User Reviews

This is a partial print of an old Educational Pictures short, "Love's Young Scream". The actors in it are long forgotten and so is some of the film. The existing portion (which seems pretty complete story-wise) is on YouTube.

The film starts with a couple going to get a marriage license. Soon after, her father (who doesn't like the groom) finds out and gives chase. What follows is a truly spectacular and very dangerous car chase--one of the most thrilling ones of the era.

Instead of focusing on jokes, this film is just all-out action and suspense. While I would not want a steady diet of this sort of thing, it is quite good and hard not to like.

One of the frustration of being a fan of silent comedy is the lost pictures. Some were lost because they were old and uncared for and some were lost for other reasons, like this late silent Christie. Only a cut-down version of the second reel is known to exist, made for the home market about 1946. Ben Model has put it on his Youtube site, where you can see it with his typically sprightly accompaniment on the organ.

One of the reasons I tend to rate Christie comedies a bit lower than other contemporary fun factories was the way the studio paced them: set up, payoff, then a rush to the next set-up. Yet, in this cut-down version, we find almost entire story reduced to one long set up -- the young lovers pursued by her father -- and then a series of sight gags based on the mayhem of their auto ride. The editing of this version lends an air of spontaneity to the proceedings that I don't usually get from the Christies and the number of gags results in a sort of surreal catalogue of variations on the theme. I like it. I like it a lot with its sense of "If you didn't like the last one, here's another." I think you'll like it too.