"Girl Shock"

When delving into Charley Chase's rich and vast catalogue of films, it does not take very long to recognize the unfortunate scarcity of the majority of the comedian's work. Even when ignoring the low survival rate of Chase's late silent films (of which only a handful are still extant), there are scores of comedies that are not easily available for public consumption. Yes, thankfully there have been a number of Chase silent comedies released on DVD in recent years, with the tally happily still growing. But the bulk of Chase's comedies have yet to be released on DVD or video, some of these eluding even the staunchest die-hards, sometimes even calling into question whether a particular film exists at all anymore. One of the most notoriously obscure titles among these rare films is an intriguing little two-reeler called Girl Shock (1930), a film that, according to some aficionados at least, seemed to have fallen off the face of the Earth.

In truth, Girl Shock's scarcity is likely due to its exclusion from the Hal Roach TV packages of the 1950s, and its absence from the 16mm home collector market of the '50s and '60s. The obscurity of the film is underscored by its omission from the Chase scholarship of the past few decades, which had uniformly praised much more accessible early talkies like The Pip From Pittsburgh and Whispering Whoopee. And so, to this very day, Girl Shock retains its reputation as the 'Holy Grail' of Charley Chase talkies, an ultra-rare early sound comedy that is without doubt the most hard-to-find Chase comedy from the period. In fact, the only Chase talkies less scarce than Girl Shock are the comedian's initial sound films, some of which are missing their original soundtracks.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I was afforded the opportunity to view the elusive Girl Shock. At first glance, the film seemed awfully familiar. In fact, Girl Shock sits comfortably alongside the silent What Women Did For Me (1927) and the later, and much better known, talkie Girl Grief (1932). In Girl Shock, just like the two other shorts, Charley is afraid of girls. However, unlike Chase's other "girl shy" comedies, Girl Shock provides an unusual psychological dimension to his characterization. At the beginning of the film, Charley's fiancee (played by Carmen Guerrero, who reprised her role in the Spanish-language version of the short, Huye, Faldas!; a French version, Timide Malgre Lui, was also shot simultaneously with the American release) explains the root of Charley's odd behavior to her father, played by the gruff Edgar Kennedy. She tells her father that Charley's shyness around women - which manifests itself as sheer terror mixed with a comic craziness not displayed by Chase since Crazy Like a Fox - stems from an episode when he was stationed in Russia during the First World War. In a strange flashback sequence - and one of the most intriguing scenes found in Chase's sound-era work - we see Charley emerging from the debris of his downed warplane, seemingly surrounded by enemy troops. He whips out his gun, ready to fight, but the troops announce that they are Russian allies. Upon closer inspection, Charley notices that the soldiers are in fact all gorgeous women, naturally presented in smiling close-ups, who one by one volunteer to nurse the wounded Charley. Without warning, the sex-starved women tackle "poor" Charley and the scene fades back to the present, with Edgar remarking, "He must've had a terrible shock!"

Once Charley arrives at a party thrown at his fiancee's house, he begins displaying his odd behavior around women; unlike Girl Grief, it isn't bashfulness that he exhibits when introduced to a lady, but instead massive hysteria. Throughout the short, Charley attempts to suppress this reaction - and tries to avoid contact with women altogether - but social situations inevitably, and repeatedly, provoke this response in him. As noted earlier, his fits of lunacy invite comparisons to his nutty act in the much earlier Crazy Like a Fox (as does an early moment in the film when, fleetingly, Charley's fiancee mentions that their impending marriage had been "arranged years ago"), and during one of his loony episodes Charley actually pushes a matronly women - his soon-to-be mother-in-law, no less - into the pool like in the earlier comedy.

Given Charley's odd behavior, his fiancee and her father resolve to help Charley get over his fear of women. To help cure Charley they hire a kooky psychologist, Dr. Lorenzo (played by Jerry Mandy), whose over-the-top eccentricity leads to one of the funnier moments in the short, when Charley turns the doctor and remarks, "Wait a minute, you're trying to cure me?" Dr. Lorenzo suggests that, since Charley's behavior was induced by a "shock", another big shock would snap him out of it. This leads to several heavy-handed slapstick gags that would be more at home in one of Chase's later Columbia comedies than in this Hal Roach talkie. The "shock cure" idea also provides the film with a rather flat comic set-piece, as Charley attempts to get bitten by a dog (who turns out to be of the small and harmless variety), and, when that proves unsuccessful, he sticks wieners in his back pockets, which causes all the neighborhood dogs to maul him. Finally, Dr. Lorenzo decides that a blood transfusion from a hearty male is Charley's only hope for a cure, and convinces Edgar to give a quart of his blood to Charley. After the operation, Dr. Lorenzo tells Edgar, his wife, and Charley's fiancee that he should be cured after the operation, since now he'd have Edgar's attitude towards women. At this point, Charley emerges from the hospital room chasing various nurses all over the corridor with wild abandon like a dapper Harpo Marx. As this reveals Edgar's true flirty nature, Mrs. Kennedy turns to her husband and smashes a vase over Edgar's head. The short ends on a shot of the outside of the hospital, with nurses leaping out of all the open windows, trying to escape the lecherous Charley inside.

On the whole, the short has a rather strange feel about it, and even when its comic moments fall flat, there is a strange and fascinating interplay between its anarchic atmosphere, the almost childish nature of some of its gags, and the adult overtones of the film. A critic with a Freudian bent could have a field day with all the sexual implications found in this two-reel comedy (the ending alone, which presents Chase as something of a cross between a crazed Pan and a sexual monster, would cause these critics to go into hysterics themselves.) Perhaps Harry Langdon's presence on the Hal Roach lot during this period had an influence on Chase, if not in terms of characterization and performance style, then in the incongruities that abound in this particular short. At this point in his sound-era career, Chase still appeared as the worldly, debonair sophisticate of his silent days, a look that provides a distinct counterpoint to the sexually skittish character he plays in the short. The soundtrack of the film is a LeRoy Shield score that, oddly, is not an orchestral arrangement, but instead performed on a solo theatre organ, which serves to add to the already strange atmosphere of this comedy.

So, how does this obscurity rate compared to the more well-known entries in the Chase canon? Girl Shock is no classic, and a somewhat awkward, creaky early talkie, but the film contains enough idiosyncrasies to make it more satisfying than some other, more routine Chase comedies of the period like Fast Work or All Teed Up. That the short almost exclusively centers upon the theme of sexuality makes it an intriguing entry in the Chase series and rather reflective of the pre-Code era. Though hardly his most inventive comedy, and comprised of clumsy slapstick and some downright silly gags, Girl Shock remains one of Charley Chase's most fascinating and bizarrely diverting films of the early talkie period.

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