Ranking All Of Director Buster Keaton’s Movies
“What are Buster Keaton’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Keaton’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Buster Keaton and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.
Happy Viewing!
The Top Film’s Of Buster Keaton
45 ) Streamlined Swing
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 45
- Letterboxd User Score: 40
A group of African-American waiters on a railway believe they have made a deal to secure a railroad dining car that they set up on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles as a diner. To bring in customers, they sing, their voices providing most of the musical accompaniment as well. At the diner, in front of a crowd of swells, the police deliver the bad news.
Purchase / Learn More
 |
44 ) Life in Sometown, U.S.A.
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 43
- Letterboxd User Score: 40
A satirical visualization of strange and forgotten, but (at that time) nevertheless still existing laws in the U.S.A.
Purchase / Learn More
|
43 ) Hollywood Handicap
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 44
- Letterboxd User Score: 38
A group of stable hands is given a race horse when its owner retires from the business. They raise money to run the horse in the Hollywood Derby at Santa Anita race track. Many Hollywood personalities attend the event.
Purchase / Learn More
|
42 ) Mixed Magic
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 41
- Letterboxd User Score: 40
When Buster Keaton goes to work as an assistant to a carnival magician, the results turn out to be less than magical.
Purchase / Learn More
|
40 ) The Rough House
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 41
- Letterboxd User Score: 39
Roscoe, his wife and his mother-in-law run a seaside resort. Buster plays a gardener who puts out a fire started by Roscoe, then a delivery boy who fights with the cook St. John, then a cop.
Purchase / Learn More
|
40 ) Blue Blazes
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 40
- Letterboxd User Score: 40
Buster becomes a fireman, but unfortunately not a particularly good one. He has a chance to prove himself, however, when three women are trapped in a burning building.
Purchase / Learn More
|
38 ) Excuse My Dust
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 36
- Letterboxd User Score: 40
Joe, inventor in an American Small town of 1895 has problems with his new invention, a car, driven with a gasoline motor. Everybody is making fun about his “crazy invention”, only his girl friend believes in him. When he’s halfway successful, another woman tries to win his heart, and his girl-friend thinks he has quit with her. But on a race for those new horse-less vehicles, he gets in trouble and only his former girl friend is able to help him.
Purchase / Learn More
|
38 ) Love Nest on Wheels
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 36
- Letterboxd User Score: 40
Buster, the eldest son in a family of hillbillies who manage a hotel, attempts to raise money to save the hotel from foreclosure.
Purchase / Learn More
|
36 ) Allez Oop
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 38
- Letterboxd User Score: 36
When Buster’s girlfriend falls for a trapeze artist, Buster tries to beat him at his own game.
Purchase / Learn More
|
36 ) Easy to Wed
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 38
- Letterboxd User Score: 36
A spiffy remake of the screwball classic Libeled Lady, with Esther as the lady libeled. Van Johnson, Keenan Wynn and Lucille Ball round out a funny four-sided love triangle.
Purchase / Learn More
|
35 ) The Frozen North
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 24
- IMDB User Review Score: 34
- Letterboxd User Score: 31
This satirical parody of William S. Hart’s melodramatic films finds Buster in the frozen north, “last stop on the subway.” He uses a wanted poster as his partner in robbing a gambling house. When he thinks he spies his wife making love to another man he shoots them both only to learn it isn’t his cabin after all.
Purchase / Learn More
|
34 ) Hollywood Cavalcade
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 34
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
Starting in 1913 movie director Connors discovers singer Molly Adair. As she becomes a star she marries an actor, so Connors fires them. She asks for him as director of her next film. Many silent stars shown making the transition to sound.
Purchase / Learn More
|
32 ) The Balloonatic
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 23
- IMDB User Review Score: 31
- Letterboxd User Score: 31
Buster and Phyllis endure a number of outdoor adventures trying to prove to each other their survival skills. The balloon which lands Buster in the wilderness proves useful later on as their canoe is about go over a waterfall.
