Yes, Yankee Doodle in Berlin is silent, but don’t go away. Let me tell you about it. It’s different. Really.

The picture stars Bothwell Browne, who was Danish and a female impersonator. (Note that you don’t have to be Scandinavian to be a female impersonator, but it helps. Just look at Garbo.) Anyway, Browne is Capt. Bob White of the American Army who accepts the job of infiltrating the German high command during WWI in the guise of a sexy woman. He will then vamp the Kaiser (Ford Sterling) and his son, the Crown Prince (Mal St. Clair), and seduce from them all their military secrets. Think of him as Mata Harry.

The comedy comes from shameless slapstick and the conceit that the Kaiser is nothing but a henpecked husband who is constantly under the thumb of his frau (Eva Thatcher). Add that to the propagandistic notion that Germany was being ruled by numbnuts and idiots (played by silent comedy stalwarts Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin, Bert Roach and others) and you have a fast-paced 58 minutes of funhouse slapstick that makes Mel Brooks look like Alan Rickman.

The picture was directed by F. Richard Jones and is pure Mack Sennett, loaded with pratfalls, mistaken identities, domineering women, seltzer bottles, sexual innuendo, collapsing beds and more goofy facial hair than a barber shop full of adolescent werewolves. Settle back to laugh, kick off your shoes, lower your brow, and pop the cap off a beer. Keystone, of course. —Doug Bentin