User Reviews

This is one of Harold Lloyd's most enjoyable short comedies, but if things had turned out differently it might never have been made at all. Get Out and Get Under was one of the first films Lloyd appeared in after recovering from a freak accident that nearly claimed his life. In the fall of 1919, while Harold was posing for publicity photos, actor Nat Clifford innocently handed him what was believed to be a prop bomb; it turned out to be real, and when it exploded both men were badly injured. After a period of convalescence Harold resumed his career, but his still-healing facial scars are visible in his first close-up in this film, and if you watch his right hand carefully you can see that he's wearing a prosthetic device in place of the fingers lost in the explosion. Nat Clifford is here too, as the neighbor at work in his garden.

Despite the circumstances under which it was made Get Out and Get Under is a surprisingly cheerful comedy, though much of the humor relies on anxiety and frustration. Harold plays an actor in an amateur theater production trying to get to his show on time, but auto troubles and other problems hinder him every step of the way. After a somewhat measured opening the story builds in momentum and suspense, becoming funnier, loonier, and more surreal as it goes along. One bit involving the creative use of a pup tent is especially memorable. Some of the gags suggest routines identified with Buster Keaton, as when Harold makes a wrong turn and crashes a parade (as Buster would do in Cops) or is sidetracked into a railroad yard and gets doused by one of those water spouts (as Buster did several times). It all goes to show that there was a lot of borrowing and cross-fertilization in silent comedy; Lloyd certainly returned the favor and borrowed from Keaton on other occasions. In any event, our hero ultimately achieves his goal, wins the girl, and delivers a neat pay-off gag in time for the fade-out.

Modern viewers might be surprised at the sequence involving a drug addict Harold meets during his adventure; the man is actually shown injecting a substance, presumably cocaine, into his arm, leading to a routine reminiscent of Chaplin's Easy Street but with a surprise twist. (Oddly enough, prolific character actor William Gillespie played the dope fiend in both movies!) This sort of subject matter would become absolutely taboo when enforcement of the Production Code kicked in during the '30s, but jokes about illegal substances and drug addicts crop up fairly often in silent comedy. Also of note here is the presence of Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison, the first African- American kid in the Our Gang series, who plays the boy who insists on participating while Harold is trying to fix his engine. Sammy has an easygoing charm and naturalness before the cameras that is striking in this sequence.

Being after his accident, Harold wears gloves for pretty much this entire film. This is still under the Hal Roach studios in 1920 & it is less refined slapstick style & not as complex as Harold would develop in later films. Think Harold is self-conscious about his hands in this, not only because of the gloves, but his stunts in this one are no where near the ones he would do later. Mildred Pierce is the girl in this love story but her major work is in Harold (the boy) dream sequence in the film beginning where he dream Mildred went & married someone else & he found out while trying to pose for a photo portrait & arrives too late to do anything about it. This is a theme Lloyd would develop more thoroughly in later films. Some of the chase sequence with the police pursuit has some inventive sequencing & the pace is fast & furious. While this is a couple of notches below his better films, this one is pleasant. The version I saw from the TCM set is only just over 25 minutes, though it doesn't seem to be missing anything. Watch for the sequence where Harold disappears inside his car. It looks impossible & clever, & is the most intriguing stunt by Harold in the film.

Two of Harold Lloyd's favourite props are in use here. The first is the car, driven recklessly at speed, the second is the joke of remaining crouched down without realising your hiding place has been removed. You expect something terrible to happen to his car given the fuss he makes over it, but nothing that horrendous befalls it – unless you count being driven by Lloyd as something to be dreaded. He encounters all manner of mishaps as he races to the play being staged by the local amateur dramatics troupe, of which he is a starring member. On a number of occasions he has to jump out of the motor and run back to fetch something that has fallen out of the back. There's nothing unusual about this other than the fact that he doesn't bother stopping the car when he does so…

This is one of those early shorts of Harold's that has a boundless energy to match His character's single-mindedness of purpose, and it contains plenty of laughs. One surreal moment occurs however when the car breaks down and Harold is struggling to revive it. Spotting a junkie injecting himself in a doorway, Harold deftly picks the junkie's pocket and uses the contents of his syringe to get the motor running again.

