Frauds and Frenzies

A clerk is given $10,000 to deposit at the bank, but the bank is closed for the night so he tries to get to the bank president's house with the money.

While Larry Semon does not star in Rips and Rushes, its confident gags and frenetic pace suggest his touch. In the knockabout one-reeler set in a dance studio, three suitors compete for the girl. James Aubrey, the actor playing the father’s preferred suitor, may look like a Chaplin imitator, but he came by those skills honorably, born like Chaplin in Britain and likewise coming to the U.S. with Fred Karno’s troupe. Nevertheless it’s Alice Mann, with her wacky headdress and knowing glance, who steals the show. Suffice it to say that many vases are broken and pants ripped before she escapes out the window with the handsomest of the beaus.

Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend.

Larry in school and always gets in trouble until he falls asleep and dreams of when he's all grown up.

A government official staying in a hotel puts some important secret papers in the hotel safe. A ring of spies out to get the papers manages to steal them from the safe, and a lady government agent enlists the help of the hotel's bumbling bellhop in getting back the papers and breaking up the spy ring.

The Sportsman is an American film comedy first released in 1921, directed by Larry Semon and Norman Taurog. The film stars Larry Semon, Lucille Carlisle, Al Thompson, Frank Alexander and William Hauber.

Unlucky Larry finds himself pursued by the police after he inadvertently steals a man's car and kidnaps his girlfriend.

The storm, which takes up most of the second reel, is a trial run for the storm sequence in The Wizard Of Oz which Semon would make in 1925. Fox released a comedy that was an exact copy of Lightning Love just before the Semon film was due to come out. Albert E. Smith noticed the similarities and on September 5, 1923 attempted to have the Fox film pulled from the exhibitors.

Comedy on the golf links.

Lay Zee works on a farm and has won the heart of the farmer's daughter. There is oil on the farmland, and some swindlers are determined to get their hands on the property, by force if necessary. Lay Zee, who knows that oil has been found on nearby farms, convinces the farmer not to sell, and the swindlers enlist the help of another farmhand, who is jealous of Lay Zee's relationship with the girl.

Larry might be a hick causing a lot of trouble at the farm, but he shows he can outsmart those crooked city folks!

This film represents one of Larry Semon's pro-war films. He is a clumsy guy working in a restaurant and oddly, everyone who works in the place as well as many of the customers are Kaiser-loving spies. Why they would be headquartered in a restaurant in California, I have no idea! Regardless, their aim is to steal some plans from some old guy and his daughter. When Semon finds out, he comes to the rescue.

Larry helps a girl escape her wedding to a fat man.

A man comes home drunk in this slapstick comedy.

The plot of this film really isn't that important. Instead, the sight gags and chase scenes are paramount--with some of the most impressive chase footage you'll ever see. All the near-misses with the speeding train were amazing and the scene where the car gets smashed by the truck are absolutely priceless.