The Speed Spook

What makes modern film buffs value hard-to-come-by silent films over others? Archaeologists do the same. They dig up items thrown in the trash ages ago and declare them ancient treasures. This might be the case with "The Speed Spook", a slap-dash conglomeration of plots with some intended and unintentional humor tossed in.

It was included in the film festival I attended and I wondered if it was included because it was valuable or just because it was old. There's not much plot to follow. A Race car driver is on tour and becomes mixed up in local politics and somehow feels a driverless car would be an attention-getting device during an election, and would put him in his new girlfriend's good graces.... oh, who cares. Suffice it to say it is alternately confusing and funny, but mostly the former.

Johnny Hines is funny and has a winning smile. Warner Richmond, 30's and 40's Western heavy, is the heavy here and adds substance to the proceedings. Long story short, if anyone out there is planning a film festival you might want to look elsewhere for a program filler. This film was shown in 16MM which is apparently the only way it is available. As previously stated, just because it is old doesn't make it valuable.

In this high concept mashup of Wallace Reid and Douglas Fairbanks vehicles of the previous decade, Johnny Hines is 'Blue Streak' Billings, a racecar driver who figureheads the Comet line. After winning his latest race, he returns to his home town, where his girl, Faire Binney, has been unable to sell the car because Warner Richmond bought one, then doped the gasoline so it knocks past endurance on the street. Hines works out a gag of an apparently driverless 'Speed Spook', which races through town, and then disappears. He plans to reveal it is a Comet when the time is right. Meanwhile, Richmond is also running for sheriff to replace Miss Binney's father, Frank Losee, and has worked out a scheme to print up fake ballots and replace the real ones with them while everyone is chasing the Speed Spook.

Hines is pretty good as the athletic and breezy driver, but the fun is interrupted by some ill-natured gags, and the overwrought and pun-filled titles by Ralph Spence are occasionally pretty bad, particularly when Hines and sidekick Edmund Breese engage in snappy patter, which is anything but. The result is a flawed, derivative movie with decent but unremarkable stuntwork.

Johnny Hines was dealt with briefly in Walter Kerr's important reference work 'The Silent Clowns'. His inclusion in that book is justified, but a brief mention is all he deserves. Hines was a third-string comedian in the great days of silent comedy. He tended to play brash go-getters in the Harold Lloyd mould ... but Lloyd was distinguished by his hornrimmed eyeglasses, whereas Johnny Hines's only distinguishing trait was a slightly Oriental cast to his facial features. Hines's films were brisk and funny, but he never did anything that wasn't done better by Harold Lloyd, Wallace Reid, Raymond Griffith or several other comedians of this period.

Many of Hines's films were directed by his brother Charles, an untalented hack who would never have become a director if not for the family relationship. Most of their collaborations consisted of arbitrary gag sequences, hung on a thin premise and strung out to feature length. 'The Speed Spook' is slightly better than their typical output ... due to an unusual premise, a plot that was more linear than usual for a Hines film, and some peppy dialogue scripted by veteran title-card writer Ralph Spence.

Johnny plays 'Blue Streak' Billings, an auto racer who breezes through the town of Westwood, where the local sheriff is standing for re-election. His opponent is shifty politician Hiram Smith. Meanwhile, the town seems to be haunted (in Scooby-Doo fashion) by a weird grey car with a white squiggle on its flank. What's so weird about this car? Well, it has no driver. It races through town at unlawful speeds, turns corners sharply, and disappears abruptly in broad daylight. Where does it go? Where does it come from? How does it manoeuvre with no driver? The townspeople are demanding that Sheriff West solve the mystery.

SPOILERS COMING, BUT NOT SPOILING MUCH. Inevitably, Johnny gets involved. Inevitably, the sheriff has a beautiful daughter ... played by bland unattractive oddly-named untalented Faire Binney. Much of this movie is extremely predictable. What keeps us watching is our eagerness to learn how the car (the 'speed spook') is controlled, and who's controlling it, and why. The eventual answers are unconvincing and disappointing. If you've read 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow', you'll watch this movie with a sense of deja vu.

I said that 'The Speed Spook' is one of Johnny Hines's better films, but that's not saying much. I'll rate this forgettable movie 5 out of 10.