Feet First (1930)

7/10

Lloyd improves greatly over "Welcome Danger"...

AlsExGal10 February 2023

... his first sound film.

In this comedy from Paramount and director Clyde Bruckman, Harold stars as Harold, a lowly shoe store flunky in Honolulu, Hawaii. Harold sees the beautiful Barbara (Barbara Kent) and falls for her, but when he learns that she's the daughter of the shoe store's owner (Robert McWade), Harold pretends to be a leather-goods magnate in order to impress them. Things get complicated when Harold finds himself on a trans-Pacific cruise ship with Barbara and her family and he has to continue his charade despite being broke and a stowaway! Also featuring Lillian Leighton, Henry Hall, Noah Young, Alec Francis, and Willie Best (as Sleep 'n Eat).

This was Lloyd's most successful sound movie, and it has a lot of good gags. An extended sequence on the cruise ship as Harold tries to destroy every copy of a magazine he can find is a highlight, as is the high-rise finale. Lloyd and company were obviously trying to one-up the clock-dangling antics from his earlier Safety Last, and while repetition renders this not as noteworthy, it's still entertaining. Kent is adorable, and I always enjoy Willie Best regardless of the role.

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6/10

Mediocre Harold Lloyd, with some good moments

zetes30 July 2012

Harold Lloyd's second talkie, after Welcome Danger (which, if I recall correctly, was only part talkie). It's okay, but a step down from Welcome Danger. As far as I'm concerned, Lloyd's The Milky Way from 1933 is among his best films, so I certainly don't think he lost his talent after the silent era. Feet First comes across as desperate at times, mostly during the final act, which re-creates the climax of Safety Last!, with Lloyd dangling off the side of a skyscraper. In this film, Lloyd is a lowly shoe salesman who is mistaken for a leather baron by his employer, for whose daughter (Barbara Kent, star of Pal Fejos' Lonesome) he has fallen. There are some amusing sketches, but nothing particularly great.

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6/10

Lloyd's misadventures include the amazing building routine...

Doylenf20 April 2009

This is one of Lloyd's first talkies and might have played better as a silent, since most of the action revolves around a whole bunch of amusing sight gags.

He's a hapless shoe salesman who tells a wealthy girl that he's a tycoon and spends the rest of the film trying to impress her after unable to leave a cruise ship before it takes off. All of the shipboard scenes are amusing but become repetitious after the first twenty minutes. Highlight of the humor is Lloyd's interaction with sailor Noah Young, adept at playing a dummy.

Silly plot manipulations end up with Lloyd getting stuck inside a mailbag and somehow hoisted up the side of a building on a flimsy scaffold. It's here that the film reminds one of the silent success he had with his skyscraper routine. Although the gags are inventive and foolish enough, it's an extended sequence that plays out over too much running time. WILLIE BEST is seen as a black maintenance man who's no help at all to Lloyd when he becomes aware of his plight. It's the kind of stereotyped role that makes today's politically correct audiences squirm.

Summing up: Funny in spots, but certainly not one of Lloyd's best efforts. The scaffolding gags look painfully real.

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A GREAT COMEDY, IN NO SENSE A REMAKE

bensonj13 November 2001

I first saw the finale of this film in the compilation, HAROLD LLOYD'S WORLD OF COMEDY, in 1962, in a jam-packed 800-seat theatre. The audience roared and ROARED with laughter and excitement. It was the funniest, most thrilling thing I had ever seen in movies (I was 21) and I never forgot it.

What surprised me when I finally saw the whole of FEET FIRST recently, after seeing nearly all of Lloyd's silents (including SAFETY LAST) in the intervening period, is not only how well the final building-climbing sequence still holds up, but how inventive and funny the entire film is. There's a long sequence of Harold as a shoe salesman that's as hilarious and creative as anything in his silents, and there are just no dull spots at all.

The final long sequence on the side of a building is in NO WAY just a rehash of the SAFETY LAST sequence. I doubt if there's a single gag in it that repeats anything in the earlier film. It's every bit as imaginative and hair-raising as SAFETY LAST, a real tour de force. The bumbling Willie Best is a bothersome racial caricature, certainly, yet in terms of comedy, his "unflappable" casual unconcern is a perfect foil for Lloyd's kinetic, action-filled, dangerous gags, and he has one of the funniest lines in the picture.

Keaton and Laurel & Hardy (in their features) lost creative control of their work in the sound era, Langdon never made a starring-vehicle sound film, and Chaplin didn't make a talking film until 1940. Lloyd's sound films were not so successful at the box office, and a reasonable assumption would be that they, too, lacked whatever mysterious element had made the silent comedians great. In the case of Lloyd, at least as regards to his three pre-Code era films designed for sound, this is dead wrong! FEET FIRST, MOVIE CRAZY, and THE CAT'S PAW are all top-notch comedies (and his three films that came after them aren't bad either).

As with all of Lloyd, this is best seen with an audience, but even on TV it's a funny, funny film.

