Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Kid’s Auto Race (1914)

Indicative of the occasional practices of the Keystone Film Company during the years of 1913-1914, when the film release schedule exceeded their production capabilities, quick little films were either purchased or produced on the fly to fill out the split-reel films in the Keystone schedule. Sometimes the Keystone staff took advantage of civic events to serve as a backdrop to these largely improvised films. Kid’s Auto Race (1914) is a prime example of such a film.

In his second film role, Charles Chaplin appears for the first time in his famous makeup and wardrobe improvising as a motion picture camera ‘lens louse’ against the backdrop of a boy’s soapbox car race competition. Henry Lehrman is the frustrated film director who tries to keep Charlie out of the camera frame.

— Carl Bennett

This quality DVD edition has been mastered from a restoration conflation of two 35mm nitrate prints held by the British Film Institute, which has been transferred by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovita in Italy. The intertitles were digitally reset with texts from a rerelease print and with two original Keystone cards. The results are very-good to excellent.

The film is accompanied by a music score performed by Eric Beheim on a MIDI synthesizer.

Supplemental material includes Charlie et sa Belle [Charlie’s White Elephant] (1916); Inside the Keystone Project (2010) documenting the Chaplin Project (10 minutes); Silent Traces: The Keystone Locations (2010) with John Bengtson, author of Silent Traces (12 minutes); and a stills gallery.

Overall, the improvement in quality over previous home video editions is so great that you’ll toss your other Keystone Chaplin discs when you see this collection. Highly recommended!

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is available directly from . . .

The film is presented with a music score.

Supplemental material includes 53 other films; and a 16-page insert booklet with notes on the films.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The silent films are accompanied by music scores performed by Neil Brand, Éric Le Guen, Eric Beheim and Gaylord Carter.

Note that there are no English language intertitles except for the American films and that there are no English language subtitles to Bromberg’s verbal introductions or to the foreign language films. North American collectors will need a PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

This Region 0 PAL DVD boxset is available directly from . . .

The film is likely presented with a soundtrack compiled from preexisting low-fi music recordings.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from ALPHA VIDEO through . . .

Don’t consider buying this collection for the Chaplin Mutual films. The Mutual films have all been released on DVD home video in far superior editions transferred from 35mm prints. Cobra Entertainment (successor to Delta) rereleased remaining stock of this disc onto the market in 2010.

DELTA ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .

Other KEYSTONE comedy films available on home video.