Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
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With Sitting Bull
at the Spirit Lake
Massacre
(1927)
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This Western drama, directed by Robert North Bradbury, stars Bryant Washburn, Chief Yowlachie, Anne Schaefer, Jay Morley, Shirley Palmer, James O’Neil, Bob Bradbury Jr. (Bob Steele) and Fred Warren.
Washburn’s moustache looks ridiculously out of place in a western.
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 Alpha Video
2011 DVD edition
A Texas Cowboy (1929), black & white, 54 minutes, not rated, with With Sitting Bull at the Spirit Lake Massacre (1927), black & white, 74 minutes, not rated.
Alpha Home Entertainment, distributed by Oldies.com,
ALP 6510D, UPC 0-89218-65109-9.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), 3.8 Mbps average video bit rate, 384 Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 mono sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, no chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $7.98 (raised to $8.98).
Release date: 22 February 2011.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 6 / audio: 6 / additional content: 3 / overall: 5.
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Surprise! Surprise! This Alpha Video DVD-R edition has been mastered from a very-good 16mm reduction print, which has the usual amount of vertical scratches, speckling and dust with some minor print damage — some of it likely to be hard duplicated from the 35mm source materials. Still not the sharpest picture available but you normally would not see this level of picture quality from an Alpha Video release.
The film is accompanied by a compiled music score of preexisting orchestral recordings that are, at least, of better audio quality than usual. Not always thematically appropriate to the film’s action but better audio.
Recommended until a higher-quality disc is released as this appears to be the only available home video edition of the film.
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USA: Click the logomark to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD-R of this edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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Canada: Click the logomark to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD-R of this edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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