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7/10

Sometimes a formula idea does not work well the second time

theowinthrop26 July 2007

Warning: Spoilers

The coming of sound is erroneously said to have destroyed the careers of the great silent comedians. Not quite true, though some truth to it. Chaplin did not go fully into sound until 1940 with the generally excellent THE GREAT DICTATOR. Keaton actually went into the sound period with a final great silent film (THE CAMERAMAN) but problems with an unsympathetic (even hostile) Louis B. Mayer, divorce problems with his wife, and (unfortunately) alcoholism caused a serious collapse in his career. But he recovered slowly to be a fixture on television and in movies to the end of his career. Laurel & Hardy did better with sound than with silent films (including getting into feature films). W.C.Fields also did better in sound films (and so did the Marx Brothers after their fitful silent production(s)). After years in the wilderness due to scandal, Fatty Arbuckle was making a come-back when he died in 1933. The only real casualties were Larry Semon (who died in 1928, presumably in part due to the collapse of his production company after some film failures), Raymond Griffith (who was unable to speak loudly due to a physical problem - but would play his best remembered part as the dying French soldier in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, and then have a great career in film production), and Harry Langdon (whose career toppled over his egomania, according to Frank Capra). Langdon still managed to occasionally appear in films (HALLELUJAH, I'M A BUM, ZENOBIA) and did work as a gag writer for Hal Roach.

Harold Lloyd found the coming of sound relatively easy. Unlike Keaton he did not have domestic problems or drinking problems that interfered with his career. Like Chaplin he had invested his sizable income into a wide variety of different businesses, and was rich enough to pick and choose his vehicles.

But he made mistakes in his first two films that managed to show what was no longer possible. Lloyd's comedy was the comedy of suspense and danger. Lloyd's characters, whatever their social class, always had to overcome death defying or dangerous problems to reach their goals. This included winning a football match (in THE FRESHMAN) or capturing a murderer to free his father and brothers (in THE KID BROTHER). His best remembered sequence of danger and humor was the climb up the side of the department store in the aptly titled SAFETY LAST!

SAFETY LAST! appeared in 1922. Eight years later Lloyd repeated the climbing sequence in FEET FIRST, his second talky, and his second error at trying to repeat the successful formula. The first film was a crime melodrama/comedy WELCOME DANGER, which was too long and complicated to be successful. The sections dealing with potential dangers were not well handled - some reversed the whole concept of sound films by having Lloyd and others talking in the dark (sort of making the movie the equivalent of a radio). Lloyd apparently was trying to return to the success of SAFETY LAST!, but failed to notice one aspect of the first talkie. Audiences were not thrilled to hear people in peril screaming for help. As a result the audiences were confused about what their responses to the "comedy" was to be.

SAFETY LAST! had a natural build-up to the last half hour of Harold's climb up the side of the department store to win $1,000.00 and get married to his girlfriend. FEET FIRST was also tied to a romance. Harold is working in a shoe store in Honolulu, when he meets a female customer who is the daughter of the store's owner. They are taking a boat back to the U.S. and Harold is accidentally made a stowaway. He has tried to impress the girl that he is a millionaire too. So now he is romancing the girl as a rich man, and also trying to avoid being thrown into the brig as a stowaway.

At the end of the film the ship is in San Francisco, and Harold gets off the boat by hiding in a mail bag. But he is taken to an office building, and accidentally pulled up the side of the building (in the bag) many stories above the street. Harold cuts his way out of the bag, but he is soon struggling to get to safety. Here, unlike SAFETY LAST!, he is heard yelling for help. This actually makes his danger all the more real. But it keeps the audience from enjoying Harold's predicament.

An audience today would also resent the humor of Stepin' Fetchit (here called "Sleep 'N Eat") as the only person who tries to assist Harold - but moving and acting in stereotypical manner (i.e., when he sees Lloyd has fallen a few floors down, he asks, "Whatcha doin' down there?"). To be fair one sequence has both men frightened by a stuffed gorilla, but it is not enough to undue the bad taste of the racism.

Some of the jokes are definitely based on originals from the silent film - when Harold reached the top in SAFETY LAST! he got hit on the head by a machine. Here he reaches the roof, only to breath in some ether that makes him woozy. He also does fall off the roof at the end and actually ends up within feet of the street pavement. It's a neat switch, but it makes the climb upward seem meaningless at the conclusion.

Individual scenes and sight gags are funny (Lloyd as stowaway hiding behind a lifeboat, and a gull lies on his head). But the total effect is mediocre Lloyd at best. Fortunately Lloyd learned from his error. His next two films were both good (MOVIE CRAZY and THE MILKY WAY) showing he had learned a bit from the misfires of the first two films.

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7/10

FEET FIRST (Clyde Bruckman, 1930) ***

Bunuel197621 December 2006

This was Harold Lloyd's second Talkie but the first one I watched, since WELCOME DANGER (1929) is currently unavailable. It's a typical star vehicle and, in fact, the plot is quite similar to that of SAFETY LAST! (1923) - from the shoe-store background replacing the department store of the earlier film (hence the title) to Lloyd's attempts at impressing his girlfriend by pretending to be a wealthy businessman and, of course, its lengthy climactic shenanigans of our hero dangling from the side of a building.

