Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
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The
Stunt Man
(1927)
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We do not keep secret our low opinion of Larry Semon, and this film does not change our mind.
Luther Meek (Semon) is a rich dumbbell who is courting Pearl Splurge (Dorothea Raynor). To impress her, he takes up a job as a motion picture stunt man and, predictably, wreaks havoc on the film studio. Nothing makes sense here, not even in the spurious logic world of silent slapstick comedies.
— Carl Bennett
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 Grapevine Video
2005 DVD edition
Larry Semon Shorts, Volume One (1918-1927), black & white, 114 minutes total, not rated, including The Stunt Man (1927), black & white, ? minutes, not rated.
Grapevine Video, no catalog number, unknown UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC 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 mono sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $16.95.
Release date: 2005.
Country of origin: USA |
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from an 8mm reduction print. The quality should be the same as Grapevine’s edition noted below.
The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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 Grapevine Video
2004 DVD edition
Stand and Deliver (1928), black & white, 60 minutes, not rated, with The Stunt Man (1927), black & white, 16 minutes, not rated.
Grapevine Video, no catalog number, unknown UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC 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 4.4 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); MPEG 2.0 mono sound encoded at 224 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 4 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $12.95 (raised to $14.95).
Release date: August 2005.
Country of origin: USA •
Ratings (1-10): video: 3 / audio: 4 / additional content: 4 / overall: 3.
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a fair to good 8mm reduction print.
The film is accompanied by a compilation soundtrack of preexisting recordings that may just be funnier than the film itself.
Other home video editions have been released and may not look any better than this.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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