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"One of the best loved and most recognizable of silent comedian Harold Lloyd's feature films, Safety Last is the ripping tale of an idealistic, bespectacled small-town boy who heads for the big city in hopes of making his friends and family proud. Instead he ends up working in a dry goods store as a humble clerk. Not wanting to disappoint the folks back home, especially his sweetheart, Harold fudges the truth and writes glowing letters of his fabulous exploits. To further impress his beloved, he spends every nickel he earns on lavish gifts for her. As a result, he is nearly destitute and shares a humble apartment with a ""human fly,"" a daredevil who makes money scaling sky scrapers. In need of cash, the youth convinces his roommate to attempt the tallest building in town. Unfortunately, a merry mix-up ensues on the day of the ascent and Harold must climb the obstacle-covered tower himself. This leads him to one of the most infamous and nail-biting scenes in cinema wherein poor Harold ends up clutching the hands of the shaky and badly sprung town clock while the tiny world 12 stories below waits breathlessly to see how he can extricate from his precarious situation. An accomplished athlete and acrobat, Lloyd performed most of the film's stunts himself, including portions of the clock-tower scene (the scene's long shots were filmed with stunt double Bill Strothers, but this was not widely acknowledged until long after Lloyd's death)."
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Safety Last! (1923)
73 min
When a store clerk organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building, circumstances force him to make the perilous climb himself.