The Great Chase

This is one of the most enjoyable movies ever made. I can't believe it's such a sleeper. (At this writing, still awaiting 5 votes). THE GREAT CHASE is a compilation of some of the best chase scenes of the silent film era.

It's 81 minutes of non-stop pulse-pounding excitement without any boring plots to have to plod through. As such, it's more watchable and entertaining than almost any single silent movie ever made.

Some of these scenes are completely breathtaking. There are acrobatic stunts that would make Evel Knievel wince. No stunt doubles, no computer generated special effects. Just real human bodies and giant boulders/out of control trains/runaway horses/man eating lions/freezing ice floes and of course hundreds of bad guys trying to catch the good guys.

Included are scenes from THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton), THE PERILS OF PAULINE (Pearl White), THE MARK OF ZORRO (Douglas Fairbanks Sr), THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (the first "real" movie ever made), TUMBLEWEEDS (last film of the first screen cowboy, William S. Hart), and WAY DOWN EAST (Lillian Gish jumping around on real icebergs in a real frozen river near a real big waterfall). Also there's some more obscure stuff that's rescued from celluloid oblivion, including a really cool Jungle movie filmed on location in the Amazon that is strongly reminiscent of Indiana Jones.

This is a great movie to own. You can watch it with the whole family or put it on in the background during a party. Even if you don't like silent movies, you'll love this one. Your kids will love it. Your grandparents will love it, and you will love it. What more could you ask?

This is a pretty good documentary & compilation of the best chases of the silent movie era. It's good to get or rent if you can't get all the individual movies, esp The General by Buster Keaton. The narration is light and you get to see a lot of footage unlike many documentaries that are heavy on narration with just a small clip of the scene (or audio). The soundtrack is great, with the music by composer and harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler. There are many added sound effects (horse hoofbeats, train sounds, gunshots, etc) that weren't there in the original viewings of these movies of course but add to the footage (unless you're a purist).

I've always loved those Keystone Cops and slapstick scenes with the great silent comedians performing outrageous stunts and chases down city streets. With that in mind, I paid big bucks for this VHS a dozen years ago, thinking it would be a compilation of one wild chase scene after the other. Terrific reviews of this tape made me believe that it was just that.

I wound up disappointed because only the last two scenes, both done by Max Sennett, were what I was looking for, and a long clip of Buster Keaton's "The General" was no good to me since I already owned it (and I owned only three silent films at the time). Some of the other clips also dragged on way too long and weren't spectacular or that funny. The famous ice flow scene was pretty cool, I'll say that, but not enough other things in here made this worth the money.