Still, it's entertaining - and inventive - enough to stand on its own (even if, being so dependent on sight gags, the dialogue scenes feel awkward in comparison); the initial shoe-store segment involves Lloyd falling foul of the boss' wife, while the middle section is set aboard a sailing ship (which Harold contrives to be on along with the boss, his wife - who says she never forgets a face - and his own girl, the boss' secretary and whom Lloyd thinks is actually his daughter!)...but the genuinely hair-raising stuntwork (which, it must be said, sees no obvious repetition of the innumerable gags from the climax of SAFETY LAST!) is what really makes the film - also because it involves a lethargic black janitor (played by Willie Best, appropriately nicknamed "Sleep 'n' Eat") who, I'm afraid, wouldn't pass muster with today's PC-brainwashed audiences (especially when dubbed "Charcoal" by Lloyd himself!) and who clearly results in being more of a hindrance than a help to Harold's singularly hazardous predicament.

This was actually the star's fifth and final 'thrill' picture, which also features regular character actor Arthur Houseman invariably - and somewhat irritatingly - playing a drunkard; as for Lloyd co-star Barbara Kent, she's adequate, having already played his leading lady in WELCOME DANGER (I was also surprised to learn that she was the heroine of Hungarian director Paul Fejos' most renowned Hollywood film, LONESOME [1928], a part-Talkie which I've only managed to catch in snippets on late-night Italian TV: I did record a recent broadcast of it, presumably shown in its entirety - as the film, curiously, still bears no opening credits or any underscoring of any kind!).

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7/10

Not a classic so much for its story, but its nail biting comedy.

mark.waltz11 April 2018

Warning: Spoilers

If Harold Lloyd knew anything it was how to make something old seem new again which he does here perfectly in his second talkie, repeating a classic sequence from "Safety Last" and getting as many laughs out of it, this time with dialog added. I couldn't find myself getting to care so much about the story as I was intrigued by all the situations surrounding it, some real quick and the famous skyscraper climbing sequence taking two reels to get through. Lloyd is a shoe salesman's assistant, told by his boss that he hasn't got the "personality" to be a salesman, and somehow he ends up one anyway, trying to sell shoes to the boss's wife while trying to impress their daughter (Barbara Kent, Lloyd's co-star from "Welcome Danger"). They all end up together on a cruise ship where Lloyd pretends to be a leather tycoon and tries to keep them from seeing pictures of the real tycoon, thus going around and creatively getting rid of a magazine which features the real tycoon's face. Lloyd somehow ends up in a mail sack which is pushed off a trolley onto a painting scaffold where he is lifted far above the ground unable to see the danger below him. By the time he gets out of the bag and realizes the danger he's in, you're already laughing so hard and cringing for his safety that you won't notice that this sequence seemingly goes on forever.

There's the always utilized gag of a shoe salesman trying to fit new stylish shoes onto a heavyset woman, and the confusion of what happens when a shoe mannequin's leg is mistaken for that of a young lady who is sitting on a couch appearing to have three legs. Gags including flipping spoons, ether getting in the way of Lloyd's finally making it onto the skyscraper roof, and the sight of a gorilla in a taxidermist's office when Lloyd thinks he's finally reached free space scaring him back out. The tactlessly billed "Sleep n' Eat" (better known as Willie Best) is the sadly stereotypical slow moving black janitor who tries unsuccessfully to save Lloyd from his fate on the scaffolding. As badly utilized as he was (lessened over the years in his career fortunately), he wasn't as hideously stereotyped as Stepin Fetchit, but none the less a sad reminder of a part of Hollywood history that is shameful. This is the type of film that you might consider having around just to revisit for the two reels devoted to his skyscraper wall sequence, which even though you know he will somehow make it out will still have you cringing in hysterical panic. The final pay-off of the scene is very funny too. Every sight gag needs a great finish, and "Feet First" tops em' all.

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7/10

I'd give the first thirty minutes, a five or a six. The rest of the movie a ten!

JohnHowardReid26 November 2017

Warning: Spoilers

Harold Lloyd attempted to revisit the climax of "Safety Last" in his second sound film, "Feet First" (1930), with but a limited success. On this occasion, the sequence is not as effectively motivated. It also runs too long and is further undercut by the stupid stereotype played by Willie Best's janitor.

The movie's plot also takes it own sweet time to get underway yet (at least in the New Line excellent 10/10 print) doesn't bother to tell us that the story is actually set in Honolulu. There's no title to this effect. What's worse, the scenery and the people all look like they belong in Los Angeles.

It's not until the movie has been running no less than 30 minutes before we are told that the story is supposedly set in Hawaii! Fortunately, at that point, as soon as Lloyd settles down to stowaway on the ship, the movie improves dramatically. Even Lloyd's squeaky voice takes on a bit of character.

