The Little Rascals in The Sun Down Limited — Atomic Antiques
This is a wild guess you understand but I suspect that 95 of Atomic Antiques readers have never watched any of the silent Little Rascals shorts In fact I ll bet that 80 didn t even realize the Rascals were around in the silent era There s certainly no shame in this as only silent film aficionados and the most rabid of Little Rascal fans would be familiar with these cinematic gems And that s unfortunate as the silent Rascals not only set the stage for the later shorts but were often more successful artistically and commercially than the better known talkies This 1924 short The Sun Down Limited is a good one chock full of
what would become the Rascals trademark elements Having been chased out of the railroad yard the gang has one of their eureka moments and decides to build their own train to operate on an abandoned stretch of track They have always been known for their contraptions built from neighborhood scrap and the train they put together here is a sight to behold The method of propulsion would probably be a major obstacle for you or I but the gang used a source of low emission power that served them well time and time again a dog on a treadmill Actually the system used a dog and a cat two cats if reverse is required the cat being in a box just in front of the dog thereby harnessing the power of the chase The train is a huge success at least until Toughy who s own homemade train had been one upped by the gang derails the train and sends it careening wildly through the city streets Filmed on the streets of Culver City the locomotive sends cars and pedestrians running for cover with a slew of intrepid police officers giving chase or being dragged behind the train The final melee is short but frantic with the train finally overturning as it snakes down a steep hill Of course no one is hurt along the way even though the show ends with a young Farina seeing stars Those wishing to see this or any of the silent Rascals will have to do some looking as they haven t been released on DVD in any professional way It s been my hope that Genius Productions would publish them in a set comparable to their stellar 2008 release The Little Rascals The Complete Collection but I doubt that the demand would justify their expense A little snooping can find sets produced on read write disks copied from a VHS source and while the quality varies from bad to horrible they are watchable
Tags: chock, city streets, contraptions, culver city, farina, little rascal, little rascals, locomotive, melee, pedestrians, police officers, propulsion, railroad yard, seeing stars, silent film, slew, steep hill, sun down, talkies, treadmill, Uncategorized
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