THE GOLD RUSH (1925) *** ½

I’m not the biggest Charlie Chaplin fan in the world (I’m more of an Abbott and Costello man myself) but I thought it was high time for me to check this flick out.  The only other Chaplin film I’ve seen was The Great Dictator and I enjoyed it immensely, so I figured that this one would go down smooth.  While I had a couple of quibbles with the film, overall it was thoroughly entertaining.

The Little Tramp goes out prospecting for gold in the icy Klondike where he meets these two burly looking motherfuckers who let him stay in their shack.  They almost go hungry during the long winter and the Tramp resorts to eating his boot.  When the weather warms up, he heads into town where he meets this dance hall dame and falls head over heels in love with her.  At first, she doesn’t give the Tramp the time of day but she eventually falls in love with him when he becomes a millionaire big shot.

The first act of The Gold Rush features more classic comedy than you can shake a stick at.  There’s a great scene where The Little Tramp tries to leave the shack in a howling windstorm and promptly gets blown out the back door.  Then of course, there’s the immortal scene where he eats his boot for supper.  We also get a funny scene where his roommate gets so hungry that he hallucinates and imagines the Tramp has turned into a giant chicken.

For me, the flick kinda slows down once the Tramp falls in love.  The laughs certainly dry up during this portion of the film, that’s for damn sure; although we do get the immortal “Dinner Roll Dance” scene.  The finale where the Tramp’s shack is dangling on the edge of a cliff almost makes up for the lulls in between the laughs though.

The Gold Rush still has enough yucks for the bucks to place it on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Silent Movies of All Time List at Number 9, right in between The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Maciste in Hell.