Anyone looking for a good example of a typical Keystone product from the heyday of The Fun Factory is likely to enjoy Love, Loot and Crash, a movie whose title could well have served as a motto for the studio's output. This is a brief and enjoyable farce comedy, no masterpiece but amusing, and a "typical" Keystone in the sense that it's an ensemble piece without a dominant personality driving the action. There's no Chaplin or Arbuckle here, just a good solid team of performers romping their way through a scenario based on thwarted romance, mistaken identity, and criminality. It's a straightforward 1915 sitcom that culminates in a wild chase involving fast cars, a motorcycle, some ditch diggers, a prat-falling fruit vendor, and the Keystone Kops.
(Incidentally, it's been pointed out elsewhere in IMDb that the Sennett organization always utilized the correct spelling of the word "cops" in its films and publicity material, not "kops." For what it's worth, a quick Google search reveals some 119,000 usages of the phrase "Keystone Kops," so despite the studio's original practice it's clear that the "Kops" spelling has entered popular culture.)
Among the featured players in Love, Loot and Crash the best known is Charley Chase, who was only 21 years old at this time and barely recognizable to viewers familiar with his starring comedies of the 1920s and '30s. Here Charley acquits himself nicely as the smiling juvenile but has very little comic business to perform. Most of the laughs are earned by plump character actor Fritz Schade, who plays a crook disguised as a scullery maid and thus appears mostly in drag. Schade is amusing with his dainty gestures; there's a good moment when the local cop drops by to flirt with the plump new maid, and Schade turns to the camera to deliver a clearly lip-readable "Oh my God!" Still, the thought of Roscoe Arbuckle in the role points up how much funnier these scenes might have been.
Scholar Glenn Mitchell confirms in his book 'The A-Z of Silent Film Comedy' that the Italian fruit vendor is played by another promising young comedian on his way up, Harold Lloyd. He can be seen during the chase, performing wild falls. In later years, Lloyd teased his one- time employer Mack Sennett for not appreciating his abilities during his brief stint at Keystone. While that cannot be denied, Lloyd's modest contribution to this movie makes an already pleasant diversion still more enjoyable.
