SnoopyStyle Harold Lloyd plays an aimless New York playboy. He's supposed to be studying at the YMCA but instead, he's dancing at the nightclubs. In frustration, his father sends him to his uncle's ranch in the wild, wild west. In the town of Piute Pass, he is taken with a local gal. Her father is being held prisoner by local thug "Tiger Lip" Tompkins. Tompkins owns half the town and leads the Masked Angels.This early Hal Roach short has his best act Lloyd doing his every man. It's not quite a nice innocent guy but he's plenty likeable. The plot is simple. It's a weak easterner trying to make it in the tough old west. There are some simple action stunt sequences. It has good slapstick fun. It is a short which limits any complexity. This is a simple physical comedy.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "An Eastern Westerner" is a 24-minute black-and-white short film from 1920, so it will soon have its 100th anniversary. The names Hal Roach, Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis and Noah Young will tell you immediately that this is a black-and-white silent film if the production year hasn't already. Of course, it is an American movie and except Young (who wasn't much older) all the protagonists I mentioned earlier were still under the age of 30, but very successful already in their respective fields, despite the age. Western films were apparently very popular already at this point (shortly after World War I) and this movie here has several western scenes and components in terms of costumes and sets for example. But the story is not really that good. I do believe that silent film superstar Lloyd had decent comedic talent, but nothing really made a difference in his purely comedic films. He was at his best when he could bring in some emotion and manage to evoke strong feelings of joy or sadness in his audience. This component is missing here entirely I must say. That's why I give it a thumbs down, even if it is among Lloyd's most known short films. Not recommended.

MartinHafer Harold plays a spoiled rich young man who would rather party than act proper. Fed up with his lazy ways, Harold's parents send him west--hoping to make a real man out of him.While this is far from a great short picture, it is a very good one featuring Harold Lloyd. The only short-comings are the slightly slow pace at the beginning--though the film certainly picks up speed towards the end. This is when Harold has a show down with the town bully--as well as his KKK-like gang! All this starts because he meets a woman in distress in the cow town--her father is being held prisoner by this bully until she agrees to marry this jerk. Lloyd, being a silent comedy star, is obligated to help with pretty predictable results. However, the stunt-work is excellent and the pace is fast and furious. Overall, it's a middle of the road Lloyd (and that still makes it excellent) comedy that is sure to please.

wmorrow59 Anyone who wants to know why Harold Lloyd was so popular during the 1920s should take a look at this film: it's one of the most satisfying short comedies he ever made. An Eastern Westerner is consistently clever and amusing, well-paced and packed with gags from the opening scene to the final fade-out. What's more, Harold himself is charming, displaying just the right blend of self-assurance, exuberance and humility. I must confess I find Harold a little hard to take in some of his early comedies -- sometimes he's so aggressive he borders on obnoxiousness -- but here he's an appealing figure throughout, ever more sympathetic as the story rolls along.An Eastern Westerner offers exactly what the title promises, a displaced dude forced to deal with life in the wild & woolly West. There's a girl (of course) and a bully (ditto), and it all culminates in a chase. Harold follows in the footsteps of Douglas Fairbanks, who played a boyish character in a similar situation in a 1917 feature appropriately titled Wild and Woolly. But although Harold is a fish out of water in this instance he's no bonehead, and it's refreshing to see that, like Doug before him, he quickly adapts to the difficulties he faces, uses his brains, and manages to come out on top. At the same time, he has a sense of humor and isn't arrogant. When his attempts to impress leading lady Mildred Davis backfire and she laughs at him, Harold is big enough to join in and laugh at himself, and we like him for it. This likability wasn't always present in Lloyd's earlier films, where gags were all-important and his behavior was sometimes callous. In An Eastern Westerner Harold has graduated from clown to hero.Beyond its value as a laugh-provoker this movie should also be of interest to fans of early Westerns, for the filmmakers evidently took care with production details to a degree that is surprising in a two-reel comedy. This really looks like a Western! The town of Piute Pass (where, we're told, "it's considered bad form to shoot the same man twice in the same day") is as dusty and rough-looking as the town of Hell's Hinges, and the bully of Piute Pass could appear in a William S. Hart epic without having to change costume. Sequences in the saloon involving fighting, card-playing and dancing could be excerpted and passed off as clips from serious Westerns of the era. While these production details are gratifying, this engaging comedy is already well worth seeing as a fine example of what made Harold Lloyd a top star.