Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
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Slapstick Masters
(1917-1929)
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Contents: Easy Street (1917), One Week (1920), Chasing Choo-Choos (1927) [condensed version of the feature comedy Play Safe (1927)] and Big Business (1929).
This compilation of previously-available material from video producer David Shepard features newly-recorded musical accompaniment by the quirky Alloy Orchestra.
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 Film Preservation Associates
2003 DVD edition
Slapstick Masters (1917-1929), black & white, 87 minutes total, not rated,
including Easy Street (1917), black & white, 24 minutes, not rated, One Week (1920), black & white, 22 minutes, not rated, Chasing Choo-Choos (1927) [condensed version of the feature comedy Play Safe (1927)], black & white, 23 minutes, not rated, and Big Business (1929), black & white, 18 minutes, not rated.
Film Preservation Associates, distributed by Image Entertainment, ID1897DSDVD, UPC 0-14381-18972-8.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD disc (reissued on DVD-R disc); 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 224 Kbps audio bit rate; English language subtitles, no foreign language subtitles; 20 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $24.99.
Release date: 15 July 2003.
Country of origin: USA •
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This DVD collection features video transfers of the four films that have been released elsewhere: Easy Street from the Chaplin Mutual Comedies collection, One Week possibly from the 2000 Kino Saphead release, and Chasing Choo-Choos from the Slapstick Encyclopedia boxset, all produced for video by David Shepard. Only Big Business could be a different transfer than that issued on the Lost Films of Laurel and Hardy, Volume One edition released on DVD by Hal Roach Studios. Easy Street and One Week are now available in far better-looking editions on Blu-ray Disc.
Each of the films are accompanied by custom music scores by The Alloy Orchestra and is the principal reason to own this collection (if you like their music . . . we do).
This edition was reissued on DVD-R disc and is now out-of-print.
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USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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