ups for the DVD have been posted on some classic film blogs:

• - All Fall Down physical comedy blog: "Meet Musty Suffer"
  - Curtains classic film blog: review
  - Psychotronic Paul: "Available For The First Time Since 1917: The Misadventures Of Musty Suffer"
  - Trav S.D.'s Travalanche blog: "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer"
  - plus these ten 5-star reviews on the DVD's Amazon listing