Thundering Taxis

As I said above, I'd love to know more about the making of this film. You see, in the early 1930s, the Hal Roach Studio made a series of films under the umbrella term 'The Taxi Boys'. Some starred Ben Blue and Billy Gilbert, but a few had different Taxi Boy characters--such as Clyde Cook and Billy Bevan. Now here is the part that makes me curious. Why do the Clyde Cook ones look as if they are pieced together with clips from silent films? After all, silent movies were filmed at a slightly slower speed than sound films (16-22 frames per second versus 24 for sound) and when silent clips are inserted in talking pictures, the silent portions run too quickly. Could these films be made up of new footage and an older Roach film? Or, could they have shot some footage and not used it--only to use it later in these films? I tried to find out more about the series on the internet without any success.

This short has to do with the two cabbies having problems with a nasty rival cab company--one that will do ANYTHING to stop their competition. As things heat up, there are lots of scenes of speeding cars and crazy driving and the film looks more like a Sennett film because of this. It's all fun but there isn't a lot of depth--just lots of silent era style gags.

After the demise of the "The Boyfriends" series Hal Roach hired Mack Sennett's ace director Del Lord to create a new series "The Taxi Boys". THUNDERING TAXIS was the last released in the short-lived series but was actually the first one filmed (according to comedy historian/guru Richard Roberts) and is one of the wilder examples of meshing silent film techniques with sound comedic stylings. Silent comedy veterans Billy Bevan and Clyde Cook are recruited to recreate their glory years. At one point the action stops so Cook can revisit a clam eating routine first performed by Bevan in WANDERING WILLIES (26). Lord goes all out using fast motion, mechanical (these taxis get bent , twisted and turned)and impossible gags (a cabbie's arm stretches to incredible lengths to retrieve an unpaid fare), and even animation (an old silent comedy dodge). In fact, if ever there was a live action cartoon this is it.

Bud Jamison leads a ragtag, misfit crew of cabbies who line up each morning for inspection and then promptly get toppled over like bowling pins. When a taxi war breaks (thanks to the lovely Muriel Evans, who once again loses her skirt)out they show what a true cowering, sniveling group they are. Cook and Bevan get pushed to the forefront of the fight but it's all about the gags - a taxis with headlights for eyes peer outside the garage to see if the coast is clear; lethal spits of tobacco juice break windshields, knock over whole cabs and make them spin like a top on the road. This short is not about plot or character development. Our two heroes are just as much props as the taxis are. Dirty tricks abound and when Bevan tries to retaliate he gets a telephone pole crashing upon his car for his troubles. Eventually a chase breaks out but by now all of the cabs on both sides are so damaged that it's more of a junk yard derby featuring bouncing heaps on the road.

All in all this is a fun short for lovers of sight gag comedy.

Thundering Taxis (1933)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

This here is without question the worst entry in Hal Roach's Taxi Boys series. This one here is yet another head scratcher but more on that in a bit. The story has our "Taxi Boys" getting a fight started with a rival taxi company and soon the two sides are doing battle with the other guys often winning. Billy Bevan and Clyde Cook eventually gets things really heated and this leads to a battle in the streets. Leonard Maltin had a great book on shorts from this era but even it wasn't that complete when it came to this series. There doesn't seem to be too much out there in terms of reading about the Taxi Boys series, which is a shame because as other reviews have said the series is rather confusing. I'm not sure what the point of switching the film stars so much was but this one here is full of stock footage from a silent movie. Whenever I watch a movie I hate to be thinking about anything other than the story in front of me but this movie here had me thinking which movie I was actually watching. You could tell the silent stuff because of the speed but at other times I wondered if I was watching freshly shot material or if perhaps they were using footage from a third picture. The film looks horrible and you can't help but feel it was thrown together because the studio had to get a new film in the theater and didn't have a real one ready to go. I didn't laugh at anything and the big special effects of an ending doesn't work simply because it's another movie.

Del Lord directed a series of Taxi comedies for Mack Sennett in the late 1920s, which is, in no small part, how he came to direct a series of taxi comedies for Roach. After Roach closed down the series, Lord went into selling cars for a while, then into directing for Jules White.

It is no surprise, then, that this series owes a lot to Lord's old series -- in fact, the first gag in this one is taken from TAXI DOLLS (1929), but while the reaction to that iteration is salacious, here it's simple surprise.

Most of the rest of this is largely composed of other Sennett-style gags, which are very well executed -- Billy Bevan, who was a Sennett stalwart, is here, and Clyde Cook is virtually voiceless, as he is in his other appearance in the series. The plot is about a war between various taxi fleets and the havoc they wreak on each other. It's all competently done, but nothing that Lord had not done before. Or after: they even do the oyster in the chowder gag and White used that routine for Three Stooges movies into the 1950s.

This one must have been made before Ben Blue and Billy Gilbert became the stars of the Taxi Boys. Director Del Lord was well known in the silent era for his stunts with car chases. As usual, he does not disappoint here. However, this film does not take advantage of the possibilities of sound. It is essentially a silent film. Silent comics Billy Bevan and Clyde Cook are the main focus. It is nice to see Lord favorite Bud Jamison as the manager of a taxi company. This plot less wonder had two reels of car gags with some time out for Cook to do the famous oyster stew routine. It was first done by Bevan at Sennett in the 20s and was done to perfection by Curly Howard at Columbia. Cook has no dialogue at all and Bevan very little. Bevan does not even look like the Bevan character. Where is the walrus mustache? Blue and Gilbert brought some humanity to this series. Without them, it is all about action. A big plus is the familiar LeRoy Shield background music mixed with some lesser known pieces. For once the music editor added some interesting music staying away from the all too familiar "Sliding" which seems to show up in every Roach comedy of this period.