Kid Speed

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.

Kid Speed is another Larry Semon short with Oliver Hardy in support that I found on a Platinum DVD Laurel and Hardy collection. This time Hardy and Semon are car race rivals for a girl's affection. Since Hardy is the heavy, he's the one who tries to keep Semon from winning with help from various friends. One of my favorite gags involves Hardy and pals washing themselves with water from a barrel when another barrel on the roof spills tar through a roof hole into the water barrel causing Hardy and friends to look pitch black! There's also plenty of laughs involving people slipping into and out of automobiles and one more involving the winner and girl with white paint on the winner's face! Larry Semon is funny throughout and Hardy once again displays mannerisms that would come full fruition when he eventually teamed with Stan Laurel. By all means, seek this one out!

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.