Trapdoor Escapes

A standard in silent films was for a comedian to make a resourceful use of trapdoors to avoid capture during a breakneck chase scene.  This type of routine goes back to nineteenth-century British Pantomime.

Here is an early film version of the routine performed by Harold Lloyd for a 1918 comedy called Follow the Crowd.

One of the best choreographed versions of the routine appeared in Buster Keaton's The High Sign (1921). 

This routine was used to a lesser extent in sound films.  Here is an example of the routine from Marx Brothers' last M-G-M feature, The Big Store (1941).