Purchase / Learn More
|
32 ) My Wife’s Relations
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 21
- IMDB User Review Score: 33
- Letterboxd User Score: 31
Buster is falsely accused of breaking a window by a woman and is taken into a courtroom. Thinking that Buster and the woman are engaged, the judge mistakenly marries them and Buster is quickly taken home by the woman to meet her family. At first unwelcoming, the family begins to treat Buster nice when they come to believe that he is going to inherit a large sum of money.
Purchase / Learn More
|
31 ) Grand Slam Opera
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 31
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
Elmer Butts is a contestant in a radio amateur hour show hoping to win the first price — by dancing and juggling!
Purchase / Learn More
|
30 ) The Paleface
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 26
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 31
A butterfly collector unwittingly wanders into an Indian encampment while chasing a butterfly. This tribe has resolved to kill the first white man who enters their encampment because white oil tycoons are trying to force them from their land. The Indian warriors give chase to Keaton, who ingeniously escapes their efforts to kill him. As a result, Keaton eventually becomes accepted by the tribe and given the title, “Little Chief Paleface”. He subsequently leads the tribe’s effort to stop the oil tycoons from displacing them from their land.
Purchase / Learn More
|
29 ) The Blacksmith
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 24
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
Buster clowns around in a blacksmith’s shop until he and the smithy get in a fight which sends the smithy to jail. Buster helps several customers with horses, then destroys a Rolls Royce while fixing the car parked next to it.
Purchase / Learn More
|
28 ) The Railrodder
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 15
- Letterboxd User Score: 31
After literally swimming across the Atlantic Ocean, an Englishman takes a country trip across Canada on a railcar.
Purchase / Learn More
|
26 ) College
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 21
- Letterboxd User Score: 20
To reconcile with his girlfriend, a bookish college student tries to become an athlete.
Purchase / Learn More
|
26 ) Spite Marriage
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 21
- Letterboxd User Score: 20
Elmer, a humble worker in a dry cleaning establishment, idolizes stage actress Trilby Drew. She, in turn, is carrying a torch for fellow actor Lionel Benmore. When he spurns her for the younger Ethyl Norcrosse, she impulsively asks Elmer to marry her, only to regret it almost immediately. Her handlers extricate her from the marriage, and when Elmer finds himself first in the hands of criminals and then at sea, he is more than happy for the opportunity to forget her. But a series of coincidences throw Elmer and Trilby back together again and she will have cause to re-evaluate her opinion of him.
Purchase / Learn More
|
25 ) Day Dreams
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 17
- IMDB User Review Score: 30
- Letterboxd User Score: 20
In order to impress the father of a girl he is keen on, Buster goes to the city in search of work. In his letters home he writes of his various jobs which her imagination expands into much nobler ones than those that he is actually attempting.
Purchase / Learn More
|
24 ) The Love Nest
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 14
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
In an attempt to forget his lost sweetheart, Buster takes a long trip at the sea when he’s caught by pirates.
Purchase / Learn More
|
22 ) In the Good Old Summertime
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 20
In this musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner, feuding co-workers in a small music shop do not realize they are secret romantic pen pals.
Purchase / Learn More
|
22 ) Hard Luck
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 18
- IMDB User Review Score: 21
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
A down on his luck young man makes several attempts at committing suicide but fails them too. He then finds himself becoming more confident through a series of petty adventures, to such an extent that this becomes his undoing.
Purchase / Learn More
|
21 ) Convict 13
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 21
- IMDB User Review Score: 21
- Letterboxd User Score: 17
A young golfer is mugged by an escaped convict and finds himself in a prison where he foils a jailbreak.
Purchase / Learn More
|
20 ) The Haunted House
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 17
Buster Keaton is a bank teller who becomes involved with a hold-up, counterfeiters, and a theatrical troupe posing as spooks in a haunted house.
