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Feb 16, 2024

10 Most Impressive Buster Keaton Movie Stunts, Ranked

Silent film legend Buster Keaton is considered one of the greatest action stars of all time, but he nearly killed himself performing his own stunts. Before Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan, Buster Keaton

Silent film legend Buster Keaton is considered one of the greatest action stars of all time, but he nearly killed himself performing his own stunts.

Before Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan, Buster Keaton was doing all kinds of amazing stunts himself, and the best of these are now among the most iconic moments in film history. Keaton was part of a famous vaudeville family, and after making his stage debut at age three, he became the biggest draw of their show. While arguably a form of child abuse, the way Keaton's father would throw Buster around and otherwise get the boy to perform slapstick stunts eventually led to him becoming the greatest physical comedian of the silent film era.

The more dangerous the stunt, the more impressive, and Keaton certainly almost died a few times while also racking up a ton of injuries. For better or worse, when he eventually became a big studio contract player, he had to give up that kind of life-threatening action. Still, a few of Keaton's best stunts are more trickery than death-defying, as he was as much a great designer of gags as he was a physical performer. Either way, Keaton's stunts are often even more impressive when one finds out how he pulled them off because his movies were made at a time before most of today's visual effects tools existed.

Related: Every Buster Keaton Movie Ranked, Worst To Best

The ironic thing about Buster Keaton's building jump in Three Ages is that it was technically a failed stunt. For a sequence during the modern-day part of this 1923 Intolerance-parodying triptych film, the plan was for Keaton to leap from one rooftop to another — of course, these were constructed sets foregrounded in front of city streets and only made to appear like the tops of very tall buildings. Still, they were about 35 feet high. Had Keaton made it across successfully, it wouldn't have just been more impressive, but he would've beaten the broad jump world record and still held it today.

Unfortunately, the sets weren't close enough together for him, and Keaton just barely grabbed the edge of his destination before falling into an unseen net below. He was badly enough injured that he had to spend three days in bed. When he returned, he decided to keep the failed stunt and have it turn into another bit where his character's fall was aided by a series of window awnings. Interestingly enough, Tom Cruise wound up accidentally paying homage to Keaton's Three Ages mistake by also missing his mark during a failed building-to-building jump stunt in Mission: Impossible - Fallout, fracturing his ankle.

While not one of the most death-defying silent movie stunts, the bit where Buster Keaton jumps through a woman's midsection to evade some thugs in 1924's Sherlock Jr. remains one of his most impressive. Modern audiences might presume at least some editing trickery is involved, but the whole stunt was in fact done in front of the camera in one take using creative engineering carried over from vaudeville.

Here's how it was done: the man playing the woman is actually suspended on a plank above the unseen hole in the costume and fence that Keaton jumps through. Then the man quickly drops forward and to the ground in order to walk away, as the plank fills in the space in the fence. Keaton, meanwhile, landed face-first in the dirt on the other side of the fence.

It might not seem as impressive today, especially when the new trend is for actors like Tom Cruise to hold their breath underwater the longest, but when Buster Keaton filmed his undersea dive for the 1924 feature The Navigator, nobody was really shooting underwater for Hollywood productions. Consider him the James Cameron of his day as well because he was set on achieving the impossible with aquatic filmmaking rather than using the usual fakery to pretend his underwater scenes were indeed underwater.

Initially, he intended to film in a pool, but when that didn't work, he took the scene to the clear but freezing waters of Lake Tahoe. Like any movie star who performs their own stunts, Keaton wanted audiences to know it was him, too. His helmet for the diving suit was created specially so that his face could be clearly seen through the window.

Day Dreams is not one of Buster Keaton's best-known works, but the 1922 short has a favorite stunt among fans who've watched the film. Keaton partly shot Day Dreams on location in San Francisco, and while there he incorporated the city's famous cable cars into the narrative of the film (though there were also streetcars in Los Angeles at the time). Amid a chase scene, Keaton grabs onto a cable car one-handed, and he's flung into the air in a horizontal position, essentially flying due to the speed of the vehicle. Eventually, he pulls himself aboard the cable car and then enters its interior for a proper ride.

Whether Keaton could've actually done such a stunt without help is uncertain. If the cable car was going fast enough to make him coast the way he does, without gravity pushing him at least to an angled position, the physics of him not being injured by the pull of his arm would be questioned. Previously, in the more famous 1922 short film Cops, Keaton performs a similar stunt with a car, but it's brief, and gravity does appear to impact his position. Some suggest in Day Dreams he's held up by an unseen string, pointing to his clothing being raised when played in slow motion. Regardless, it's a cool stunt.

Another Buster Keaton stunt that's more impressive with context, this Sherlock Jr. bit proved the silent comedian's resilience and tolerance for pain. Taking place well before the jump through a person gag in the same movie, Keaton's projectionist character trails his rival in an effort to play detective. One thing leads to another and the projectionist winds up atop a moving train. He runs from car to car until he's at the end of the train then jumps onto the station's water tower spout, which lowers him to the ground and pours out and drenches him.

