The Sun Down Limited

The second Our Gang comedy to feature sound was "Railroadin'"--and it wasn't a particularly good film. It featured some insane parenting, poor sound and was in no way an improvement over this original picture. While "The Sun Down Limited" isn't a very good film, it is a bit better than the remake.

The film begins with Mickey Daniels and Joe Cobb hopping rides with two railroad engineers on their trains. However, when the two engineers leave the train to take a quick break, Joe and Mickey hop aboard and take the train for a spin!! In the process, they nearly run over a black member of the gang--who seems to be a bit of a racist cliché (with pickininny braids flying up in the air when the kid is frightened). It all seems pretty limp but might be of some interest to fans of silents and those determined to see each and every one of these Hal Roach Productions!

Mickey and Joe manage to climb into the engine car in the railyards and cause all sorts of mischief until they are thrown out.... so they build their own railroad! Far more elaborate and far-fetched than this sweet-natured series usually is, once again, it works because of the playfulness and reality of the kids.

Sun Down Limited, The (1924)

*** (out of 4)

Up to this point in the series there's no doubt that this film was the highlight of the Our Gang series. Mickey and Joe are playing at the railroad station when they're kicked out for causing too much trouble. The kids decide to get together and create their own train and railroad station, which they do but soon a neighborhood bully tries to cause havoc. This certainly isn't the greatest film ever made and no one will mistake it for a masterpiece but I think for the series it's the best I've seen up to this point. There's not too many great laughs but there are enough interesting visuals to make it worth viewing. The first nine-minutes have the kids playing on a train and of course Mickey and Joe end up starting it up and taking off on their own. Farina gets his food caught in the center of the tracks and ends up getting ran over several times which is the "joke" of this portion of the film. The second half has the kids building up their train and eventually taking it out for a spin. I must admit that I loved the look of the train because it really does seem like something these kids would be able to put together. I thought the imagination was quite high and especially how the used the dog to make the train run. This short runs 26-minutes, which was longer than your normal time but it never seems boring and certainly makes for some nice entertainment.

This is an early silent Our Gang comedy whose cast will likely be entirely unfamiliar to the generation that remembers watching Spanky, Darla, and Alfalfa on after school TV. It isn't one of the best Rascal films out there.

On the other hand, this film is absolutely fascinating for both historical railroad enthusiasts and Los Angeles history buffs. There are numerous sequences showing heavy steam locomotives and Pacific Electric (the old Red Car system) rolling stock. There is a brief shot of the Palms P.E./S.P. station, about 100 yards west of the new Palms LACMTA Metro station.

Other segments are centered on or near the intersection of Motor Avenue and National Boulevard, where a good deal of period architecture still exists. The 1915 building on the SE corner of Motor and National figures prominently in a scene near the end.