Harold Lloyd in SAFETY LAST at ‘Camp Arkadin’ September 23rd at The Heavy Anchor in St. Louis

” Young man, don’t you know you might fall and get hurt?”

The Arkadin Cinema, a local independent theater scheduled to open soon, is hosting ‘Camp Arkadin’, an outdoor film series that takes place in the back lot at The Heavy Anchor (5226 Gravois Ave in St. Louis). Harold Lloyd in SAFETY LAST plays at ‘Camp Arkadin’ Wednesday September 23rd. Showtime is 8:15. Enter through the front of The Heavy Anchor. Admission is $5. Bring your own chair. First come, first served. Seating is limited. Food and drinks and available there at The Heavy Anchor. This is a 21+ event, so leave the kids home. A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE. The Arkadin Cinema’s site can be found HERE. Admission is only $5. ‘Camp Arkadin’ only seats about 30 people so get you tix in advance (ticket info on the FB invite).

SAFETY LAST stars Harold Lloyd, whose signature straw hat and round glasses were the biggest draws in comedy next to Chaplin and Keaton in the ‘20s. And if you show any film fan today the scene of Lloyd hanging precariously from a clock high on the side of a building, they may not know who the man is, but they probably know the indelible image, which is the biggest highlight from SAFETY LAST, probably the most beloved of Lloyd’s career.

The story of Safety Last! follows the Boy (Lloyd) as he seeks his livelihood in the big city of Los Angeles, in the hopes of making enough to wed his beloved Girl (Lloyd’s soon-to-be real-life wife Mildred Davis.) Working as a fabric counter clerk in a department store though, fortune eludes him, but he spends every dime to buy his Girl jewelry to convince her he’s doing well. Eventually the scheme catches up with him, but he has a plan to make some quick cash, involving a human fly who plans to climb the side of the store’s building for some easy publicity. It’s a moderately simple story broken into two main parts, the store struggles and the big climb, but it’s meticulously paced to keep the energy high and the laughs flowing thanks to precision gags by Lloyd and an impressive filmmaking effort..