Fair Harold Lloyd short which presents several gags he would re-use and improve upon in his later feature films. It opens with a scene at a photographer's studio where Harold discovers that his girl Mildred Davis is about to marry another man - but it all turns out to have been just a dream. He's involved in amateur theatricals and, being late for a performance, rushes out to the venue in his beloved car: amid the vehicle's breaking down on him, he falls foul of an elderly neighbor and a colored child; the race-against-time, then, culminates in the usual pursuit by a horde of policemen. The automobile trouble eventually gets a bit repetitive, but the film nevertheless includes the occasional inspired and hilarious gag - such as when Harold 'disappears' inside the car's engine compartment, an actor accidentally falling off the stage (after being 'killed') promptly going back up to resume his performance i.e. affecting a typically melodramatic 'exit' and, especially, when Lloyd sees a junkie getting high in the street and reasons that, if he injects his vehicle with the same substance, it will be likewise revitalized - which is what happens, as the car goes off on its own soon after 'taking' its fix!

The Boy (Harold Lloyd) is getting his picture taken and it does not go well. He is proposing to The Girl (Mildred Davis), but the photographer tells him that she is marrying The Rival (Fred McPherson) that day. He is too late. Luckily, it's all a dream, but he's late for a theatrical performance. He gets in his car, but it's an eventful drive.

I would have liked to see this story without the dream reveal. It is a 25 minutes short so I don't know if he has the time to break up the married couple. I would like to see him try. This short ends up being a lot of car gags. It's fun, but the story can be anything if all Harold wants are car gags. Diving in to fix the engine is a fun visual gag. I'm sure they removed the engine to do that one. He is just breaking the law when he runs from the cops.

This is a good Harold Lloyd comedy that gets plenty of mileage out of the material, and it has quite a few amusing moments. It is one of many silent comedies that take one situation and then stretch it out as far as possible.

The top silent comedians such as Lloyd could often find quite a variety of possibilities in a simple premise.

In this case, most of the story has Harold in a desperate rush to get where he is going. The number of obstacles he encounters is pretty creative, from the expected, such as an uncooperative automobile, to unexpected obstacles such as a friendly little boy and a cute dog. There is some decent slapstick, and there are also some good sight gags, a couple of which might be the movie's best moments. It works pretty well overall.

(1920) Get Out and Get Under COMEDY

Harold Lloyd playing a boy part of a theater play, the first few minutes is a dream sequence where he is told his dream girl is already been married, and stumbles on to it. Only then as soon as he wakes up, he realizes he is late as the led actor as the prince. And of course, it does not run smoothly upon his drive toward there. One of the many slapstick's also include his run ins with trafficking cops while driving. And his problems with a young curious child such as making him think that he got the car to work by standing on the side and moving it up and down and upon him fixing it. This is the seventh of fifteen movies Harold Lloyd starred with actress Mildred Pierce.

Get Out and Get Under is Harold Lloyd's first film after an exploding accident that caused him to lose a two fingers and a thumb in one of his hands requiring him to wear a prosthetic glove in movies for the rest of his career. This is a very funny short in which Harold is hurrying to get to the theatre for his performance. Lots of hilarious scenes concerning ways to fix his car, his dealings with a kid (Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison of the original Our Gang) who keeps hanging around while he's working, a dog, some engineers of a train ferry the car accidentally goes on, a parade, a banana peel (no surprise there), a steep hill, a water tower, a fire hydrant, a "road closed" sign, and some motorcycle cops. His leading lady is played by his eventual wife, Mildred Davis. Produced and directed by comedy mastermind Hal Roach. The music I heard in this version was provided by Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks Orchestra. Highly essential viewing for silent movie comedy fans especially those of Harold Lloyd.

A Hal Roach HAROLD LLOYD 2-Reeler.

A young man races across town in his beloved new Model T - occasionally having to GET OUT AND GET UNDER to repair it - to keep an appointment with his girlfriend.

Harold Lloyd is simply hilarious as the single-minded fellow who will go to any length to protect his Ford car, even giving it a shot of heroin at one point to keep its motor running. Of course, every indignity & frustration is heaped upon him as he makes his determined way towards his destination, making for some wonderful sight gags. As always, his athletic prowess is remarkable, especially considering this film was produced after the accident which cost him half of his right hand.