And what's more, the girl, soft-speaking Barbara Kent, is absolutely lovely – even though her attraction to an obvious misfit like Lloyd seems hard to fathom.

Fortunately, grumpy old Robert McWade keeps the paper-thin plot crackling along, assisted by Lillianne Leighton as his dumpy wife and Noah Young as a dopey sailor.

Unlike some of the critics, I love the skit where Lloyd is forced to hide all copies of a certain magazine and I really enjoyed the bit where he unintentionally hands McWade an exploding cigar.

All told, Well done, director Clyde Bruckman!

Incidentally, dialogue writer Paul Girard Smith appears on camera as a seasick passenger.

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10/10

One More Climb Up The Building With Mr. Lloyd

Ron Oliver17 February 2004

A stock clerk falls FEET FIRST in love with a shoe tycoon's pretty secretary.

Silent comedian Harold Lloyd made his second foray into talking films in this very enjoyable slapstick movie. Consisting in large part of a series of often hilarious sight gags, it proves Lloyd's mastery of the new medium. Quickly learning how to make sound work for him, Harold firmly embraced the technology which ruined the careers of many other stars. He also benefited from using the same writers, directors, gag men & character actors who had made his silent films such a success. Appreciating their skills & loyalty, Lloyd's production company kept these individuals on the payroll even when making only one picture every other year, a routine he would begin starting with FEET FIRST.

Ever generous, Harold took his cast & crew to Hawaii, thus allowing for the filming of some very funny sequences on board the ship at sea. Interestingly, while the opening scenes of the film are presumably set in Honolulu, absolutely nothing is done to create an Hawaiian ambiance with the sets or characters in any way.

The movie's climactic moments involve forcing Harold to dangle from the side of a very tall Los Angeles building. This will invite invariable comparisons with his classic human fly sequence in SAFETY LAST (1923). This is somewhat unfair, as the scenes in FEET FIRST are wonderfully funny and vertiginous all on their own. Even with the assist in the long shots from master stuntman Harvey Parry, there was real danger involved for Lloyd (notice that there's only a couple of seconds of rear projection used and that's during Harold's final fall) who once again gets to display his remarkable athletic agility.

Pretty Barbara Kent plays the object of Harold's affections. Robert McWade is her grumpy boss, with plump Lillian Leighton playing his suspicious wife. Noah Young, a welcome face from Lloyd's silent days, portrays a hapless sailor. Arthur Housman gets to play (what else?) a humorous inebriate and slow-moving Willie Best is marvelously adept in hindering Harold's progress up the side of the building.

Movie mavens will recognize an unbilled James Finlayson, long the nemesis of Laurel & Hardy, as one of the painters on top of the skyscraper.

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7/10

The master fails a little bit here..!

naseby14 June 2008

Warning: Spoilers

I love Harold Lloyd to bits, he'd proved himself to be a great sight gag master,in the 'silents' and there's no question of that. The transition to sound for him wouldn't be easy, as it wouldn't for any silent comedian. I did enjoy this flick, it was pretty easy-going, but as has been pointed out here elsewhere, the greats, the Marx Bros, Laurel and Hardy etc were definitely the yardstick that all talkies/comedy would be measured against for the 'thirties. Harold hadn't progressed further, it's evident here , but there are some good moments in it, although there is a repeat of his 'Safety Last' routine. Willie Best (otherwise known as 'sleep 'n' eat') has been mentioned a lot here, and rightly so, as there's an engaging stereotype of him. Although it is that, at times, of the gangly black man, gormlessly strutting his way through the movie, it's still funny, not because of the stereotype but he lends a 'dumb ass' to the proceedings, or a stooge to Harold. Calling him 'Charcoal' wasn't exactly tactful, but I'm sure the people of the deep south just loved it. A re-issue in 1960 had Harold dub over, in his own voice, the name of 'Charcoal' with 'Charlie'. Not a bad film, but that's all, it lost its way at times, but watchable, nonetheless.

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3/10

"Feet First" bogs down

Damonfordham1 July 2006

The earliest sounds films tend to be weak, awkward, and more interesting for historical reasons other than entertaining. This is a classic example. "Feet first" strikes me as quite weak, and Harold Lloyd is one of my all time favorites.

Here, our man is a shoe salesman who tries to move up in his business. The humor and gags drag like lead, and if you have this on DVD you will skip a number of scenes trying to get through it. There is one mildly amusing moment where HL practices public speaking pounding his fists and waving his hands with a ridiculously pompous pontification "If it weren't for shoes, we'd all be---BAREFOOT!" But things don't get really funny or interesting until the skyscraper-climbing scene reminiscent of SAFETY LAST. That's well done. As for Willie "Sleep & Eat" Best as the hapless janitor trying to help Harold during his predicament, his character was WAY too stupid (such as the "hose scene") and it is horrible to hear the beloved Lloyd refer to this African-American comic as "Charcoal," (especially when one considers that Lloyd is usually kind and polite to Black and other nonwhite characters in his films). Admittedly, the fact that Lloyd and Best become equally scared at the sight of the gorilla (as was the case with Lloyd, Sunshine Sammy Morrison, and the supposed ghosts in "Haunted Spooks") takes SOME of the edge off the stereotype.

