Go West/Battling Butler Ultimate DVD Set

BATTLING BUTLER (1926): Keaton stars as Alfred Butler, a fragile young man whose father sends him into the country where he hopes masculinity will blossom. Ironically, he is there mistaken for ''Battling'' Butler, a renowned prizefighter of fiery temperament. To impress a young lady (Sally O'Neil), Alfred carries on the ruse by engaging in a laughingly inept training regimen, but his harmless charade is soon complicated by the untimely arrival of the true contender (Francis McDonald). When the long-awaited opportunity to prove himself a man finally comes, it is before the gloved fists of the boxer, who initiates a locker-room brawl. There, in a sequence of agonizing tension and delightful surprises, Battling Butler reaches its unforgettable climax.

GO WEST (1925): In this hilarious classic Buster Keaton plays a hapless young man (aptly named ''Friendless'') who idealistically hops a freight train westward to meet his destiny, first in a teeming metropolis (where he is roundly trampled by rush-hour foot traffic) then into the ranch lands of Arizona. In the side-splitting course of his attempts at bronco-busting, cattle wrangling, and even dairy farming, Friendless finds himself enamored with Brown Eyes, a particularly affectionate bovine beauty from whose hoof he removed a painful pebble.

This 2-DVD set includes:

• Both full-length features. Go West: Music composed and performed by Eric Beheim. Battling Butler: Music composed and performed by Robert Israel
• Go West (1923, 12 min) comedy short produced by Hal Roach
• A rare 60-minute audio recording of Buster Keaton hashing out a script proposal for the western TV series “Wagon Train”
• Excerpt of the screenplay for an unproduced remake of Battling Butler, written by Keaton in 1947
• Gallery of photographs from the 1922 stage production of Battling Butler
• Two galleries of production stills

  --synopsis and DVD image courtesy of KINO. For more great films on DVD, visit the KINO website.

  This DVD set is being offered at a special price - the Damfino discount does NOT apply.