Hot Water is a 1924 American silent comedy film directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor and starring Harold Lloyd. Directed by Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, it features three episodes in the life of Hubby as he struggles with domestic life with Wifey and his in-laws.
Plot
Episodic in nature, the first episode features Hubby winning a live turkey in a raffle and taking it home on a crowded streetcar, much to the chagrin of the other passengers. The second features Hubby grudgingly taking the family en masse out on his brand new Butterfly Six automobile, and the third is an escapade with his sleepwalking mother-in-law. The third segment almost qualifies the film as a horror movie, as in it, Hubby mistakenly believes he has killed his mother-in-law, and when she starts sleepwalking later, he thinks she's a ghost haunting him.
Cast
Harold Lloyd as Hubby
Jobyna Ralston as Wifey
Josephine Crowell as Her Mother, Winnifred Ward Stokes
Charles Stevenson as Her Big Brother, Charley Stokes
The film is a light comedy with minimal character development, and followed Lloyd’s early 1920s pattern of alternating what he called “gag pictures” with “character pictures”. Some distributors had complained about the length of his previous elaborate feature Girl Shy, and Hot Water was the response. Its storyline was also interesting as a unique departure from most of Lloyd’s 1920s features, because his character was married with a family, and was not striving for success, recognition, or romance. It was popular at the box office and grossed $1,350,000, an excellent return for a film of the period. The fictional "Butterfly Six" was in reality a 1923 Chevrolet Superior Sedan.
Renewed interest in Harold Lloyd
In 1962, the "live turkey" and "Butterfly Six automobile" sequences were included in a compilation film produced by Harold Lloyd himself entitled Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and created a renewal of interest in the comedian by introducing him to a whole new generation. Critic Christopher Workman comments "At a way, way too long 59 minutes, "Hot Water" relies on a seemingly endless succession of pratfalls for its yuks. The only horror-tinged segment is the third.....Still and all, the film was a huge success."
