Local Showers (1916)

• 53%
• 1916
• Comedy
• Louis Myll
• Harry Watson
• Della Connor
• H.H. McCullum

Musty sleeps beside an open window and the morning breezes set his hollow tooth a-going. So Musty goes to the "painless dentist." He is ushered first into the ante-room, where his joy at knowing that teeth are pulled free of charge receives a set-back, for the attractive office girl begins to weep. She just can't bear the thought of what is going to happen to our hero. She attaches a large pair of tongs to Musty and gives the signal to the engineer, who operates the "power behind the uplift movement" in the shape of a steam hoist. After being thoroughly shaken, so that all his loose change falls into a hopper devoted to that purpose, Musty is hoisted up many floors through a series of trap-doors, to the topmost stage of the skyscraper. On the way up he meets a workman with a ladder. The results to the latter are disastrous and he falls through all the trapdoors to the engine room. Musty is taken off the unique elevator and hauled into the reception room of the "painless dentist." There he is discouraged by the sight of so many sufferers, and further depressed by the howls of agony coming from the dentist's operating room. At last Musty's turn comes and he discovered that the painless dentist really is a painless dentist; it doesn't hurt the doctor a bit. Musty fails to succumb to the gas administered, but a few judiciously directed blows over the head render him unconscious, and the offending molar is removed. Musty is then propelled from the office in unique fashion, after being restored to consciousness by a downpour of water. He lands in the "drying room." After a few turns on the spit before the open fire, he is thoroughly dried. He escapes from the drying room by dashing up the chimney, but is pursued by a heavy stream from a fire hose, which lifts him up the flue to the roof of the building, where he falls through a series of chutes which again convey him to the bottom floor. Here he finds two ambulance attendants waiting with a stretcher and is much relieved when they carry him into a hospital.