LOVE SPEED AND THRILLS (1915) Mack Swain, Chester Conklin

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Richard M Roberts
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LOVE SPEED AND THRILLS (1915) Mack Swain, Chester Conklin

Postby Richard M Roberts » Mon Jun 26, 2017 4:55 pm

Here's a good copy of one of the best Mack Swain/Chester Conklin Keystones, released by Mutual January 18, 1915, directed by Walter Wright, and also featuring Minta Durfee and Josef Swickard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0VQGOLnfcU

RICHARD M ROBERTS

Chris Snowden
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Re: LOVE SPEED AND THRILLS (1915) Mack Swain, Chester Conklin

Postby Chris Snowden » Wed Jun 28, 2017 5:26 pm

This has always been one of my favorite Keystones. Not so much because of the comedy, but because it used to be one of the handful of silent one-reelers that were screened on endless loops at Disneyland's Main Street Cinema.

Main Street hadn't yet become the Mickey Mall, and the Cinema hadn't yet switched to running nothing but a batch of Mickey cartoons stripped of their soundtracks (that rumble you feel there isn't an earthquake, it's Walt Disney turning over in his grave).

I'd visit Disneyland about once a year throughout the '70s and '80s, and being a rosy-cheeked young silent movie buff I'd stand around in the Cinema, feasting on The Great Train Robbery, the Thanhouser Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a really condensed Tumbleweeds and (the best of the bunch) Harold Lloyd's Spring Fever (complete with the original intertitles, which were missing from the Murray Glass print I later bought). But Love Speed and Thrills held a special fascination for me, with its frantic action and its two zany, silly-looking but somewhat sinister comedians. There are funnier Keystones out there, but this one is a great example of the spiraling Sennett madness that we all find so addicting!

Richard M Roberts
Godfather
Posts: 2895
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 6:30 pm

Re: LOVE SPEED AND THRILLS (1915) Mack Swain, Chester Conklin

Postby Richard M Roberts » Wed Jun 28, 2017 7:13 pm

Chris Snowden wrote:This has always been one of my favorite Keystones. Not so much because of the comedy, but because it used to be one of the handful of silent one-reelers that were screened on endless loops at Disneyland's Main Street Cinema.

Main Street hadn't yet become the Mickey Mall, and the Cinema hadn't yet switched to running nothing but a batch of Mickey cartoons stripped of their soundtracks (that rumble you feel there isn't an earthquake, it's Walt Disney turning over in his grave).

I'd visit Disneyland about once a year throughout the '70s and '80s, and being a rosy-cheeked young silent movie buff I'd stand around in the Cinema, feasting on The Great Train Robbery, the Thanhouser Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a really condensed Tumbleweeds and (the best of the bunch) Harold Lloyd's Spring Fever (complete with the original intertitles, which were missing from the Murray Glass print I later bought). But Love Speed and Thrills held a special fascination for me, with its frantic action and its two zany, silly-looking but somewhat sinister comedians. There are funnier Keystones out there, but this one is a great example of the spiraling Sennett madness that we all find so addicting!



It isn't really the Disney Corp's fault that the Silent Movie Theater runs only Mickey cartoons these days, the main problem was that they could not get prints of the silent films anymore from Blackhawk Films or Charlie Tarbox's Film Classics Exchange (who used to supply them before Blackhawk) anymore, at least they haven't turned the Theater into a gift shop!

The films did change later on, I remember them running the ten-minute cutdown of the Sheldon Lewis Jekyll and Hyde and THE ROUNDERS with Chaplin and Arbuckle later on, as well as MR. SILENT HASKINS (1914) with William S. Hart. It was always a good place for me to hang out while whomever else I was with went shopping on Main Street.


RICHARD M ROBERTS


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