Purchase / Learn More
|
19 ) Battling Butler
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 18
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 20
Alfred’s father feels his son has grown up too comfortably and as a result has not become what a man should be. To remedy this predicament he sends his son Alfred off on a hunting trip. On the trip, in the midst of many follies brought on by his inexperience with the outdoors, he meets a young mountain girl and falls in love with her. Alfred’s butler, who has accompanied him on the outing, is sent to arrange the marriage with the girl’s father, who thinks Alfred is too weak to become a member of the family. In an attempt to change the father’s mind, the butler tells the girl’s father and brother that Alfred is actually Alfred “Battling” Butler, a professional boxer. The deception works and a wedding is arranged. Comic mischief ensues as Alfred and his butler attempt to make their newly fabricated story seem plausible to the family of his new bride.
Purchase / Learn More
|
18 ) The Play House
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 14
The opening scene, a dream sequence prior to the vaudeville routines which follow, is what makes this film famous. In it Keaton plays everyone in a theatre simultaneously (through multiple exposures).
Purchase / Learn More
|
17 ) Three Ages
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 18
- IMDB User Review Score: 21
- Letterboxd User Score: 20
“The Three Ages,” Buster Keaton’s first feature-length film after a number of comedy shorts, is his parody of Griffith’s “Intolerance.” Keaton tells three parallel stories about the perils of romance, one set in the Stone Age, one during the Roman Empire, and one during the 20th century.
Purchase / Learn More
|
16 ) The Boat
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 15
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 14
Buster’s handmade boat, The Damfino, is finished and is, of course, too large to get through the basement door. When he drives off with it in tow, the side of his house, then the whole thing, collapses. At the harbor he rides the boat out only to have it sink beneath him. The rest is a series of adventures he and his family have with the restored boat.
Purchase / Learn More
|
15 ) The High Sign
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Buster is thrown off a train near an amusement park. There he gets a job in a shooting gallery run by the Blinking Buzzards mob. Ordered to kill a businessman, he winds up protecting the man and his daughter by outfitting their home with trick devices.
Purchase / Learn More
|
14 ) The Electric House
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 16
- Letterboxd User Score: 17
Botany major Buster mistakenly graduates in electrical engineering and is hired to wire a new home.
Purchase / Learn More
|
13 ) Go West
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 15
- IMDB User Review Score: 16
- Letterboxd User Score: 14
Keaton portrays Friendless, who travels west to try to make his fortune. Once there, he tries his hand at bronco-busting, cattle wrangling, and dairy farming, eventually forming a bond with a cow named “Brown Eyes.” Eventually he finds himself leading a herd of cattle through Los Angeles.
Purchase / Learn More
|
12 ) Neighbors
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
The Romeo and Juliet story played out in a tenement neighborhood with Buster and Virginia’s families hating each other over the fence separating their buildings.
Purchase / Learn More
|
11 ) The Cameraman
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 27
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
Buster is a tintype portrait photographer who at first sight develops a serious crush on Sally, a beautiful young woman who works as a secretary for MGM’s newsreel department. Buster seeks to also work there, as a newsreel cameraman, in hopes of impressing her. However, his skills with a movie camera are lacking at first. Buster is determined to succeed, in hopes of winning the girl.
Purchase / Learn More
|
10 ) Cops
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Buster Keaton gets involved in a series of misunderstandings involving a horse and cart. Eventually he infuriates every cop in the city when he accidentally interrupts a police parade.
Purchase / Learn More
|
9 ) The Scarecrow
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
Buster competes with another farmhand for the love of the farmer’s daughter.
Purchase / Learn More
|
8 ) The Goat
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 10
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
A series of adventures begins when Buster is mistaken for Dead Shot Dan, the evil bad guy.
Purchase / Learn More
|
7 ) Our Hospitality
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
A man returns to his Appalachian homestead. On the trip, he falls for a young woman. The only problem is her family has vowed to kill every member of his family.
Purchase / Learn More
|
6 ) The Navigator
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 5
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Two spoiled rich people find themselves trapped on an empty passenger ship.
Purchase / Learn More
|
4 ) One Week
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 3
The story involves two newlyweds, Keaton and Seely, who receive a build-it-yourself house as a wedding gift. The house can be built, supposedly, in “one week.” A rejected suitor secretly re-numbers packing crates. The movie recounts Keaton’s struggle to assemble the house according to this new “arrangement”.
