Big Red Riding Hood

There are two takes that one finds on Charley Chase. There are those who think of his silent films as some sort of preparation for what is to come after (although it is never very clear to me what glorious "afterwards" they are thinking about and there are those (myself included) who have little doubt that his best films are the silents and, to my mind, the best of those are to be found amongst the early "Jimmy Jump" series when Chase was working with Leo McCarey (later of course famous for his association with the best of Laurel and Hardy and with the Marx brothers as well ass such classic comedies as The Part-time Wife and The Awful Truth).

The Jimmy Jumps are of variable quality but some have a surreal quality that marks them out from the average Charley Chase film (of any period). My personal favourite is I think The Rat's Knuckles but this film runs it close in its cheer zaniness. Even the initial idea - that Jump has been commissioned to translate Little Red Riding Hood into Swedish - is excellent and sets the tone for the off-beat events that follow. There is crime and a car-chase but totally unlike the equivalent events in other comedies and perfectly integrated with the central fantasy - the obsessive reader - that runs through the entire film.