The High Sign" was Buster Keaton's first two-reeler after he went solo after leaving his partnership with Roscoe Arbuckle in 1920, but it was not the first film he released. Here he plays a drifter who gets hired by a member of the gang "The Blinking Blizzards" to run a shooting gallery. In a turn of events that can happen only in a Keaton film, Buster winds up being hired to both kill the father of the girl he loves and also to protect him. The film ends with a funny chase sequence through a house that has a series of trick doors, false walls, and traps that could only be designed by the mind of Keaton. Keaton disliked "The High Sign" and delayed its release. Instead, his premiere release was "One Week". Both films show a genius in bloom.
Review of The 'High Sign'