Mildred Davis, who would later marry Harold, plays his girlfriend. Sunshine Sammy Morrison, one of the earliest OUR GANG members, is very funny as the kid with the banana.

Vince Giordano and His Nighthawk Orchestra have supplied an excellent antique film score which perfectly complements Harold's antics on the screen.

Harold Lloyd's most famous movies really weren't slapstick films, as they weren't nearly violent enough and had way too much plot to be considered "slapstick". The slapstick films originally had the barest of plots and most consisted of people hitting or kicking each other, pie fights and lots of falls and accidents. While some of these are seen in Lloyd's films in the 20s and 30s, he really made films that were a little deeper and generally more enjoyable. This being said, this film is a great example of slapstick and what Lloyd's films were like up until he matured as an actor. It is also very similar to the films done in the 1910-1920s by Keystone and Roach Studios. In fact, Arbuckle, Chaplin and Keaton did many slapstick style films during this time. It's nice to see Lloyd's take on this style of film--especially because despite having a weaker plot, the action and silliness of this film are first-rate and the film deserves a rating of 9. For what it is, it is exceptional.

I have a production still in which Harold Lloyd and producer/director Hal Roach are obviously having an enjoyable time embellishing a shooting script with gag after gag. Employing a cast as long as the memo Hal is holding, "An Eastern Westerner" incorporated more production values than the average feature.

What's more, Hal Roach's smoothly expansive direction certainly gives the lie to the often-repeated claim that as a director, he was second-rate.

If another proof of the absurdity of this claim was needed, you have only to look at another of Lloyd's 1920 two-reelers, namely this "Get Out and Get Under". This short is a superbly orchestrated and timed little comedy in which no expense seems to have been spared.

The camera really moves when appropriate and all the action is brilliantly staged.

Indeed, one of Lloyd's favorite props, a streetcar, figures in the action and the cast includes wonderful Sunshine Sammy Morrison who shares some hilarious "business" with Lloyd.

This is hardly Lloyd's best film, but it is fun. Notice a couple of superb deep-field shots, amazing for 1920, but indicative of what b/w film could do. TCM's print is exceptionally good. Also, the Nighthawks provide a wonderful musical accompaniment, based on the popular song of the era, from which (I assume) the movie derives its title -- "Get Out and Get Under." These were the times when "Get a horse!" was still considered an amusing response to the breakdowns that tin lizzies tended to experience. Those flivers tended to shake when running, and the film uses that tendency for a couple of jokes on Lloyd's character and the automobiles of the early 1920s. The chase scenes may be typical, but they are very good. I always marvel at the incredible timing that characterizes them.

Get Out and Get Under (1920)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A young actor (Harold Lloyd) must rush to get to his play but his car starts all sorts of trouble. There's a few nice laughs here, including some nice bits with a young kid and a dog but some of the gags don't work as well. There's some amazing stunts including one where Lloyd jumps out of the car while it continues down the road. Lloyd must then catch back up with it. Another scene has the car going through thousands of people, which looks quite amazing. This was one of Lloyd's first films after a bomb exploded in his hand, nearly killing him and in a few close ups you can still see the scars on his face.

Tin Lizzie, that is, a model T. This is a beautifully constructed silent comedy of a Man and His Car. Lloyd Lloyd was the model for later Hal Roach comedians, and his plots and situations were recycled for later comedians. Here, it is done in its pure form.

Young man's girlfriend calls him.He should get to the amateur theatrical production soon.He hops on his Ford Model T and gets on the road.He soon notices the car doesn't like him too much.He has to deal with all kinds of problems, including a dog,a kid and a banana peel.Get Out and Get Under is a Hal Roach comedy from 1920.It's a hilarious comedy with Harold Lloyd, also known as the third genius.His girl is played by Mildred Davis, who became his wife.Fred McPherson plays The Rival.The movie's runtime is 25 minutes and those minutes hold many funny gags inside.Harold Lloyd had the ability to make us laugh.And in this one he has a sidekick- his Ford Model T.What a wonderful pair!