It's a funny gag, but it's also more dangerous than it looks. The water pressure was so much that it knocked Keaton against the rail, breaking his neck. Incredibly, he didn't find out he had broken his neck at that moment until 30 years later when a doctor showed him an x-ray. He did suffer terrible headaches for weeks after the stunt, however. If he had realized just how dangerous that water spout gag was and how the scene nearly killed the actor, Keaton might not have surprised his co-star Marion Mack with a similar bit in The General where he soaked her with a railroad water tower spout.

Another stunt went wrong during the making of the 1923 Civil War-set feature Our Hospitality. While filming on location around rough waters for the climactic action involving river rapids and a waterfall, a rope snapped, sending Buster Keaton adrift. Some of that made its way into the film while other elements were reenacted for the sequence.

Then, Keaton's character has to save his love from the edge of a waterfall. Trusting the rope would hold this time, he jumped from the bank and swooped in to save the character (played by a dummy in one shot and a double in another) just in time. The waterfall was actually shorter than it looked, and the water was shallower, as it was a set constructed over a pool and had a safety net just out of frame. Still, it took Keaton three takes to get the stunt right, and on one of the first two he did require medical attention anyway after turning upside down and nearly drowning.

While Buster Keaton almost always performed his own stunts, occasionally he enlisted athletic colleagues to either do what he couldn't (as was the case with the pole-vault stunt into a second-story window in College, which was actually done by Olympian Lee Barnes) or what he couldn't do alone. In the 1920 Romeo and Juliet-esque short Neighbors, Keaton recruited his friends from The Flying Escalantes for a bit where his character is joined by his groomsmen as he tops a three-man human ladder in order to grab his bride-to-be from a third-story window.

The back-and-forth stunt that ensues between buildings is impressive enough, but then Keaton adds additional obstacles, including a perfectly structured scaffolding. Then, a clothesline takes out the middle man, and the bottom man drops through a sidewalk cellar door, yet Keaton never loses his balance, even while carrying his lady love, as they land on the ground still running.

Buster Keaton's greatest film, the 1926 Civil War-set comedy The General, is also one of the most influential action movies of all time. The silent feature is filled with impressive feats, most of them occurring during a lengthy locomotive chase. Or, in the case of the highly influential and extremely expensive train crash into a ravine, they occur at the end of the chase. Among the many other gags and stunts is a moment that is popular for both its spectacle and its accuracy.

About midway into the silent feature, Keaton's train engineer, Johnnie, is following enemy spies who've stolen a locomotive. As he gains on them, they try to derail his train by throwing railroad ties onto the tracks behind them. With his engine still moving, Johnnie climbs down, runs a bit ahead, and just barely dislodges one of the railroad ties before his train's cowcatcher rams him from behind. Then, thinking fast, he throws the first tie in just the right spot onto the second, flipping it off the tracks. While Keaton was certainly a strong man, though, the ties were actually relatively light props allowing him to perform the toss easily.

Related: The Best Civil War Movies Of All Time

Sherlock Jr. has another one of the most impressive Buster Keaton stunts — there's a reason many fans consider this iconic silent film to be his best movie rather than The General. During the climactic chase sequence of the 1924 film, Keaton's titular dream-self character winds up riding on the handlebars of a motorcycle driven by his assistant, Gillette. After a bump throws Gillette off the motorcycle, however, Sherlock Jr. is left riding solo as Keaton drives and steers while remaining on the handlebars the entire time, without access to the brakes.

While it's already a great stunt on its own, Keaton throws a number of other obstacles in his way, including ditch diggers shoveling dirt in his face, an exploding log, a game of tug-o-war, an incomplete bridge that miraculously sees the coincidental merging of two trucks moving in opposite directions, and a speeding train that he just barely misses as he crosses the railroad tracks. The last of these encounters looks more death-defying than it probably was, as the shot was reportedly filmed in reverse. Other gags and stunts in the sequence used camera tricks, miniatures, and other effects, including a double-exposure shot for the bridge and trucks bit.

Related: 10 Best Movie Stunts Performed By Real Actors

Not only is this stunt from 1928's Steamboat Bill Jr. considered to be the best that Buster Keaton ever pulled off, but it's well beyond the others in terms of its notoriety. Whether this is because of the danger involved, how quickly and clearly it plays out as an impressively staged bit, or the many homages paid toward its achievement resulting in greater iconic status, the stunt is legendary. Taking place amid a hurricane sequence, the stunt consists of a house's facade collapsing forward and Buster's titular character only surviving because he's standing perfectly in the spot where he passes through a window instead of being crushed.

This stunt wasn't even original, as Keaton saw Fatty Arbuckle perform the same gag in their 1919 short Back Stage, and then Keaton did it himself in his brilliant 1920 short One Week. However, for his feature Steamboat Bill Jr., Keaton used a bigger and heavier wall, weighing about 4,000 pounds, which was deadlier, and the window was a lot narrower, requiring the accuracy of his position to be even greater. As the legend goes, the crew shielded their eyes as the stunt was performed and two women fainted. Buster Keaton's courage came from him not caring what would happen as he'd just heard his studio was being shut down.