Chasing Choo Choos

You're a star of silent short comedies and your first feature is a bomb. What do you you do? You cut eighty percent of it and leave the good parts. That's what happened here. Apparently his feature, PLAY SAFE wasn't a draw at the theaters, so they cut out almost all the explication and left in just enough to set up a marvellous sequence in which Monty Banks chases after a runaway train in order to rescue his sweetheart. Beautifully timed and shot on site, this has an immediacy and reality that helps make great thrill comedy.

Okay, this isn't the funniest silent comedy short I've ever seen, but I still think it's a "must see". While the plot is awfully simplistic, once the film gets going it has about the fastest and most incredible stunt work I have ever seen. It's like an action picture on CRACK!!

Daddy is trying to split up the romance between his daughter and her boyfriend (Monty Banks). When that doesn't work, the thugs daddy hired kidnap the girl and Monty begins the most amazing train chase. In fact, while I love THE GENERAL and think it's a better overall film, the stunts look VERY tame and dull compared to those in CHASING CHOO-CHOOS! Again and again and again, the fastest and most dangerous scenes in silent film history take place--ranging from walking along the top of a moving train, climbing from one moving train car on one track to another on a different track, falling down hills at high speed, etc.!!! It's so crazy and high-spirited, it's a great film. See it and be amazed.

I first saw a segment of this movie forty-some years ago as part of Robert Youngson's movie " The Days of Thrills and Laughter." This segment was longer than all the others. I saw the complete short the other day on a Kino Video titled " The Race Is On. " Which is part of the Slapstick Encyclopedia collection.

This movie is loaded with action and Monty Banks and Virginia Corbin are excellent. Monty did his own stunts in this film which were both daring and very dangerous. The scenes on the runaway train passing through Carizzo Gorge are particularly breath taking! This is also mentioned at the San Diego Railroad Museum's website. There a railroad crew member said that he was amazed at the stunts that Monty Banks performed. This film puts Monty right up there with Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton in the " Thrill Comedy " genre.

As the previous poster stated. This film is an abridgment of the full length film, " Play Safe." This film will not leave you disappointed!

Think of this more as an action film than a comedy, and you'll be right on the money. There are funny moments, but it's mostly a suspenseful, high-risk chase with just enough exposition to establish who the characters are and why Monty will risk his life to save the girl -- and enough to make you root for Monty and want him to come out of it all unscathed.

I don't like Monty Banks' acting style nearly as much as I do Buster Keaton's, but his stunts are even more breathtaking and daring. This little film had my heart in my throat! It's well worth a watch, and more than enough to send me scrambling to find out if this was a fluke, or if all of Banks' work is as exciting.

The well-crafted and amusing chase sequences in "Chasing Choo-Choos" are among the better such scenes of their era and genre. The feature was excerpted from the longer movie "Play Safe", and the idea works well. As it remains, there are a few minutes of decent material left at the beginning that set up the main action in a generally efficient manner.

Monty Banks does well in the lead, as a character vaguely similar to those played by some of the more famous screen comics of the 1920s. The story sets up a romance between him and Virginia Lee Corbin, which her guardians are determined to break up. All of the introductory material is really just to set up the lengthy action/comedy sequences, which involve various means of conveyance ranging from horse carts to automobiles to trains - especially trains. As with the best of such sequences, it has portions that combine comedy and suspense.

Overall, it's a movie that works very well as a short feature. There's not actually much to it, so it can hardly rank anywhere near movies such as "The General" that include brilliant chase scenes as part of a movie that is also brilliant overall. But "Chasing Choo-Choos" does provide nearly 20 minutes of decent action and humor, and that is just what it set out to do.