Silent Era : Home Video Reviews

Silent Era Home Page > Home Video > Silent Comedy Classics, Volume 1

Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved.

Silent Comedy
Classics
Volume 1
(1913-1987)

Contents: The Locket; or, When She Was Twenty (1913), The Face on the Bar Room Floor (1914), Laffin Gas [Laughing Gas] (1914), Prince Pistachio (1921), Post No Bills (1923), The Caretakers Daughter (1925), [Exhibitors Convention] (1925), Be Your Age (1926), Mighty Like a Moose (1926), Fluttering Hearts (1927), Forgotten Sweeties (1927) and Late to Lunch (1987).

Alpha Video
2009 DVD edition

Silent Comedy Classics, Volume 1 (1913-1987), black & white, 207 minutes total, not rated, including The Locket; or, When She Was Twenty (1913), black & white, 10 minutes, not rated, The Face on the Bar Room Floor (1914), black & white, 8 minutes, not rated, Laffin Gas [Laughing Gas] (1914), black & white, 9 minutes, not rated, Prince Pistachio (1921), black & white, 11 minutes, not rated, Post No Bills (1923), black & white, 10 minutes, not rated, The Caretakers Daughter (1925), black & white, 23 minutes, not rated, [Exhibitors Convention] (1925), black & white, 11 minutes, not rated, Be Your Age (1926), black & white, 20 minutes, not rated, Mighty Like a Moose (1926), black & white, 23 minutes, not rated, Fluttering Hearts (1927), black & white, 26 minutes, not rated, Forgotten Sweeties (1927), black & white, 20 minutes, not rated, and Late to Lunch (1987), black & white, 35 minutes, not rated.

Alpha Home Entertainment, distributed by Oldies.com,
ALP 5941D, UPC 0-89218-59419-8.
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), ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $7.98 (raised to $8.98).
Release date: 24 November 2009.
Country of origin: USA

This budget DVD collection has been mastered from 16mm reduction prints but is so highly compressed to fit more than 200 minutes of content on a single-sided DVD that the picture is coarsely rendered, and looks terrible on a high-definition system.

Some of the films are accompanied by synchronized sound effects and music scores performed on digital keyboards by Don Kinnier, and some are accompanied by soundtracks compiled from preexisting recordings.

For our comparative reviews of the individual films in this collection, see our Be Your Age on home video; Fluttering Hearts on home video and Mighty Like a Moose on home video pages.