Never Again! The Story of a Speeder Cop. (1916) *** (out of 4)This early animated film runs just under two minutes but it's certainly a creative gem. The story is pretty simple as a cop is sitting in the middle of the road trying to stop cars but no one listens to him. Instead of stopping they just fly past him as a dangerous speed. He then decides to get creative in ways to stop them. At just two minutes there's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but if you're a fan of early animation then you'll certainly enjoy the drawings as well as the creative story. There are several tricks that the cop tries that are actually fairly funny and it certainly helps keep the film moving at a nice pace.

This cartoon was produced by International Film Service. Other cartoons of theirs I have seen have little characters named GLOOM and JOY that oddly appear within the cartoon. I'm really not sure why and they just seem like bizarre little additions today. Perhaps in 1916 this all made sense! Our hero the policeman is told by his boss to stop all the speeding cars. However, nothing the officer does helps, as everyone just ignores him. Again and again, little zippy cars nearly kill him. He resorts to come cute tricks to try to stop them--all to no avail. In the end of the film, he looks like he'd been through a hurricane and his boss yells at him.The cartoon is mildly amusing and rather poorly drawn (even by the standards of the day).