Keystone Kops II - Thematic Design Considerations

You may never have seen any of the Keystone Kops movies, which means you probably never saw movies by Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, or any of the other great comedic talents of the Silent Screen.

Too bad. You've missed something.


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Even though the early Hollywood directors had no qualms about using sex to sell movies, their general approach toward comedy was to capitalize on sight gags. When your movie doesn't have a sound track, that's about all you have to work with. The only way they could communicate comedy was with sight gags, or by flashing 'title frames' on the screen. That only distracted their audience.



Consequently, the main characters who became STARS had their own schtick. Buster Keaton was "The Great Stoneface".



Harold Lloyd played characters who found themselves in impossible situations, often in dangerous places. He always did his own stunts and in places which were NOT studio props. There was the time he found himself hanging from the hands of a steeple clock ....

But the Keystone Kops just ran back and forth, often with disastrous results.



For the Section Match, we had originally thought to use "Television Cops" as the theme. You know, Miami Vice, Kojak, Peter Gunn, 77 Sunset Strip, and even Dukes of Hazard (okay, so they weren't exactly cops, but there was a cop in the show if you count Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane and his deputy Enos Strate.)

On second thought, we changed the theme to "Keystone Kops", just because it was a more lyrical name, and for the alliteration.

This developed into a theme. What if many of the stages required the shooters to run back and forth across the shooting bay, in a manner reminiscent of the Keystone Kops?

This sounded like more fun, and so the stage designs were 'tweaked' by Match Director Mike McCarter ("Mac" to his friends) and especially to his evil alter ego, "Mikey". Also, we had valuable input by the Dundee Club Representative "Barsoom", who needs no alter ego to work his mischief when building stages.

Remington Steele
Thus we had "Remington Steele" (designed by the Hobo Brasser) which was completely altered by Mikey so that the competitor starts in the middle, runs to one side of the stage and then runs to the other side of the stage.



Dukes of Hazard
The Dukes of Hazard stage required the shooters to drop a whiskey jug into a barrel, which activated a disappearing target with a hang time of approximately one half second. (The DT is seen at the right edge of the photo, partially obscured by the barrel.)


Miami Vice
The Miami Vice stage let the competitors kick open doors ... except of course you couldn't actually kick them, lest the Airstream Trailer prop be damaged during the match. The problem was, there were two doors. When you open the left hand door, a swinger was activated which was visible only from a port on the right side. When you open the right hand door, a swinger was activated which was visible only from a port on the left side. There was no alternative to moving back and forth across the stage. Here Scott Springer is working out the best way to shoot the stage.


Starsky & Hutch
"Starsky & Hutch" was a pure hoser stage. Put up a wall, with gaps in it. Targets on the ends. Add ground traps in each of the wall gaps, to activate moving IPSC targets. Throw in steel Poppers, stacked up so you have to knock one down to see the one behind it, and a couple of partially hidden targets for you to forget to shoot.

Match Winner Glen Higdon is shown here, walking through the stage BEHIND the wall so he can count the targets.



It was a good idea to make sure you knew how many targets there were, and where you had to be standing to see them, because there were more targets than there seemed to be, if you only considered that the score sheet listed a mere 24 rounds.



Match winner (GM) Glen Higdon finished the stage in 12.83 seconds with 107 points.


Stage Winner (GM - no photo available) Yong Lee finished the stage in 12.38 seconds with 115 points.

Thirteen year-old C-Open shooter Ryan Leonard finished the stage in 17.42 seconds with 102 points,

beating sixty year-old B-Open shooter Jerry the Geek who finished the stage in 19.21 seconds with 112 points.


(I never liked that kid!)

It's a young man's game, when youthful talent so readily beats experienced treachery.