I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

What makes The Electric House such a must-see Keaton short is curiously not the showcasing of the great man himself but that of the technical prowess of his technical director Fred Gabourie. Gabourie had built The Boat and worked with Keaton since 1920's One Week, which was the one with the ingenious portable house, and he would progress with Keaton from the shorts to the features. But never were the technical gadgets Keaton used and Gabourie had to make work practically better displayed than in The Electric House. Keaton really lets Gabourie's gadgets take centre stage here and it is a chance to marvel at a master at work.In a strange way it's almost too brilliant because the laughs don't really play as well. Whereas in One Week or The Boat the gadgets and physical comedy worked in perfect harmony in The Electric House Keaton lets the film get a bit bogged down in watching the gadgets at work.Nevertheless in these days of CGI and visual cheats it is stunning to see these practical effects in full flow. Gabourie was clearly a genius, one whose name deserves to be held in the same light as practical effects masters like Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen and Stan Winston.

Amsterdam has this tradition of theatres that invite prominent musicians of the city to play orchestra during an old classic silent movie. I got an invitation from my office friend – Lucy Wilson to watch one of such shows. As never in my life I have seen such a thing, I immediately accepted the invitation. It was a show of three short silent movies (20-25 minutes) of the great Buster Keaton – The Electric House, The Frozen North and One Week.Buster Keaton started his career as playing Laurel's part in "Laurel and Hardy" series, but soon captured the silent era imagination with great classic silent movies - obviously with reminiscence of Charlie Chaplin style.The first movie The Electric House – was about a person who by mistake is given a job of an electrician in a house. Buster Keaton innovates and imagines all possible electrical appliances possible in 1920s – more or less we see a lot of them today. Hats off to this genius for his visionary power! The second movie The Frozen North – is about a person who dreams himself as a bad guy of Wild West with a gun on a frozen snow clad landscape. It is a wonderful comic take on what a man can think of doing if given some heroic movie image.The third movie One Week – is about a newly married couple who get a portable house as a gift and their attempt to assemble it together. The laugh starts when they mix the number of boxes and end up in creating a house that has everything fitted in the most inappropriate way. It was amusing.I loved all the three movies. This was also my first viewing of Buster Keaton movies and I enjoyed it a lot. Added experience was this live orchestra on organ / piano being played that was in synch with the movie scenes.Highly recommended movies! (Stars 7.5 out of 10)

It's funny; the other day I watched Buster Keaton's "College," which starts off with a high school graduation. My next Keaton movie, this one, begins with a college ceremony. Yes, once again, the graduates look more like their fathers than 22- year-old people.The degrees get mixed up somehow and the Dean thinks Buster has graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree and hires him to wire his house while he and the family go on vacation. Buster knows nothing about that sort of thing but reads a quick how-to-do-it book. The next thing we know, we see the house with all the gadgets.This was pretty amazing stuff. I didn't think they even had the technology in the early '20s to do this sort of thing. Shows you what I know. Anyway, we see all kinds of James Bond-type tricks from swimming pools that drain and refill within seconds to mechanical billiard tables to train tracks feeding the family. There too many of these crazy things (a bathroom on tracks going right to the bed was one of my favorites!) to list them all.Suffice to say they are fun to watch. Unfortunately, the real engineer gets wind of what happened, sneaks into the house and sabotages the gadgets while the family is showing them off to guests. Unfortunately (again), justice is not served in this film....or is it? There's a strange ending to this film, too, and makes me wonder if Buster wasn't a bit suicidal. I guess not, since he lived a fairly long time.There is no real plot in here; just gags....which is fine for a short film, except I found this was so fast-paced in the first half that by the 15-minute mark it seemed almost too long, if that's possible. It seemed like a long 22 minutes.

A lot of Keaton's comedies feature a scene or two filled with creative and wacky gadgets that make you laugh and make you marvel at his inventiveness, all at the same time. This short comedy is entirely devoted to this kind of eccentric gadgetry, and while that means there isn't much of a plot, it's fun to watch. There's a subtle, funny mix-up at the beginning that results in Buster being entrusted with filling up a man's house with whatever electronic devices he can think of, and he really goes to it. "The Electric House" is a funny place to visit.