a5c7b9f00b Young David Morton, heir to millions, has been over-zealously restrained from normal youthful activities by his two old-maid Aunts, Harriet and Agatha. In an outburst from his confinement, he meets lovely Gertrude, and promises to race her injured-brothers car in the Big Race. Between the gangsters trying to win the race by disabling him, and his bungling bodyguards trying to bring him home safely, David has a battle to win the race and Gertrude's heart. He succeeds in winning the race, capturing the gangsters and gets his aunt's understanding release.
ROARING ROADS is a fun little drama from the 1930s that manages to pack a lot into the short running time (under one hour). It also has a lightness of touch which I found commendable, meaning that the narrative moves along smoothly and even the rough-around-the-edge touches aren't much of a problem.<br/><br/>The main character is played by David Sharpe, who also had a hand in the story. He's an amusing dweeb character, an upper class twit mollycuddled by his aunts and longing for an adventure. Through various plot contrivances, an adventure indeed comes along in the form of a pretty girl in thrall to gangsters, one of whom is played by former OUR GANG actor Mickey Daniels.<br/><br/>What follows is a story mixing together romance, drama, thrills, and plenty of comic hijinks involving the stars. The climactic racing car scene is well handled to boot and it's a lot of fun to watch it just to see how dangerous things were back in the day before various safety measures like roll cages and the like were brought in to play. The humour is lowbrow and slapstick and typically involves dumb henchmen getting knocked out by even dumber comedy sidekicks, but it's an effortless watch.
I hadn't heard of this movie until recently. I've been on a Little Rascals (or Our Gang) binge recently and when I viewed the Miss Crabtree shorts, I looked up June Marlowe on this site to see if she had made any movies after her stint as that teacher on the series and this one was listed. The fact that former Our Gangers Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman were also in it whet my appetite as well. Well, I've finally seen this one and the June Marlowe who appeared wasn't Miss Crabtree at all just a brash singer who wasn't so bad during the dance sequence. Oh, and I just found out the star of this movie was one Dave Sharpe who was a stuntman for Hal Roach Studios (he did those backflips for Margaret Mann's Grandma in Fly My Kite) and also was one of the players in The Boy Friends series for Roach which also starred Mickey and Mary. Anyway, this was quite a funny movie not only for those stunts Dave did but also for some dialogue exchanges between Mickey and Mary (and look, he finally got that kiss from her after persisting throughout Fish Hooky a few years back!). And yes, he does that familiar laugh he often did during the talkie era. So on that note, Roaring Roads is worth a look if you're curious enough as I was...P.S. Sharpe also did the story as D.H. Sharpe
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Updated: Mar 21, 2020
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