In either case, this is only for hardcore Harold completists. Casual fans will want to stick to GRANDMA'S BOY, SAFETY LAST, WHY WORRY, etc.

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10/10

Fine Lloyd film!

unclerussie19 February 2006

"Feet First" is a fine Harold LLoyd film, that clearly shows the master comic as adept to making funny talkies as he was to making silent movie classics. Harold Lloyd possessed a great sense of timing as well as a keen sense of what made audiences laugh. Even if you've seen "Safety Last" (referring to the "hanging on the clock" scene) you'll enjoy this film (including the similar but still hilarious scene with Lloyd hanging from the side of the building). Concerning another reviewer's comment about "racial slurs", undoubtedly the reference is to a scene whereas Harold Lloyds's character (while hanging from the building) calls out to a black fellow using the name "Charcoal". Look, it was 1930; thats the way it was then, so get over it. "Feet First" is a wonderfully funny motion picture from one of the screen's greatest comedians, Harold Lloyd.

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6/10

Safety Last! better

SnoopyStyle12 August 2018

Harold Horne (Harold Lloyd) is a lowly shoe salesman working in tycoon John Quincy Tanner's store. He defends Barbara when her driver rear-ends a brute's truck. He pretends to be a rich leather tycoon himself while wooing Barbara who he assumes to be Tanner's daughter but she's actually his secretary. The bumbling attempt has him lying at work, stuck on a ship to Hawaii, and culminates with another skyscraper stunt.

I don't enjoy him lying to get the girl as much as the movie wants me. It starts off nice with him defending her against the giant truck driver. Sometimes, the lying is fun especially against the rich, snooty people. The lying may be worthwhile if she's actually the rich daughter and she can forgive him in the end. I simply don't like it for the girl. The skyscraper stuff is impressive although the rig to make it work is well understood. There are some actual skyscraper work and those are blood-curdling stunts. The Willie Best colored comedic character is bothersome as always with our modern sensibilities. This is a movie of its times. Overall, I like "Safety Last!" much better.

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4/10

Well below his best

dockbennett17 April 2009

A mild mannered young man, working at the bottom rung of a shoe shop, falls for a high society girl and tries to reinvent himself. Lloyd's second talkie is really divided into three sections; working and meeting the girl, unwittingly traveling on a cruise ship, and then hanging onto a high rise building for his life. However, it's well below the standard of the best of Harold's silents (like the lovely "The Kid Brother"). The film does get better as it goes (the ship and building sections do become reasonably entertaining, if nothing else), but it's rarely very funny, and one can't help but think it would have worked better as a silent.

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Good Low-Key Comedy With a Throwback Finale

Snow Leopard20 March 2006

This Harold Lloyd feature provides good low-key comedy, capped off with a lengthy finale that is very much in the style of a throwback to the finale of Lloyd's "Safety Last" and other silent classics. Lloyd has the kind of role that allows him to use most of his range of comic talents, and the story sets up plenty of predicaments for his character to try to wriggle out of.

The story has Lloyd as an ambitious but rather hapless shoe salesman, who tries to pass himself off as someone important in order to impress a young woman. It's familiar territory for Lloyd, but the story adds plenty of good material that makes the character again and again scramble for ways out of a continual series of problems.

The finale has Lloyd's character getting caught on the outside of a tall building, and desperately trying to get to safety. It contains a number of imaginative details and obstacles to add to the suspense and humor. The only drawback is the heavily stereotyped character played by Willie Best, which distracts your attention away from the good comedy material. That's nothing at all against Best, who was a talented comedic actor who simply took the roles that were available to him, and who would have succeeded if he'd been given the chance to do more.

Overall, though, it's a solid comedy, and one that allows Lloyd to do many of the things that made him so popular.

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7/10

Enjoyable, albeit lacking the necessary vitality to really make it stick

I_Ailurophile21 December 2023

While he lacks the same name recognition among general audiences as some of his contemporaries, Harold Lloyd was a shining star of the silent era, a comedian handily matching Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin with his funny antics. With stunts and effects aplenty, his pictures earned big laughs with abundant gags and situational humor, not to mention some witty dialogue (imparted through intertitles), fun character dynamics, and even some physical comedy adjoining the lighthearted silliness. Lloyd's first foray into sound films was less successful, however, for reasons that had nothing to do with audio; the writing in 1929's 'Welcome danger' felt too much like a mishmash, stepping away from the man's strengths, and it came off as the least Harold Lloyd of any Harold Lloyd vehicle up to that point. What then of his second sound film, which further reunites Lloyd with returning director Clyde Bruckman, and co-stars including Barbara Kent and Noah Young? For as much as I've loved all of Lloyd's silent works, after this title's immediate predecessor I sat to watch with expectations that had been substantially lowered. The good news is that 'Feet first' is pleasant and charming, and certainly earns some laughs, with no small amount of cleverness. Happily, it's also surely more consistent than the last effort.

