One Wild Ride (1925) watch online HD

This is another one of those good-feeling inducing silent Our Gang comedies, which are my all time favorite pre-sound era films.

Essentially, our half-pint heroes do some ingenious stuff to get out of their chores so they can go riding in their makeshift taxi (a device making a return from the previous year's classic "Tire Trouble"). After picking up rich girl and resident Rascal cutie-pie Mary Kornman, Mickey Daniels' grandpa demands they stop using his horse to pull the cab. When Farina hooks up to the truck, the title takes effect and see the rest.

Usually, the silent Gang films are amusing in a gentle way. The first half of the film is like this as we see the Gang enjoying a childhood that no longer exists as they romp in chicken coops, abandoned lots, and the actual sunny streets of suburban Los Angeles of the 1920s. Farina proves himself to be a five year old child prodigy of comedy as we enjoy his reactions to the thrilling and guffaw generating runaway car scenes that take up the second half of this enjoyable film. For obvious reasons, the scenes of the other children rebuffing Farina's attempts to play with them and enjoy a ride on the crazy car are a bit disturbing (considering his usual full-fledged status as a Rascal), but the rest of the film wipes away any nasty aftertaste over this.

The early silent Our Gang films are largely an underground cult phenomenon and hard to find. Let us pray that there wonderful films will soon get their just deserts on non-bootleg DVD.

This Hal Roach comedy short, One Wild Ride, was the forty-fifth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. Mickey and Joe are a little down because they're doing chores: Mickey planting seeds and Joe churning butter. When Jackie and John stop by in a horse-pushing car (yes, you read that right), Mickey and Joe stop what they're doing and join them with Joe using a moving pulley from a windmill to continue the churning while his baby brother looks on with his stuffed animal toy being pulled on the top of his carriage (that's the last we see of him). Rich girl Mary watches the gang pump a tire from her window and decides to join them. During one of these rides, Johnny's upset father takes the horse away leaving the gang to try to find another way to get the engine-less car going. They eventually get one car to pull theirs toward a hill that they slide down before getting another one to pull them back up. Little Farina follows them on foot during much of this time and keeps begging for a ride but gets pushed away each time. When the gang stops for some rest, Farina takes the rope attached to the car, ties it to a truck, and takes the wheel as the truck pulls it away. This leads to one long wild ride...This was quite an exciting "Our Gang" entry from start to finish and made me quite concerned for Farina's safety for much of the second reel even though I knew it had to be a mix of simulated split-screen between Farina's car and moving point-of-view road footage as well as some possible rear screen projection when he's seen from one side. Among some other funny gags: Mary's accidentally pushing grapefruit juice on her mother's face, Farina's car knocking down a man whose goldfish bowl causes the bowl to land on Farina's head and the fish under his shirt, a later organ grinder's monkey giving Farina's face grief with his tail, and-for the finish-the car knocking a watermelon cart with the contents falling down next to the now-overturned car with the youngster rising out among them! Quite a hilarious thrilling ride from director Robert McGowan, so much so he'd remake it as the "Little Rascals" talkie Free Wheeling seven years later. And kudos once again for the YouTube poster who added the LeRoy Shield music from those later talkies.

I must note that I love the silent 'Our Gang' series and this is not one of the best of them -- which makes it, nonetheless, an enjoyable short subject. This one is more concerned with its plot than most of them -- Mary Kornman, who would like to feel mud squish between her toes, falls in with the gang and their engineless taxicab and has a swell old time. Farina gets more than his fair share of screen time, but, as usual, makes the most of it The gag construction is topnotch and, as is usually the case with this series, believable. But as my favorites are the idylls, like A QUIET STREET, this one is a little too frenetic for my taste. But if they still made 'em like this, I'd be very happy.

One Wild Ride (1925)

*** (out of 4)

Fun our Gang short has Mickey "borrowing" his grandfather's horse so that he can push a car, which the gang are using as a taxi. After grandfather takes the horse back the kids get the bright idea of having people use their cars to drag them up this hill and once there they'll hitch a ride back down the hill. All goes as planned until Farina hooks it to a large truck and he goes on the wild ride. ONE WILD RIDE certainly lives up to its title and this turns out to be one of the better entries in the series. What makes the thing so fun is the final five or six minutes when Farina, a monkey and a talking parrot get into the car and head off on a dangerous course. The title cards of dialogue between Farina and the bird are very funny and I must admit that the ride itself was fun even if you can obviously see the back projection. The earlier stuff with the kids running the taxi service isn't nearly as fun but we do get a few good laughs including a bit with rich Mary wanting to walk in mud and Joe gets a couple good scenes.