High Speed (1932) Review: Dumb, Dusty, and Surprisingly Fun

If you have seventy minutes to kill and love dusty, loud engines from the Hoover administration, High Speed is worth a look. 🏎️

Car nerds and people who find old Hollywood cheese charming will dig it, but anyone expecting a deep story or real logic will absolutely hate this.

The plot is basically a fever dream written on a napkin.

We got Buck Jones playing a cop who decides the best way to catch some local mobsters is to... put on some racing goggles and drive really fast. 🤷

It makes no sense, but honestly, who cares when the cars look like giant metal bathtubs with wheels?

There is this kid in it played by a tiny Mickey Rooney, and his energy is just off the charts.

He is practically vibrating in every scene he is in, just screaming his head off.

I kept thinking about other shorts from back then, like Tire Trouble, which had that same scrappy, DIY energy with vehicles.

The romance subplot is incredibly rushed, even for 1932.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of High Speed (1932) through its definitive frames.

He basically looks at the racetrack owner's daughter, they share about three lines of dialogue, and suddenly they are in love.

The Racing Scenes (Or: How to Almost Die for a Movie)

You can tell they didn't have much of a budget because the camera just sits by the dirt track while these cars kick up massive clouds of dust.

At one point, a car spins out and it looks genuinely dangerous, like the stunt driver actually lost control and they just kept rolling.

I love those little accidents that make it into the final cut of old films.

It feels much more real than the clean CGI we get now, even if the acting is stiff as a board.

Speaking of stiff, the main mob boss guy looks like he is reading his lines off a giant poster board behind the camera. His eyes keep drifting to the left!

If you've seen other cheap mysteries from this era, like The Wall Street Mystery, you know exactly what kind of wooden acting to expect here.

But Buck Jones has this easygoing charm that somehow carries the whole messy thing on his back.

"I'm gonna win this race, and then I'm gonna lock you up!" (Not an actual quote, but it might as well be).

The climax is just a big jumble of dirt, roaring engines, and guys in flat caps shouting. It is wonderful chaos.

Is it a masterpiece? Heck no. But it is short, it is silly, and it has Mickey Rooney yelling at cars.