The bad news is that the humor in this feature is too often very extra light - albeit also punctuated with instances of a somewhat off-putting mean streak. In a runtime of ninety-some minutes, much of the first third doesn't make much of an impression, and thereafter the writing continues to be highly variable; too many bits feel tired, as if the writers were really stretching and straining to whip up good ideas. This applies equally to the narrative, scene writing, characters, and dialogue: clever at many points, yes, but meager at others, and too often lacking the vitality that would help a moment to really stick and have the desired impact. In the same measure that 'Welcome danger' felt too much unlike a Harold Lloyd movie in its amalgamation of crime, drama, and adventure with the comedy, 'Feet first' feels at times too much like a softer, lesser creation, failing to achieve the same vibrancy as its silent predecessors no matter how boisterous the actors are, or how much they run around. This is enjoyable, but in a way that more tends to more closely resemble a warm, gentle spring breeze, sometimes blowing hotter more like the middle of summer, than an invigorating shot in the arm. Case in point: the picture's biggest stunt, recalling Lloyd's most famous scene in 1923's 'Safety last!', is also the only significant one here.

I do actually like this. It's entertaining, and it's well made, with fine contributions from most everyone on hand, including the cast. The sad fact of the matter is that this flick struggles to capture the imagination in the same way as anything the star made preceding the advent of talkies - 'Why worry?', 'Dr. Jack,' 'Hot water,' and so on. It holds up better than the man's first sound feature, but I only wish that it were more robust, with the same energy and wit that defined the best of Lloyd's oeuvre, for even the last act has a had time matching up despite the obvious kinship. (Please also note a single, casually racist line that hasn't aged well. Lloyd himself accordingly dubbed over that line for a subsequent re-release, which speaks well to him sensibilities, but it's there nonetheless.) While this is worth watching on its own merits, with swell ideas through to the end, I would strongly suggest prioritizing Lloyd's silent offerings. Those are must-see classics; this is something less remarkable to be saved for a lazy day. 'Feet first' deserves your viewership, but ironically, it shouldn't be first.

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9/10

a very good sound-era Lloyd film

planktonrules30 April 2006

Warning: Spoilers

I really expected to hate this film. After all, it's the first full-sound feature by my favorite silent film comedian, so I just knew I'd hate it,...the only problem is, I didn't. While in some ways the movie was a minor disappointment (I really didn't want to see him reprise the building climbing sequence from SAFETY LAST), the film was pretty entertaining and stacks up well against other early sound comedies. Compared to many of Laurel and Hardy's features, for example, the film seems good. While it's not up to the quality of Stan and Ollie's SONS OF THE DESERT, it's about as good as THE DEVIL'S BROTHER or SWISS MISS. And, it is better than or as good as a couple of Lloyd's silent features. If you are looking for a film as great as THE FRESHMAN or THE KID BROTHER, well, then it will be a let-down.

Harold is a shoe salesman who wants more out of his career. He takes a self-confidence correspondence course and sets out to make his fortune. Along the way, he meets up with a sweet lady who he thinks is rich (but she's just the secretary for a rich man who manufactures shoes--the same ones Harold sells in the shop where he works). Through a series of mix-ups, the boss thinks Harold, too, is rich and they strike up a friendship. Harold wants to tell the truth but is afraid of losing the girl. Watch the film and see how it all works out in the end (that's the Lloyd trademark).

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5/10

Deja Vu

JoeytheBrit2 January 2010

Lloyd's career, like that of Keaton's, was irreparably damaged by the advent of sound, and this film is a fairly good example of why he failed to survive the transition. While the physical comedy is as funny as it was in his silent movies, the verbal comedy is, for Lloyd, one almighty pratfall. He clearly realised he needed something to amend for this shortcoming and, with a hint of desperation, harked backed to Safety Last (1923), one of his greatest silent films, by repeating the entire scaling the outside of a skyscraper sequence.

Lloyd plays a lowly shoe salesman who falls for a woman he believes is the daughter of the wealthy owner of the shoe store he works for but who is actually his secretary. Lloyd inadvertently manages to end up as a stowaway on the boat which his beloved and her boss are travelling and attempts to pass himself off as a wealthy young businessman while trying to avoid the ship's crew.

For most of the film the laughs are pretty strained. To be fair the film isn't particularly bad, but it falls so far below Lloyd's previous standards that you end up believing that it is. The finale in this film is almost as thrilling as the one in Safety Last, but it's just a repeat (without a musical score) and it smacks of desperation on the part of both Lloyd and his studio.

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8/10

Harold Lloyd's First Official Talkie

springfieldrental1 September 2022

Harold Lloyd was trying to find his footing in talkies after he had achieved enormous popularity in silent movies. His first official "talkie" was November 1930's "Feet First." His previous movie, 1929's "Welcome Danger," could be catalogued as a talkie, but some of the scenes were filmed as a silent, with the remainder reshot with talking dialogue.

