31min. // A tipsy gentleman staggers into an upscale health spa with a single-minded plan: to cure his thirst with more drink, not less. His most prized possession is a massive suitcase, which the staff assumes is full of clothes and personal effects—but is in fact packed to the brim with bottles of liquor. From the moment he arrives, chaos follows. He becomes hopelessly entangled in the revolving door at the entrance, turning a simple doorway into a whirling slapstick machine that tangles guests, porters, and dignity alike.
Inside, the spa’s solemn rituals of health and purity collide with his smuggled contraband. While earnest patients sip the supposedly curative mineral water, he discreetly empties it out and tops his own glass from the hidden stash, staying several drinks ahead of sobriety. His antics put him at odds with a hulking fellow patient suffering from gout, whose bandaged foot becomes an unwitting target for every mishap—from doors and chairs to tumbling bodies. Their escalating feud turns the genteel resort into a battlefield of pratfalls and payback.
Amid the uproar, he is distracted by a gentle, idealistic young woman who believes in the spa’s powers and in the possibility of reform. She urges him to abandon the bottle and embrace the cure, even as he wobbles between charm and inebriation. Her presence introduces a flicker of conscience, but also fresh opportunities for embarrassment as he tries, and fails, to appear respectable in front of her.
As the bottles inevitably spill out and the liquor finds its way into the sacred waters, the entire establishment is soon reeling—literally. Guests and staff alike succumb to unintended intoxication, turning the regimented health retreat into a delirious carnival of drunken slapstick. What began as one man’s attempt to smuggle his habit into a place of reform becomes a riotous send-up of temperance, respectability, and the very notion of being “cured.”
Directed by: Charlie Chaplin
Writing Credits: Charlie Chaplin
Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Henry Bergman, Albert Austin, Eric Campbell
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