DAISY DOODAD’S DIAL (1914)
Article 4634 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-20-2014
Directed by Laurence Trimble
Featuring Florence Turner and Tom Powers
Country: UK
What it is: Comic short

A husband and wife both decide to enter a silly face competition being held by a local actors’ group. When the wife is ill the day of the competition, the husband wins first prize. The wife vows to win a follow-up competition, but complications arrive when she is arrested for disturbing the peace by practicing making faces in public.

Let’s face it; this is a one-joke comedy. And, if it weren’t for the fact that Florence Turner is capable of twisting her face into some truly memorable grimaces, it would die on that one joke; as it is, I found myself laughing a lot more than I really care to admit. In short, I really enjoyed this comedy. However, making funny faces does not in and of itself constitute fantastic content. What qualifies the short is the ending of the movie, where the main character has a nightmare in which she is terrorized by a succession of grotesque faces… all of them her own. When you get down to it, this makes for pretty slight fantastic content, but I’m still glad I got a chance to see this one.