Paul is trying to elope with a girl whose father offers vigorous opposition. A rival suitor, who is a giant in stature, is also an impediment in the pathway of the swain and "his girl," but opposition to the runaway is finally overcome when the girl in the case sets fire to the house in which she is held captive and in the ensuing complication of events escapes with her Romeo.
Arson never looked so romantic. Hal Roach’s 1922 pocket-rocket Rough on Romeo—clocking in at a brisk two reels—feels like someone stuffed a Shakespearean comedy, a Keystone inferno, and a marriage license into the same centrifuge and pressed purée. The resulting cocktail is a caffeinated silhouette chase that ends, qu...
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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.
James D. Davis
James D. Davis
Community
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" Arson never looked so romantic. Hal Roach’s 1922 pocket-rocket Rough on Romeo—clocking in at a brisk two reels—feels like someone stuffed a Shakespearean comedy, a Keystone inferno, and a marriage license into the same centrifuge and pressed purée. The resulting cocktail is a caffeinated silhouette chase that ends, quite literally, in flames. Plot in a scorched nutshell Paul (James Parrott, all elbows and elastic terror) yearns to bolt with his sweetheart (Jobyna Ralston, equal parts ingenue an..."
Eddie Baker
Hal Roach
United States
