This film is part of Free
The "?" Motorist
The lengths that some people will go to, just to avoid a speeding ticket… in this case to Saturn and back.
Science Fiction 1906 3 mins Silent
Overview
This eccentrically-titled Robert Paul comedy - made by trick specialist WR Booth - is one of the most iconic of early British films. As Cecil Hepworth did in Explosion of a Motor Car (1900), Booth uses a stop-and-substitute gag, using dummy body parts, for the sequence when a car runs over a policeman. Booth, however, takes it further. As the policeman reassembles himself (Terminator-style!) and pursues the car to a dead end, it drives straight up a building and up to the stars, where it drives around a very Georges Melies-style celestial scene before dropping back to earth and the magistrates' court.
Subjects
Related
Robert Paul: Giant of Early Film
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