Lloyd returned to his silent movie roots by reworking his most famous stunt, climbing the front of a tall building in his 1923 classic, "Safety Last." As the title, "Feet First" implies, Lloyd is a shoe salesman who brags to Barbara (Barbara Kent) he's an owner of a leather company. Although she's only a secretary to the owner of the shoe manufacturer he works for, he thinks Barbara is his daughter. Later, he finds himself on an ocean liner with the two of them. The CEO has to get a letter delivered on deadline, and Harold steps forward to promise delivery, only to find himself on dry land on a painter's scaffolding hoisted halfway up a tall building. The hair-raising antics of "Safety First" are then repeated. His film crew staged the scene using the same camera tricks he used seven years earlier, this time constructing a skyscraper's facade on the roof of the Southern California Gas Company building on South Broadway in Los Angeles.

"Feet First" received mixed reviews. The New York Times described Lloyd's first bonafide talkie contained his usual style of gag writing. "No matter how foolish this farce becomes, it virtually defies any spectator to sit through it without laughing." Theater-goers did enjoy Lloyd's hijinks, making it the sixth highest box-office take for 1930. But the movie was also the comedian's least financially successful feature film dating back to 1921, snaring less than one million dollars. For Lloyd, this was a bit concerting. He found himself without a female opposite again since Barbara Kent received other offers after appearing twice with the comic. As for the previously prolific Harold, his movie output slowed down considerably after talkies arrived, releasing only one movie every year or two.

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5/10

Slapstick, Romance, and Some Shoes

brandinscottlindsey14 July 2017

Feet First is a comedy film from 1930, starring Harold Lloyd as the main character, named Harold Home. Harold is an ambitious young man working a retail job where he garners no respect from anyone. The bumbling, unconfident Harold eventually meets the woman of his dreams and antics ensue as he tries to win her over.

Despite it's age, Feet First is still hilarious at times. With ageless bits, such as trying to get rid of a bunch of magazines that show Home in an undesired ad, only to have all of the magazines picked up by the wind and distributed to everyone around. There is also an adrenaline-pumping climax.

Unfortunately, not all of the jokes hold up and the gags that flop will make you cringe. There are also scenes of poor acting from some of the supporting characters. The old display of drunkenness is extremely inaccurate and hard to watch, as the actors seem to be trying too hard to appear intoxicated. The display is extremely embarrassing to watch. Apparently, the only person they have ever seen drunk is Bugs Bunny.

This movie is not exceptionally funny or interesting. Unless you simply desire to see the (in)famous Harold Lloyd in action, I don't recommend it.

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1/10

Complete dung-hole of a movie

AAdaSC27 April 2013

This film has 4 sections.

First of all, Harold (Harold Lloyd) works his way up to being a shoe-store salesman and it's not ever really funny.

The next stage is set in a club and is extremely bad. It is never funny - only tedious - with a complimentary annoying drunk played by Arthur Houseman thrown in for bad measure.

The third stage sees Harold on a cruise and the film gets incredibly boring. Once again, it is never funny.

If you haven't slit your wrists by this point, you will have survived for the final stage which sees Harold painstakingly draw out a slapstick scene outside a building.....oh my God - is he going to fall?........

That's it. Crap.

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5/10

Viewers Beware!

gelatoflo19 October 2000

FEET FIRST clearly shows part of the reasons why Harold Lloyd couldn't make it to the Sound era: he just wanted to (literally) repeat his success by recycling old gags that brought him fame, and any viewer who saw those gags in the original silent features just can't help finding them inferior this time around . First of all those gags are more suitable for silent pictures, secondly the thrill wears out if you saw it before. In this film this problem is most noticeable because it is conceptually a sound remake of Safety Last. To be fair, it has its moments-especially when Harold tried to get his breakfast; the newspaper gag worked well, too. But the Harold Horne character is simply not as likeable or as sympathetic as The Boy in Safety Last. Those contrived, saying-ridden dialogue doesn't help, either. The biggest let-down is really what was supposed to be the highlight-the building climbing scene, which is just a reverse of the same scene minus the clock in Safety Last. Technically the climbing is as challenging as in Safety Last, but for viewers it is definitely a lot less thrilling, because we already saw it before, done by the same person. I strongly recommend anyone who gets to see this movie to just press mute to better `enjoy' this sequence, since the so-called sound effect is just Lloyd panting, shouting some ugly racial slurs and serves no other purpose than annoying.

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3/10

Shoe Doesn't Fit

slokes16 October 2015

Like the other great silent clowns, Harold Lloyd struggled to adapt to the advent of sound. This early all-talkie effort demonstrates why.

Harold Horne (Lloyd) is a lowly Honolulu shoe-store clerk who aspires to better himself and achieve his share of the American dream, not to mention the attentions of an attractive woman he mistakes for the daughter of Mr. Turner, his boss. But a disastrous experience with the boss's wife forces him to endanger himself at sea and on land in order to get the girl.

