Topic: Super-Hooper-Dyne Lizzies (1925) - Billy Bevan & Andy Clyde

[Paul Pain]

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016375/

I stumbled onto this and decided to make it my next review, since it came up in last month's discussion on YOU'RE NEXT!

Man, what a strange piece this is.  This has to be the single most expensive short subject I have seen.  Cars modified and destroyed.  Bizarre contraptions everywhere.  Numerous extras used in scenes.  Fires.  No, folks, this isn't Larry Semon.  It's Mack Sennett destruction circa 1925, particularly a Billy Bevan film.

SUPER-HOOPER-DYNE LIZZIES is a title that makes no sense to me, and I hope someone, probably Big Chief, can explain this.  I understand that in the film the term "Lizzes" refers to the radio-powered cars.  But the overall title mystifies me.

This is typical 1920s silent comedy fair.  Evil, mustachioed, conniving romantic rivals making hair-brained plots.  Framed heroes.  Etc.  Much of this short, despite being billed a Billy Bevan short, focuses on John Richardson and Andy Clyde, although the second half of the film is basically just Richardson and Bevan and an unknown black actor doing scare reactions.  Overall, this is solid, dependable material that any decent actor could handle.

Highlights: Billy pushing the cars across town and off a cliff, the entire night time scene, albeit a bizarre and awkwardly introduced, the crazy closing scene with Billy and his "family," and the opening scene introducing the actors and the invention. 

We see the scene of the frightened black man disintegrating into a pile of dust from his fear here as well.  Only here it's complete with a person kicking the dust, which is conveniently black, and looking at it kind of sadly.  A very bizarre gag that would probably be today panned as racist, but I still laughed at it in a macabre way.

An interesting little film from a bygone era that is well-worth watching for silent film buffs.

8/10

[metaldams]

I edited in the video - I think it should be OK on this one.  I will post my thoughts in the next few days.

[metaldams]

      As far as the title goes, “dyne” I believe is short for dynamite.  Worth mentioning this was directed by Del Lord - who made a lot of these mid 20’s Sennett chase and high stunt affairs, titles were partially written by Felix Adler and story, what there is of it, by Frank Capra.

      Really worth seeing from a Stooge perspective for what Del Lord could do with a time and budget.  Yes, this was most likely an expensive short subject, but the twenties were the golden days of said form.  Expensive shorts like this, especially for Sennett, were common as this type of thing was his bread and butter, not some side project like It was for Harry Cohn.  This is before the double feature so shorts were even more important back then.

      The story of this thing doesn’t matter.  Andy Clyde and Billy Bevan were serviceable, but Paul is right, a lot of comedians can do what they do here.  The main selling point is the destructive car gags, especially Bevan pushing all those cars in a huge row until they fall off a cliff.  The electricity igniting the cars causing them to go crazy across town is another great sight to behold - just pure, unapologetic spectacle.

      The scare stuff at the end is more standard, very much in the THREE PESTS IN A MESS style.  Have no idea who the black actor is and I’m not even sure he is a black actor (look at the lips, very well could be blackface).  Between this, YOU’RE NEXT and a recent Larry Semon short I just saw, the disintegrating scared black man may have been more common then I thought.  I’ve seen it a little too much recently, anyway.

      So yeah, the selling point on this one is the cars and the mass destruction and chaos that ensues.  Some pretty jaw dropping stuff.

[Umbrella Sam]

The first half of this short takes what Mack Sennett was best at-wild physical gags-and really rolls with it. The stuff with the cars is extremely funny, and it is impressive how many cars they got to use. It’s fun, though it has more to do with the situation itself than the performers. As far as I’m aware, this is the only Billy Bevan short I’ve seen, and I don’t really find all that much memorable about Bevan himself. He’s not bad, but not someone who I’d really consider to be distinct.

The second half with the scare reactions is pretty bland, and also uncomfortable. Dudley Dickerson had such good comedic timing that it was a bit easier to forgive the obvious racial prejudice that came with many of the roles he had to play, but here, it’s a random actor who may very well be a guy in blackface. It’s just another painful reminder of the time and how the industry and the public treated black people. The guy kicking his dust after disintegrating is pretty uncomfortable too. At least in YOU’RE NEXT! they moved on from that pretty fast.

So, yeah, definitely worth watching for those car scenes, but it seems like they basically had one really good idea that they couldn’t stretch out in two reels, so they attached a bunch of scare reactions at the end.

6 out of 10