Kid Speed

We all know what became of Oliver Hardy, but Larry Semon's early death in the 1920s robbed us of what could have been a great comedian in the sound era as well as a talented presence in the silents.

This car race-themed film is largely a number of routines on cars crashing, stunts over cliffs and the like, and Semon's worried white face popping up in manic mode as he speeds around in his car. Hardy is as good as you would expect as 'dangerous Dan', always on the thin edge of the wedge.

Best bit? Barrels and roofs and tar and everything else as the car shoots through the wooden walls en route to the end of the race. The teens and twenties had numerous examples of speed, speed, speed, and this is a good example. Fast, furious and frenetic.

I remember seeing this on TV about twenty years ago and many of its images have stuck in my memory. It's great to see all these 'Laurel without Hardy' shorts and features made available on DVD, especially when they seem to have stopped being shown on TV (here in the UK anyway). One of the lesser known silent comedy greats, the final five minutes of Kid Speed features one of the best car chases ever put to film, and stunts (performed by Larry Sermon himself) that put many of today's CGI-fuelled sequences to shame. It's also always interesting to see Hardy in one of his pre-Laurel and Hardy appearances, and the underrated Larry Sermon is a pleasure to watch.

This is good film, and it is clear that Larry Semon has left no expense, while making this film. Their are huge sets, and a fleet of racing cars used in this production, in order too extract every laugh possible. Larry Semon does try to hard to make some of the gags as funny as possible, and that some times that does backfires, and the jokes does not raise laughs, by todays comedy standards anyway. Saying that, Larry does manage to produce some of the best sight gags that I have seen, and some really dramatic action sequences. The plot is slightly predictable, but that is overcome with the other elements.

It's hard to believe that back in the early 1920s, Larry Semon was one of the top movie comics--as he is practically unheard of today. In fact, I think the only reason I found this short on DVD was because like many of Semon's films, his co-star was Oliver Hardy and this film was part of Passport Video's "The Laurel OR Hardy Collection"--films featuring one or the other before they were permanently teamed in 1927.

The plot involves a rivalry between Semon and Hardy. Both want the same girl and oddly her father says that the winner of an auto race can then have permission to date her. Since Hardy always plays the villain in these films, it's not surprising that he cheats and uses many underhanded tricks to try to win the race. The race scenes and ones leading up to it are pretty good. Like other Semon comedies, this one is full of physical humor and is very high paced--much more so than the more polished shorts of Keaton or Lloyd. When the pacing AND the jokes come together, Semon's films are wonderful and very entertaining. The problem here is that while the stunts are excellent, there just aren't all that many laughs--making this a little better than a time-passer. Good, but certainly not among Semon's best work.

As the only Larry Semon movie I had previously seen was the rather sorry Wizard of Oz I wasn't expecting much from this short, but I was quite impressed by it. Semon plays a dapper character – you just know what's going to happen as he approaches his car in an immaculate white suit – who loves the same woman as Oliver Hardy. We know Ollie's a bad guy here because he beats his staff whenever he can. To decide who shall have the woman once and for all they decide to race for her.

The film is one of the thrill comedies so popular in the 20s and it contains some terrific shots of racing cars tearing around a dusty Californian terrain. At one point Semon's car tows the sheriff's bed – complete with the sheriff in his nightclothes – at breakneck speed while the sheriff bounces precariously around. There's also a funny scene when Semon finds himself involved in a boxing match with former champion Jim Jeffries. He takes the opportunity to swing a few punches while the champ is still tying his laces, but Jeffries doesn't even notice…