It's the classic Harold Lloyd scenario, except this time he must also contend with verbal humor that too often falls flat.

"His face bothers me," says the boss's wife, who recognizes but doesn't remember the clerk who upset her so when she meets him again on a ship bound for California.

"You were born bothered!" her husband replies.

"Oh, really!" she snorts, whereupon the scene ends, in "Feet First's" signature flat manner.

Harold himself is pretty flat, too. He had a good voice, but he was better when he didn't have to use it so much. His delivery here is halting. Instead of crisp movement, he is stuck with dialogue that hobbles him and slows down his comic rhythm and timing.

A scene where he runs around the ship stealing magazines (he has discovered he is featured in the magazine in an ad that reveals his lowly status, at a time when he is trying to pass himself off as a tycoon) has promise. He carries a stack of magazines to the ship's rail to throw them overboard, only for them to blow back on the ship. Before this can happen, though, we hear the wind gusting across the deck, spoiling the surprise.

Similarly, "Feet First's" most remembered sequence, showing Harold climbing the outside of a tall building much like he did in the silent classic "Safety Last," is made less brilliant by the poor man's grunting and cries for help. No doubt he did a lot of grunting in "Safety Last" too, only you couldn't hear him. Here, you are forced to notice the exertion more than you do the gravity-defying grace so impressive in the earlier film.

There are a couple of better Harold bits in this movie. One, when he tries to pull one of those ads he is featured in off the backside of a female passenger, has her spin around and catch him in mid-reach. Taking advantage of an on-board musical performance, Harold goes into a dance without missing a beat, and executes a backward pratfall for good measure.

But such scenes are few and far between in a 90-minute movie that feels twice as long. Harold's efforts to avoid discovery as a stowaway come off as mean and embarrassing rather than funny. Harold was always getting into these scrapes in silent films, but there you weren't required to take his antics as real the way you are here.

There is much criticism of Willie Best's turn as a dopey janitor who tries to help Harold as he's clinging to a building. Best, who went by the moniker "Sleep 'n' Eat," was a black comedian who took roles when he could find them in a socially restrictive time. Harold calls him "Charcoal," which is unfortunate and obscures the fact he gave Best a rare chance to do some comedy in an A-picture. Best's no more dopey than the white sailor "Elmer" (Noah Young) whom Harold tangles with on the ship, but it's still a weight on account of his race, not to mention that dopiness is a lazy form of comedy too often employed here.

Director Clyde Bruckman, like Lloyd, made his name in great silent comedies, notably Buster Keaton's "The General" and the classic Laurel and Hardy short "Putting Pants On Philip." Here he seems as lost as Lloyd reworking silent comic tropes for a less-forgiving medium.

Overall, I found "Feet First" a labored exercise, brightened only by occasional reminders of Lloyd's silent greatness. It's a fascinating showcase of why silent comedy was special, albeit mostly in the form of a negative example.

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2/10

Harold Lloyd's Mistake

film_poster_fan4 May 2022

It would have been better if this film had never been produced. I first saw "Feet First" on the big screen when I was about twelve with my grandmother and thought it was funny then, but that was over fifty years ago. Seeing it again tonight, I don't think I smiled once. Hearing Lloyd's every grunt and gasp and his cries for help as he climbs the building at the finale make one wish this were a silent film. Having seen "Safety Last!" earlier, it was difficult to understand why he would want to remake those same concluding scenes just seven years later.

Others on this database have written about the offensive racism of Sleep N' Eat (Willie Best), the Black actor who appears near the end of the film, who fails to help Lloyd. One reviewer confuses him with Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) and another writes that since it was made in 1930, what can you do about it, implying that racism that is old is fine. I would hope most people today are a little more enlightened.

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Great - until the end

philgieri21 December 2001

By 1930, silent pictures were definitely a thing of the past. Harold Lloyd, one of the ultimate masters of silent comedy, was forced to adapt his style to sound. This was not as easy as one would think - "Welcome Danger", his first all-talking picture, displayed very little of his usual sight-gag style, instead relying on verbal quips and one-liners and, consequently, being vastly inferior to his silent masterpieces. Fortunately, Lloyd realized this and "Feet First", his second sound film, is again on par with his greatest silents - for the most part. Although totally lacking of something like a story, "Feet First" keeps the one-liner rate at an absolute minimum, instead abounding with sight-gags.

So how come that this movie is never counted among Lloyd's masterpieces? Some people consider it a total rip-off of his silents; it generally is not, it just follows the same pattern. The only letdown is the last reel; the house-climbing episode desperately tries to copy and improve Lloyd's earlier dare-devil climbing scenes but it fails to deliver, partly because of the poor editing and pacing (compared to "Safety Last"), partly because of the stereotype racist portrayal of the janitor, played by Willie "Sleep'n'Eat" Best.

Apart from that last reel, however, "Feet First" ranks among Lloyd's funniest, if not his best pictures (it simply lacks a bit of the beauty of "The Kid Brother" or the pace of "Safety Last" to rival with those two) and certainly among his prime talkies.

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