Silent Era : Home Video Reviews

Silent Era Home Page > Home Video > Lost Comedy Classics, Volume 2

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

Lost Comedy Classics
Volume 2
(1917-1919)

Contents: All Aboard! (1917), Step Lively (1917), Ask Father (1919), Bumping into Broadway (1919), Chop Suey and Co. (1919), Don’t Shove (1919) and Ring Up the Curtain (1919).

You have to wonder why Harold Lloyd isn’t mentioned in the title of this collection entirely made up of Lloyd films.

Alpha Video
2013 DVD edition

Lost Comedy Classics, Volume 2 (1917-1919), black & white, 82 minutes total, not rated, including All Aboard! (1917), black & white, 9 minutes, not rated, Step Lively (1917), black & white, 10 minutes, not rated, Ask Father (1919), black & white, 10 minutes, not rated, Bumping into Broadway (1919), black & white, 21 minutes, not rated, Chop Suey and Co. (1919), black & white, 12 minutes, not rated, Don’t Shove (1919), black & white, 9 minutes, not rated, and Ring Up the Curtain (1919), black & white, 9 minutes, not rated.

Alpha Home Entertainment, distributed by Oldies.com,
ALP 7236D, UPC 0-89218-72369-7.
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 5.4 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 384 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 7 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $6.98 (raised to $8.98).
Release date: 10 December 2013.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 3 / audio: 3 / additional content: 0 / overall: 3.

This DVD-R collection has been mastered from a number of substandard 16mm and 8mm reduction prints. Chop Suey and Co. has been mastered from a fair 8mm reduction print. Step Lively has been mastered from a fair to good 8mm reduction print duplicated from a vintage rerelease print.

The films are accompanied by soundtracks crudely compiled from preexisting vintage jazz music recordings.

For our comparative reviews of some of the films in this collection, see our All Aboard! on home video, Ask Father on home video, Bumping into Broadway on home video, Don’t Shove on home video and Ring Up the Curtain on home video pages.

We wouldn’t recommend this below-average disc but a couple of these films are available nowhere else on home video. And . . . were these films truly lost?

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.