Galloping Bungalows

Galloping Bungalows (1924)

** (out of 4)

Lesser film from Mack Sennett has a rich woman placing an ad in the paper saying that she will marry whatever man has the best mustache in town. Billy Bevan "wins" the contest but soon he's causing all sorts of chaos starting with him trying to buy a house by the beach. GALLOPING BUNGALOWS is the perfect example of a Sennett comedy that features a story that makes no sense but instead of a story we're given various wild chases. I really wouldn't call this film good but at the same time I can understand why fans of Sennett might really eat this thing up. There's no question that there are some pretty wild stunts going on here including one sequence where a fire truck is going down the street with the back cart sliding all over the road from side to side. I couldn't help but think that something similar to this would happen decades later in TERMINATOR 3. I also thought the opening bits had a few nice ideas dealing with the mustaches but for some reason this didn't play too much into the film. At 20-minutes I thought there were plenty of places where the thing just dragged very badly and there's no question that there's not enough laughs to make it work.