User Reviews

This Italian short from the early 20th century is another item on the "Saved from the Flames" DVD collection of rarities. It depicts a large monkey-actually a man in a simian suit-causing havoc everywhere he goes. Not very funny but fascinating to watch. There's a sequence with the monkey up a tree that's obviously an early example of stop-motion animation not to mention when his pursuers chase him up a "wall" that they're actually crawling on the floor but do try to fool us by "falling" a little bit. Like I said, not very funny but it's definitely worth a look as an early example of a comedy short made in the first years of the movies for a country outside the U.S.

A large monkey arrives in a crate at a private house and escapes. Everyone, led by a bald-headed man in a housedress, chases it.

This sort of early slapstick movie was the standard model during this period, being used for runaway horses, pumpkins and whatnots, until Mack Sennett added a bit of standard story, usually derived from Griffith, around it for his Keystone movies. Here, in its early form, the entire movie consists completely of the chase and only the variety of acrobatic contortions used in the process -- and, of course, what they are chasing. Indeed, the route they take seems to have been largely set for the subgenere.

This being an Italian slapstick, the stunts are particularly vicious -- there is one scene in which they climb down a chimney. This does not, alas, allow it enough individuality to make it particularly interesting.

This film was included in the three DVD set "Saved From the Flames"--a collection of mostly ephemeral movies that have managed to avoid turning to powder, catching fire or melting--something that usually happened with the nitrate film stock used up through the 1950s.

"A Race for a Monkey" is an Italian-made film and the monkey in the title is actually an actor in a rather primitive looking ape costume. It's VERY obvious that it's not a real monkey, but considering how cheesy apes looked in film until quite recently, I guess this can be forgiven.

The film begins with a crate being opening in a home. An ape is inside and soon escapes--getting into all sorts of mischief. The folks from the household spend most of the film chasing the creature. In the process, lots of slapstick mayhem ensues.

By the way, if you haven't guessed, the wall-climbing bit was performed by having the characters crawl across a painting of a wall on the floor. The camera was then suspended from above and the scene was filmed.

I quite liked this early Italian slapstick, one of the sub-genre of films made in Europe that was an influence on the great American slapstick comedians such s Chaplin and Keaton.

The story here is practically non-existent. For some reason a large monkey is delivered to a household and, upon being released from its crate, immediately steals the wig of the bald housewife taking delivery. The housewife and delivery men chase the monkey, joined in their pursuit by various people they run into on the way. It's fairly manic stuff, with the bald housewife - actually a man in a dress - adding an element of the bizarre to it. I particularly liked the scene where half-a-dozen people are seen scaling the wall of a house in pursuit of the monkey. The 'wall' is clearly a painted backdrop lying on the floor but the way the actors move (and roll head over heels as they 'fall' off the wall) made me laugh. Good fun.