Faro Nell (1929) Online

This little short has some amazingly pre-code funstuff, with cowboys dancing with each other (OH MY)! And Louise Fazenda at her craziest, (she stuffs her bra and looks like a reject Annie Oakley). A must see if you are lucky enough to come across it.

Spunky Louise Fazenda stars as the title character, an Old West cowgirl whose special way of blowing on her six guns sends the local cowboys into a tizzy, in this unusual early talkie two-reel comedy. Produced by Al Christie, Faro Nell plays like a parody of a silent western, with broad-as-a-barn-door emoting and dressed-all-in-black villain Harry Woods literally twirling his moustache before embarking on a sneaky plot to steal Nell's mine. There are no cowboys dancing together in the print available on the American Slapstick 2 DVD set, but a naughty pre-Code highlight does arrive midway through the story when Nell declares: "I LOVE Dick!"

Just watched this Louise Fazenda talking comedy short on the "American Slapstick 2" DVD set. It seems to supposed to be a parody of those melodramatic westerns made during the period when they were silent but the problem was, nothing said or done was even remotely funny though I recognized the hammyness of the dialogue and some of the cliché way the actors position themselves. In summary, Faro Nell is one lame short.

I recently viewed a very nice 16mm print of the film and was totally surprised and taken by its oddball qualities. It has a brand of humour that you either get or you don't. If you don't, you are likely looking at it on the surface too much. The melodramatic awfulness of the dialogue is clearly an intentional throwback to the 'horse operas' of 20 years earlier (which would have been displayed as inter-titles) Pre-code sexual innuendo abounds in this one but you need to be paying attention to catch most of it. Altogether, FARO NELL is a comedic gem that deserves rediscovery.

This is very obviously an early talkie, though it's not especially apparent that it's supposed to be a comedy. That's because the short is dreadfully unfunny and a real chore to watch. My summary isn't really that far off--there's very little that could possibly ever entice me to see this turkey again. In fact of the 500-1000 early comedy shorts I have seen, this might just rank as the worse and least entertaining--it's that bad.

This cowboy comedy-melodrama appears to be possibly be trying to make fun of old time westerns. The dialog sounds so hokey and horribly contrived that you can't help but assume the intent is comedy. The problem is that there is no punchline--no payoff to listening to some of the worse dialog in film history. And, sadly, there isn't a single laugh or giggle during the entire 20 minutes (which seemed, in hindsight, like 2 hours). Plus, the story is just awful and, well, stupid. Some low-lights of the film were horrible rear-projection during the horse riding scene and lines that seemed like they were written by chimps (smart chimps, but chimps nonetheless).

Dull, pointless and unfunny. This is the trifecta of badness!