How to Risk Your Life with a Ten-Ton Steam Engine, Zero Safety Gear, and a Completely Blank Stare
It’s 3:15 AM. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with coarse sandpaper, the cold pizza on my desk is starting to look back at me, and I am currently watching a man in a gray cap sitting on the front cowcatcher of a moving steam engine, casually throwing a massive wooden railway tie at another railway tie to clear the tracks while traveling at 30 miles per hour.
Welcome, my friends, to the jaw-dropping, bone-breaking, and utterly fearless world of Buster Keaton.
If you’ve never heard of Buster Keaton, congratulations: you’ve never realized how incredibly lazy modern CGI action movies actually are. For the uninitiated, Buster was the “Great Stone Face”—a silent film star who never, ever smiled, and whose filmmaking philosophy was simple but absolutely terrifying:
- If the script says a character gets chased by a train, you don’t use a green screen. You buy a real, historical, ten-ton locomotive and drive it yourself.
- If a stunt looks like it could kill you, don’t hire a stunt double. Do it yourself, on the first take, because you might not survive a second one.
- If you need a spectacular train crash, do not build a miniature model. Buy a real train, build a real wooden bridge, set it on fire, and drive the train off it into a river.
The result? The General (1926).
The “Plot” (If we can even call it that)
We are in the middle of the American Civil War. Johnnie Gray (Keaton) is a railroad engineer who loves two things: his locomotive (named The General) and a girl named Annabelle. When the war starts, he tries to enlist, but the army rejects him because he’s too valuable as an engineer. Annabelle thinks he’s just a coward and dumps him.
But then, Union spies steal The General with Annabelle accidentally trapped on board. Johnnie doesn’t care about the war, but nobody steals his train. He spends the next hour single-handedly chasing the thieves across enemy lines using another train, a handcar, a bicycle, and pure, unfiltered stubbornness.
It is basically Mad Max: Fury Road, except it was made in 1926, the vehicles are powered by burning coal, and the main character looks like a depressed silent-era poet.
Why You Need to Watch This Tonight
- The Absolute Madness of the Stunts: In one scene, Buster sits on the side rod of the locomotive’s giant wheels as it starts moving, completely oblivious, sliding up and down. In another, he operates a massive cannon mounted on a flatcar that accidentally points directly at his own train cabin. The physical comedy is so perfectly timed it feels like a high-speed ballet with heavy machinery.
- The Train on the Cowcatcher Scene: When Buster clears the track obstacles while riding the front of the train, there are no trick shots. If he had dropped that wooden tie or timed his throw half a second late, the train would have derailed, and Buster Keaton would have been turned into a human pancake. He did it anyway.
- The Most Expensive Shot in Silent History: When the Union train (The Texas) crashes off a burning bridge into a river in Oregon, that is a real, full-sized train. It cost $42,000 in 1926 money (which is over $700,000 today) for just a few seconds of footage. The wreckage of the train actually stayed in the river for nearly twenty years, becoming a bizarre local tourist attraction until it was finally scrapped for metal during World War II.
The Verdict
Is it a good movie? It is one of the greatest action comedies ever made. While modern action stars sit in front of tennis balls on green screens, Buster Keaton was out there dodging real explosions, running on top of moving boxcars, and reinventing physical comedy. It is fast, incredibly funny, and will make you hold your breath more than once.
My Rating: 5 out of 5 shattered wooden railway ties thrown with perfect precision.
Wanna watch a guy casually laugh in the face of death?
Get some snacks, dim the lights, and search for this masterpiece on your favorite public domain video platform. Because the copyright has long since expired, you can watch one of the greatest stunt performances in human history absolutely free.
[WATCH “THE GENERAL (1926)” ON YOUTUBE (Opens in a new window)]
