Mabel at the Wheel

Charlie Chaplin went from tiny bit player to the top comic for Keystone in less than a year. "Mabel at the Wheel" is one of his earlier films and as the title suggests, it's a Mabel Normand vehicle and he's playing second to her.

Charlie takes Mabel for a ride on his motorcycle but ends up accidentally dumping her in a giant mud puddle. Not surprisingly, she's not happy and she soon goes off with another guy in his race car. Oddly, while this happens right AFTER the mud puddle incident, she's 100% clean...and not a trace of mud.

Charlie is angry he lost her, so he now plots revenge (as you can tell with a bit of overacting by Charlie). He even ends up slugging poor Mabel (which isn't very funny)! This isn't the end to Charlie's nasty behavior--which also includes rock throwing and popping the car's tire. In fact, Charlie is such a jerk you really are rooting for her to run off with Charlie's rival.

In the second part of the comedy, there is a big race and Charlie and his goons kidnap the rival so that he cannot race. So, it's up to Mabel to save the day.

While slapstick comedy is supposed to be violent, seeing Charlie slugging Mabel is terribly unfunny and I cannot imagine audiences of the day liking this, as I've seen hundreds of slapstick films and never recall this sort of behavior. Usually it's more exaggerated and oddly funny. You also see no sign of Charlie's sweet and likable Little Tramp character here...he's just a nasty jerk. Clearly not among Chaplin's best and seeing him behave this way isn't exactly endearing. Fortunately, Chaplin soon stopped playing villain roles and went on to far better things.