The team behind Bristol’s annual Slapstick festival of silent and classic screen comedy marks April Fools’ Day with a big screen showing, accompanied by live music of Harold Lloyd’s SAFETY LAST! exactly 100 years since the film was first released.
Event details
St George’s Bristol, Great George Street Bristol, BS1 5RR
8pm start, Saturday 1 April 2023
The man credited by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most prolific stuntman will be sharing insights into the risks involved in the making of the Harold Lloyd silent comedy SAFETY LAST! when Bristol’s Slapstick festival celebrates the 100th anniversary of the film’s release with a special event at St George’s Bristol on Saturday 1 April.
Vic Armstrong, whose BAFTA and Oscar winning career includes doubling for stars such as Harrison Ford, Sean Connery and Roger Moore on films in the Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Star Wars series, will join Lloyd’s granddaughter Suzanne in providing a video intro to the comedy’s big screen showing, 100 years to the day of its Hollywood premiere.
Festival director Chris Daniels says: “The clock sequence in SAFETY LAST! is arguably the best known and most copied of any from the silent era and was genuinely dangerous, too, especially for an actor who’d already lost part of his hand in an accident with a stunt explosive. So, it will be extra interesting to hear Vic’s views on it. But the clock stunt is by no means the only reason this film deserves an anniversary watch. Lloyd’s over-ambitious efforts to make it in the big city so that he can marry his smalltown sweetheart mean that it regularly appears on Funniest Film Ever lists.”
Another special feature of the event is that the film will be accompanied live by the Stephen Horne Trio, led by the acclaimed silent film accompanist and composer Stephen Horne.
Tickets for Slapstick’s SAFETY LAST! celebration are on sale now, priced £22.50 and bookable Slapstick's website via or the St George’s Bristol box office.
Slapstick is also making plans for two further 2023 events - GENDER REBELS, happening at Watershed on Saturday 22 April and looking at gender swap stories in comedy films from last century, and a BIG COMEDY BASH fund-raiser at the Hexagon in Reading on Wednesday 10 May starring Jo Brand, Marcus Brigstocke, Milton Jones, Ria Lina and others yet to be announced.
To stay up to date with Slapstick news, find/follow the festival’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts or sign up for its free e-bulletins via the website.
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