At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

. . . cops brazenly man-handled rich people because the life of a street urchin outweighed the pleasure of a half dozen well-heeled joy riders. If you don't sense something fishy watching this 160-second-long short from the Edison Manufacturing Co.--POLICE CHASING SCORCHING AUTO (1906)--then you'd probably also have trouble guessing who's buried in Grant's Tomb* (the finish line for this staged adventure on wheels). First of all, what were vehicles supposed to do when kids were playing in the middle of the street--BY THEMSELVES--in 1906? Wait till their moms called them home for supper?! The title "auto"--moving at the speed of a horse-drawn ice wagon (but "scorching" in comparison with a crawling baby, had one been present)--passes the juvenile delinquent with plenty of room to spare. Then some reckless mounted policeman scares the kid by snatching them up out of the blue and disappears from the shot. Meanwhile, a pair of his colleagues mounted on mopeds follows the car. The women in the pack seat of the car wave at the bikers, who may have appeared "cute" by the standards of that day. After two minutes of this Mr. Mountie appears out of nowhere, forcing the clunky museum piece's driver to stop (clearly, this "auto" could have given one of those threshing machine steam engines at HOUSE ON A ROCK a large head start, and still lost a half-mile race). The trio of cops proceed to belabor the males in the car (since Edison dispensed with title cards, assuming his viewers had E.S.P., film-goers probably filled in the blanks by concluding the cops were fraternity brothers of the car guys, out for a "scorching" prank). All in all, much ado about nothing.*President Gen. U.S. Grant & Mrs. Grant

Police Chasing Scorching Auto (1905) ** (out of 4) A car almost hits a small child so the police go chase it down. Not too much here.Three American Beauties (1906) ** 1/2 (out of 4) The three beauties are a rose, a woman and the American flag. This here runs just over a minute and is best known for being one of the earliest examples of hand tinting. I've seen many early hand tinted pictures but the quality of the tinting is probably the best here.Terrible Kids, The (1906) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Two kids terrorize the city with their pet bulldog. This is a rather strange film because it is pretty funny but bizarre because of all the dog attacks, which seem pretty brutal and dangerous. One little girl has the dog bite her long hair and pull her around while another scene has the dog get its chain around a woman's neck.

This is an exciting and realistic depiction of a police chase involving an interesting assortment of participants. It was originally filmed with the idea of including it in the fine Edison feature "Life Of An American Policeman", but it was one of the sequences that had to be omitted due to constraints on the movie's length. But it certainly stands up perfectly well on its own, as a shorter feature of about three minutes long.The feature starts with an automobile full of apparent joy-riders barely missing a young child in the street, and then the chase is on. Eventually the automobile is pursued by two policemen on motorbikes and one on a horse. The footage of the chase still looks very good, conveying both a sense of speed and a sense of tension. The climax of the chase occurs near Grant's Tomb, adding an interesting backdrop to the finale.The moving cinematography is nicely done, with very smooth photography that would look good in just about any era. There is one shot near the beginning that you can just spot as a stop-motion shot, but otherwise the technique is flawless for the time. It still works well in conveying the excitement of a chase with motorized vehicles, a subject that was surely much more exotic and even more exciting at the time.