Love, Loot and Crash

One of the all-time best Keytones, with great pacing and an unusually intricate plot for 1915. The car chase is among the best I've seen.

Look for a barely recognizable Charley Chase in his first really good film. A documentary I saw on Harold Lloyd leads me to believe Lloyd has a bit part as the fruit vendor who keeps getting knocked over. Can anyone confirm this?

This comedy, according to IMDb, stars Charley Chase. However, he isn't the star of the film but is billed fourth (with his real name "Charles Parrot"). Chase and a buddy are up to no good and answer an ad looking for a cook. Disguised as a woman, this friend infiltrates the home until the scheme is discovered by a policeman. At this point, very typical "Keystone Kops" hi-jinx occurs--with a protracted chase, lots of pratfalls and a ton on slapstick. While none of this is atypical of these style films, this is a good example of the genre. Plus, for fans of Chase (like me), it's a good chance to see him in his less famous pre-Hal Roach Studio days. Watchable and breezy.

Anyone looking for a good example of a typical Keystone product from the heyday of The Fun Factory is likely to enjoy Love, Loot and Crash, a movie whose title could well have served as a motto for the studio's output. This is a brief and enjoyable farce comedy, no masterpiece but amusing, and a "typical" Keystone in the sense that it's an ensemble piece without a dominant personality driving the action. There's no Chaplin or Arbuckle here, just a good solid team of performers romping their way through a scenario based on thwarted romance, mistaken identity, and criminality. It's a straightforward 1915 sitcom that culminates in a wild chase involving fast cars, a motorcycle, some ditch diggers, a prat-falling fruit vendor, and the Keystone Kops.

(Incidentally, it's been pointed out elsewhere in IMDb that the Sennett organization always utilized the correct spelling of the word "cops" in its films and publicity material, not "kops." For what it's worth, a quick Google search reveals some 119,000 usages of the phrase "Keystone Kops," so despite the studio's original practice it's clear that the "Kops" spelling has entered popular culture.)

Among the featured players in Love, Loot and Crash the best known is Charley Chase, who was only 21 years old at this time and barely recognizable to viewers familiar with his starring comedies of the 1920s and '30s. Here Charley acquits himself nicely as the smiling juvenile but has very little comic business to perform. Most of the laughs are earned by plump character actor Fritz Schade, who plays a crook disguised as a scullery maid and thus appears mostly in drag. Schade is amusing with his dainty gestures; there's a good moment when the local cop drops by to flirt with the plump new maid, and Schade turns to the camera to deliver a clearly lip-readable "Oh my God!" Still, the thought of Roscoe Arbuckle in the role points up how much funnier these scenes might have been.

Scholar Glenn Mitchell confirms in his book 'The A-Z of Silent Film Comedy' that the Italian fruit vendor is played by another promising young comedian on his way up, Harold Lloyd. He can be seen during the chase, performing wild falls. In later years, Lloyd teased his one- time employer Mack Sennett for not appreciating his abilities during his brief stint at Keystone. While that cannot be denied, Lloyd's modest contribution to this movie makes an already pleasant diversion still more enjoyable.

This Keystone comedy film is notable for containing early appearances by Charley Chase and Harold Lloyd, and to make it easier to identify them, Charley plays a character called Harold. It's not part of the series of Keystone films from this time that co-starred Chase and Mae Busch, but it still uses him as a general light comic romantic lead. He doesn't get very much to do, but he does stand out from the crowd for those who are looking: there is a great moment where he enthusiastically waves goodbye to his sweetheart while being fought off by the obligatory angry, disapproving father.

There is a lot of plotting of a robbery in the first half of the film, then the second half primarily relies on the concept of a male robber disguised as a woman (who, of course, is flirted with a bit) and the tension that results from the threat of his discovery. There's only so far this goes, but then the film is topped off by a typically elaborate Keystone Cops chase, which is well executed.

Harold Lloyd is unrecognizable in a couple shots as a fruit vendor whose stand keeps getting knocked over. It's a fair example of a prototypical 1910s Keystone one-reeler, but not the funniest of them.

Just watched this Mack Sennett Keystone silent comedy short on the Internet Archive. It would probably not be worth noting today except it has a couple of performers who would become famous later on: Charley Chase and Harold Lloyd. Chase plays a suitor of a woman whose father doesn't approve of him. Lloyd plays a fruit vendor whose cart keeps getting knocked off by cars passing by. Neither is recognizable since Chase doesn't have his mustache nor Lloyd have his glasses yet. The funniest person here is one Fritz Schade who plays a heavyset crook who disguises himself in drag as a cook for aforementioned woman and her father. Otherwise, it's mainly car chase scenes with added sequence of people falling down piers. Pretty funny even today if not completely hilarious. Still, if you're curious about two iconic comics in their early roles, Love, Loot, and Crash is worth a look for silent movie buffs.