Although academic interest in silent-film comedy is nothing new, until recently it was neither widely available on video nor readily accessible unless you went to film school, lived in a large metropolitan area with an arthouse theater and a Museum of Modern Art, or were Martin Scorsese. Kino Video has been righting this wrong in the past few years, having released a comprehensive collection of Buster Keaton comedies, a series of Charlie Chaplin's short films, and several Harry Langdon features. Its latest effort is the ambitious Slapstick Encyclopedia, a four-tape series (with four more to follow) featuring over two dozen short films dating from 1909 to 1926, with quality ranging from forgettable to brilliant. Although the collection is not strictly chronological, it does show how film comedy gradually evolved from broad, theatrical pantomime to a fluid gag-and-personality-driven style, a style eventually passed on to the classic animation of the '40s and '50s, as well as to Hong Kong action comedies. Viewing several of these often-intense, breakneck-paced films in one sitting can cause eyes to glaze over, but each volume features some startlingly impressive, innovative material that contradicts popular notions about the archaic crudeness of silent film. The Mack Sennett-produced Keystone comedies (highlighted in Volume 2) demonstrate skilled uses of D.W. Griffith-inspired editing and cross-cutting to create suspense, as in 1913's Barney Oldfield's Race For A Life. Those who think the Dadaists were acting alone in their anarchic anti-art mania in World War I-era Zurich and Paris should watch these contemporary Sennett films, which are filled with twittish lead characters, self-consciously campy villains, and a basic lack of respect for everything. The early work of Charlie Chaplin, who made his film debut with Sennett and is featured in 1914's The Rounders, reveals Chaplin's immediate impact on movie comedy. Although still some years away from his sentimental "Tramp" persona, Chaplin's relative placidity—coupled with his shrewd ability to take in all the implications of a scene and play on that which is not immediately obvious—instantly set him apart from his flailing, parody- and burlesque-oriented costars. He clearly paved the way for the quieter, more subtle, strongly delineated comic personas of Keaton and Harold Lloyd, both of whom took several years to refine their characters. This is apparent in Keaton's performances in a pair of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle shorts. Still new to movies, Keaton's trademark unsmiling expression has not yet set; in Oh, Doctor!, a recently rediscovered film from 1917, the 22-year-old comedian laughs and cries and emotes no less emphatically than any other scene-stealing clown. Slapstick Encyclopedia also gives due to such lesser-knowns as Arbuckle, Max Linder, and Charley Chase, each featured in some clever work. Arbuckle, extremely popular in his time but best known today for being accused of raping and killing a starlet (he was acquitted, but his career was destroyed), was an agile comedian with perfect timing who trained Keaton in filmmaking. Volume 3, Funny Girls, showcases several gifted comedic actresses who often starred in their own short comedies, proving that women were not just used as pretty foils or bathing beauties. Unfortunately, most of this material is mediocre, with the exception of the 1924 short One Wet Night, featuring comedienne Alice Howell. A goofy domestic situation comedy set during a raging rainstorm, it gets a lot of surrealistic mileage out of its slight premise. Even if some of the films' comedic appeal has worn off, and they occasionally feature some shockingly strong racial and sexual humor, it is still fascinating to watch what brought the house down more than 80 years ago. A film like Alkali Ike's Auto, which by today's standards is quaint at best but was all the rage in 1911, still serves as a reminder of how silent-film comedy contributed to the language of movies.