Gadgets Galore

There are cars everywhere. Up, down, left, right. Black cars, white cars, green cars, yellow cars, red cars, blue cars. Crazy cars, normal cars. Sports cars, historic cars, old cars. Broken cars, slow cars, fast cars. Inventive cars, stupid cars, smart cars, shortly all kind of cars in this Oscar nominated short. To be seen to be believed!!

With a mixture of old movies, both comedic and documentary, Robert Youngson offers theatergoers a short look at the evolution of early automobiles in America, from an era when there were less than 150 miles of paved roads in the United States -- built for the bicycling craze -- up to an era filled with freaks like submersibles, cars that ran backwards, and devices that enlarged the wheels and did away with the car.

Youngson is best remembered for his compilations of silent comedy. Before then he had produced many nostalgic short subjects for Warner Brothers. The year after this, he would turn out THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMEDY, one of the landmarks of the revival of silent comedy and eventually dramas.

Most people don't like when well established traditions change, and this short from the 50s (even though it looks more like the 30s) shows that even groundbreaking inventions can have a hard time gaining traction. This film says how the horse, mankind's means of rapid transportation for millennia, is finally being replaced by automobiles. The early 1900s had the owners of these machines and horse riders clashing like titans. People in rural America often challenged car drivers to races, willing to bet that the horse was the tried, true, and faster method of getting somewhere. Eventually, these competitions disappear and give way to races purely involving automobiles. By the outbreak of World War 1, auto racing was a national sport and it was a common sight for drivers to keep on going if a tire came off one of the wheels. Just like what racers did with their horses, they gave their cars names and praised them when they carried them to victory. Crash proof bumpers get invented once cars start becoming more numerous, even though as late as 1904, there was less than 150 miles of paved roads in the US. Interestingly, the auto industry today isn't anything like how it once was. There's only so many car companies you hear about now, and as of the time this short was made, there were only 6. In the early days of cars, there were 140. Experimental cars that were built and swiftly forgotten hit the scene, such as a hybrid car that burned coal like a train, had a smokestack and even a furnace. A car shaped like a torpedo was meant to go at supersonic speeds, but ended up achieving not even a tenth of that. A backwards car is shown as well; basically a normal vehicle on the outside but all the chairs are pointing the opposite way. Finally, inventors from Europe tried to come up with "cars" that had submarine-like hulls in order to go underwater, a giant tire that someone sat inside and steered, and a German rocket powered car that ran on railroad tracks. As history has shown, all these ambitious contraptions went away and left the normal car triumphant. Typically, I don't really care for these short films that TCM puts on after something, but this one wasn't overly long and even told me things I never knew so I thought it was passable. I have no idea why someone would design a backwards car, but it happened. While many people back then (and even now) are against cars, it looks like they're here to stay. We've come a long way since riding on animals.

This is a short film that was included as a DVD extra with Warner Brother's film, "Pete Kelly's Blues". I love how classic Warner films on DVDs seem to include a few shorts from the same year of the feature film--often a cartoon and a live action short. They don't have to do this--and it's a great selling point, as I'd pick a Warner DVD over most others because of this.

"Gadgets Galore" is a short about the story of the first automobiles. Lots of crazy scenes involving some idiots driving insanely are narrated with an attempt at humor--sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. Although all the footage appears to be vintage, I think much of it was actually created (for the most part) for this film--it looked very good and the stock footage was integrated well with the new.

So is it any good? Well, to the average viewer probably not. However, fans of auto racing will probably love the actual film clips from the 1910s and 20s.

Gadgets Galore (1955)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Strange but mildly entertaining short from Warner about the first automobiles and the impact they had on America. Throughout the 10-minute running time narrators Dwight Weist and Ward Wilson talk about various years and the importance they had on the car. This includes various items that were added to cars (like front bumper), races that started to pop up and other inventions that were meant to take the place of cars but never did (like a "rocketcar" that would travel six miles a minute). This is a somewhat hard film to judge because on one hand it's pretty cheaply made and there's really no great reason for it to have been made. I mean, I really can't think of a reason or point to the film other than the studio perhaps owed someone a short so they had a filmmaker raid their vaults and pick out silent movie clips that featured cars. This footage is the one reason to see the film as we get all sorts of stuff that should appeal to classic car fans. This includes various models but also a few early races including one early Indy 500 and another dirt race from 1906.