Thundering Taxis

Del Lord directed a series of Taxi comedies for Mack Sennett in the late 1920s, which is, in no small part, how he came to direct a series of taxi comedies for Roach. After Roach closed down the series, Lord went into selling cars for a while, then into directing for Jules White.

It is no surprise, then, that this series owes a lot to Lord's old series -- in fact, the first gag in this one is taken from TAXI DOLLS (1929), but while the reaction to that iteration is salacious, here it's simple surprise.

Most of the rest of this is largely composed of other Sennett-style gags, which are very well executed -- Billy Bevan, who was a Sennett stalwart, is here, and Clyde Cook is virtually voiceless, as he is in his other appearance in the series. The plot is about a war between various taxi fleets and the havoc they wreak on each other. It's all competently done, but nothing that Lord had not done before. Or after: they even do the oyster in the chowder gag and White used that routine for Three Stooges movies into the 1950s.