Taxi Spooks

Del Lord started out as a Keystone Kop for Sennett, one with a great touch for stunt driving. He built this into a directing career, first for Sennett, then for Roach and wound up his career directing the Three Stooges for Jules White at Columbia -- well, it was a job.

He directed a couple of series of taxi comedies, first for Sennett and later, the Taxi Boys for Roach. This is one of the first series.

Like many two-reelers of the era, it is actually two one-reelers stuck together, although well done in this case: Jack Cooper has a taxi inspector on his heels, and later confuses the inspector's wife for a theater automaton. Each section is highlighted by a major set piece of a gag and they are well done. But this was 1929, Sennett was already moving into sound shorts and this comes off as a fill-in effort, something to service the rapidly-shrinking number of theaters that were not yet wired for sound or which would still run silent shorts to accompany the talkie features.