Purchase / Learn More
|
4 ) Seven Chances
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- IMDB User Review Score: 5
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
A man learns he will inherit a fortune if he marries — by 7 p.m. today.
Purchase / Learn More
|
3 ) The General
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 2
During America’s Civil War Union spies steal engineer Johnnie Gray’s beloved locomotive The General – his lady love, Annabelle Lee, aboard an attached boxcar – and he single-handedly must do all in his power to both get The General back and to rescue Annabelle. Released throughout most of the world in 1927, this Silent comedy-action film flopped when originally released, but now is regarded as one of the great American motion pictures. The story is based on actual historic events.
Purchase / Learn More
|
2 ) Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 5
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
The just out of college effete son of a no-nonsense steamboat captain comes to visit his father whom he’s not seen since he was little.
Purchase / Learn More
|
1 ) Sherlock, Jr.
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meagre skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend’s father’s pocketwatch.
Purchase / Learn More
|
Buster Keaton’s Best Movies
Buster Keaton Review Website Filmography Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| Sherlock, Jr. | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Steamboat Bill, Jr. | 1 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 2 |
| The General | 8 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
| One Week | 10 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| Seven Chances | 1 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| The Navigator | 1 | 9 | 5 | 8 | 6 |
| Our Hospitality | 6 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 7 |
| The Goat | 10 | 5 | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| The Scarecrow | 10 | 5 | 8 | 12 | 9 |
| Cops | 10 | 9 | 11 | 8 | 10 |
| The Cameraman | 10 | 27 | 1 | 4 | 11 |
| Neighbors | 10 | 11 | 11 | 12 | 12 |
| Go West | 1 | 15 | 16 | 14 | 13 |
| The Electric House | 10 | 11 | 16 | 17 | 14 |
| The High Sign | 10 | 27 | 11 | 8 | 15 |
| The Boat | 10 | 15 | 18 | 14 | 16 |
| Three Ages | 1 | 18 | 21 | 20 | 17 |
| The Play House | 10 | 27 | 11 | 14 | 18 |
| Battling Butler | 9 | 18 | 18 | 20 | 19 |
| The Haunted House | 10 | 13 | 26 | 17 | 20 |
| Convict 13 | 10 | 21 | 21 | 17 | 21 |
| In the Good Old Summertime | 10 | 27 | 18 | 20 | 22 |
| Hard Luck | 10 | 18 | 21 | 26 | 22 |
| The Love Nest | 10 | 14 | 26 | 26 | 24 |
| Day Dreams | 10 | 17 | 30 | 20 | 25 |
| College | 10 | 27 | 21 | 20 | 26 |
| Spite Marriage | 10 | 27 | 21 | 20 | 26 |
| The Railrodder | 10 | 27 | 15 | 31 | 28 |
| The Blacksmith | 10 | 24 | 26 | 26 | 29 |
| The Paleface | 10 | 26 | 26 | 31 | 30 |
| Grand Slam Opera | 10 | 27 | 31 | 26 | 31 |
| The Balloonatic | 10 | 23 | 31 | 31 | 32 |
| My Wife’s Relations | 10 | 21 | 33 | 31 | 32 |
| Hollywood Cavalcade | 10 | 27 | 34 | 26 | 34 |
| The Frozen North | 10 | 24 | 34 | 31 | 35 |
| Allez Oop | 10 | 27 | 38 | 36 | 36 |
| Easy to Wed | 10 | 27 | 38 | 36 | 36 |
| Excuse My Dust | 10 | 27 | 36 | 40 | 38 |
| Love Nest on Wheels | 10 | 27 | 36 | 40 | 38 |
| The Rough House | 10 | 27 | 41 | 39 | 40 |
| Blue Blazes | 10 | 27 | 40 | 40 | 40 |
| Mixed Magic | 10 | 27 | 41 | 40 | 42 |
| Hollywood Handicap | 10 | 27 | 44 | 38 | 43 |
| Life in Sometown, U.S.A. | 10 | 27 | 43 | 40 | 44 |
| Streamlined Swing | 10 | 27 | 45 | 40 | 45 |
