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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Black Cyclone
(1925)
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This Hal Roach western features Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, Kathleen Collins and Rex the horse.
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 Grapevine Video
2012 DVD edition
Black Cyclone (1925), color-tinted black & white, 66 minutes, not rated, with Back to the Woods (1923), black & white, 19 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 stereo sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $14.95.
Release date: 17 August 2012.
Country of origin: USA
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This DVD-R edition has likely been mastered from a 16mm reduction print.
The film is presented with a music score performed by David Knudtson.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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 TeleVista
2009 DVD edition
Black Cyclone (1925), black & white, 67 minutes, not rated.
TeleVista, no catalog number, UPC 0-29502-13601-7.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD 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 5.8 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 192 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 12 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $19.95.
Release date: 23 June 2009.
Country of origin: USA •
Ratings (1-10): video: 6 / audio: 6 / additional content: 2 / overall: 6.
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This DVD edition has been mastered from a 16mm reduction print. The video transfer is flatly rendered with grey shadows and light grey highlights. The coarse interlaced picture can be helped by playback systems that are capable of converting the interlacing to a progressive scan picture but some interlacing artifacts will still show in intertitles type. Most of the intertitles are windowboxed which partically cuts off the edges of text from time to time. There does not seem to be a reason for this as the action cinematography is presented full-frame. The print itself has a number of scratches, rough splices, frame jitters, emulsion scrapes, dust, speckling and schmutz.
The film is accompanied by a soundtrack of compiled preexisting orchestral recordings. Some of the music is unnessarily syrupy.
The supplementary material is exclusively a section of “slides” that are, stupidly, nothing more than still frames from the video transfer.
We suspect that the Grapevine Video edition noted above is a better product than this.
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USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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 Alpha Video
2012 DVD edition
The Unknown Ranger (1920), black & white, 54 minutes, not rated, with Black Cyclone (1925), black & white, 50 minutes, not rated.
Alpha Home Entertainment, distributed by Oldies.com,
ALP 6699D, UPC 0-89218-66999-5.
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; $6.98 (raised to $8.98).
Release date: 3 January 2012.
Country of origin: USA
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This DVD-R edition has likely been mastered from a 16mm or 8mm reduction print.
The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings.
This is our recommended home video edition of the film.
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USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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This
Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .
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Other WESTERN FILMS of the silent era available on home video.
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