Marcel Perez is a browbeaten husband whose wife keeps him around to catch mice. When she sends him out for groceries to feed her harridan friends, Perez falls in love with a poster of Dorothy Earle, who plays a nurse in a local leg show. They meet and that's where the trouble starts.
It's a tremendously funny short comedy anchored by the chase sequence. When the doctor brings out the tools of his profession -- axe, saw and tongs -- to deal with Perez' medical problem (he's wrapped up like a mummy), Perez flees, hopping everywhere, with occasional help from Miss Earle. Like many of Perez' better American works, it's a bravura performance.
What makes this funny comedy less than ideal is that while Perez is fine at comedy construction, he never seems clear on the arc of the film. His works seem to end abruptly, without any real resolution or capper gag.
Of course, many of Perez' American films are lost or, like this one, fragmentary. New ones are turning up two or three a year and the evaluation is not complete. If you have a chance to see this, do.
Well, you do have a chance. Ben Model has produced a DVD of Perez' work, but in Europe and the United States and you can own a copy. Order it from Amazon.com. It's called, unsurprisingly, THE MARCEL PEREZ COLLECTION.
It's a tremendously funny short comedy anchored by the chase sequence. When the doctor brings out the tools of his profession -- axe, saw and tongs -- to deal with Perez' medical problem (he's wrapped up like a mummy), Perez flees, hopping everywhere, with occasional help from Miss Earle. Like many of Perez' better American works, it's a bravura performance.
What makes this funny comedy less than ideal is that while Perez is fine at comedy construction, he never seems clear on the arc of the film. His works seem to end abruptly, without any real resolution or capper gag.
Of course, many of Perez' American films are lost or, like this one, fragmentary. New ones are turning up two or three a year and the evaluation is not complete. If you have a chance to see this, do.
Well, you do have a chance. Ben Model has produced a DVD of Perez' work, but in Europe and the United States and you can own a copy. Order it from Amazon.com. It's called, unsurprisingly, THE MARCEL PEREZ COLLECTION.
