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The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vol. 1

Actors: Roy Brooks, Westcott Clarke, Mickey Daniels, Mildred Davis, Helen Gilmore
ASIN : B000B5XORK
Sales Rank : 56176
Director : Sam Taylor
Studio : New Line Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Restored, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780780652897
ISBN : 0780652894
UPC : 794043844621
Release Date : December 15, 2005
Publisher : New Line Home Video
Manufacturer : New Line Home Video
Label : New Line Home Video
Running Time : 465

Description

Having appeared in more than 200 films and widely considered to be one of cinema's most respected comic geniuses, Harold Lloyd was one of Hollywood's first true movie stars. Now, entertainment enthusiasts of all ages can enjoy the work of the man who inspired generations of acting greats with The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary by critic Leonard Maltin & director Rich Correll on Safety Last!
Other:*All feature films and shorts are full frame versions. **All content will have Spanish subtitles. Only the pictures with sound will have English subtitles and closed captions
Photo gallery

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Harold Lloyd's place as the "third genius" of silent comedy (with Chaplin and Keaton) should be cemented by the release of his best work in splendid prints on DVD. The Harold Lloyd Collection, Vol. 1, a two-disc set, leads off with the most famous of Lloyd's pictures, the 1923 "thrill" comedy Safety Last. The bespectacled Mr. Lloyd found his spot in comedy by playing the persona seen here: an optimistic go-getter, energetic but not particularly remarkable, who perseveres as he moves up the ladder. In Safety Last, he really moves up: Harold is a department store clerk who concocts a publicity scheme for his store, which results in a climactic, hair-raising ascent up the outside of the building (at one point hanging from the hands of a huge clock). The ingenious shooting of the sequence--no rear projection of digital effects here--made audiences gasp at Lloyd's apparent peril. (His acrobatic stunts are all the more remarkable when you realize that Lloyd lost two fingers on his right hand in a 1919 publicity stunt involving a prop bomb).

There is at least one other masterpiece on Vol. 1, the wonderful Girl Shy (1924), in which Harold is a small-time tailor's apprentice who can't speak to women but nevertheless has penned a how-to book entitled The Secret of Making Love. A stream of terrific gags (look for how Lloyd employs a dog on a train) and a nice love story blend smoothly, and the movie has an extended chase sequence using car, horse, streetcar, motorcycle, and firetruck. There's also the 1923 Why Worry?, Lloyd's last feature with longtime producer Hal Roach, which suffers just a bit with its odd milieu (tropical island beset by revolutionaries) but has some hilariously weird routines built around compact Harold and the giant John Aasen (8 feet, 9 inches).

A trio of shorter films are included, including 1920's From Hand to Mouth, which puts Lloyd in a Chaplinesque down-and-out situation. A new nine-minute featurette, Harold's Hollywood: Then and Now, visits Hollywood location sites from Lloyd films. Indeed, one of the pleasures of watching Lloyd's films is his outdoorsy use of 1920s L.A. locations and outmoded vehicles such as streetcars. Two Paramount sound features are also here, the oddball Cat's Paw and the entertaining The Milky Way. The latter has Harold as a milkman who boxes his way to a title fight; the comedian's spirit jibes well with the breezy direction of Leo McCarey.

Lloyd was a canny businessman who kept control of his own films, which is one reason most of these prints look so good. His estate, and granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd, were closely involved in assembling these treasures. --Robert Horton

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The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vol. 2

Actors: Eddie Boland, Olin Francis, Walter James, Frank Lanning, Harold Lloyd
ASIN : B000B5XORU
Sales Rank : 41023
Director : Harold Lloyd, Lewis Milestone, Ted Wilde
Studio : New Line Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Restored, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780780652903
ISBN : 0780652908
UPC : 794043844720
Release Date : December 15, 2005
Publisher : New Line Home Video
Manufacturer : New Line Home Video
Label : New Line Home Video

Description

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary by Leonard Maltin, Rich Correll and film historian Richard Bann on The Freshman Commentary by Harold Lloyd's granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd, Author Annette Lloyd and Rich Correll on Kid Brother
Other:*All feature films and shorts are full frame versions. **All content will have Spanish subtitles. Only the pictures with sound will have English subtitles and closed captions
Photo gallery

Amazon.com

The second volume of the definitive Harold Lloyd collection in no way plays second banana to Vol. 1. This splendid two-disc set might be the best of the three Lloyd volumes, and on its own serves as a worthy introduction to one of silent cinema's comic geniuses. It has three of Lloyd's finest features, Grandma's Boy, <>The Freshman, and The Kid Brother, one of his funniest sound features, and a smorgasbord of topnotch shorter films.

The Freshman (1925) presents Lloyd's successful screen persona fully realized: hopeful, plucky, a regular guy with high ambitions. He plays a college plebe whose ridiculous ideas about making himself ingratiating to others (including hilariously inapt jig during a handshake) makes him the laughingstock of the campus. The movie concludes with a justifiably famous football sequence, later excerpted by Preston Sturges for his Lloyd-starring comedy, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. The Kid Brother (1927) is Harold as the weak link in the tough Hickory family, while Dr. Jack (1922) casts him as a country doctor whose ordinary ways prove sharper than they seem (his co-star, as in some other films here, is future wife Mildred Davis). In Grandma's Boy (1922) Lloyd plays a small-town fellow who lives with his frisky grandmother; convinced of his own cowardice, he yearns to compete for the hand of a pretty girl. His courtly call to the girl's home is the occasion for uproarious battle with a ridiculous "formal" suit, mothballs, and a litter of kittens attracted by the goose grease on his shoes. There's also a long (and quite funny) flashback to Lloyd's ancestor, tangled in a Civil War fracas.

The short films include Bumping Into Broadway (1919), which gives an early glimpse at Lloyd's athleticism, and Billy Blazes, Esq. (1919), which puts Lloyd in the Old West. The gem is High and Dizzy (1920), a warm-up for his classic Safety Last (on Vol. 1), which has a great sequence with Lloyd tipsily navigating a ledge on a high building. Feet First (1930), Lloyd's second talking picture, has Harold as an upwardly-striving shoe salesman trying to finesse his way up the ladder. Some good shipboard sequences in the middle of this one, but the main drawing card is a throwback: Lloyd re-visiting the Safety Last hanging-from-a-building sequence, but this time working every variation known to slapstick. It's really funny, and shows his physical dexterity to be undiminished (the bit is marred only by the insensitive racial jokes at the expense of actor Willie Best, who is billed under his wince-worthy performing name, Sleep 'n Eat). Commentaries on two films and lots of production stills round out the package, along with a short doc about music for silent slapstick comedy. --Robert Horton

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Gary Cooper MGM Movie Legends Collection (The Cowboy and the Lady / The Real Glory / Vera Cruz / The Winning of Barbara Worth)

Actors: Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Merle Oberon, David Niven, Denise Darcel
ASIN : B000Q6774A
Sales Rank : 37112
Director : H.C. Potter, Henry Hathaway, Henry King, Robert Aldrich
Brand : TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0027616076533
UPC : 027616076533
Release Date : December 22, 2007
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 371

Product Description

Disc 1: THE REAL GLORYLegendary screen icons Gary Cooper (High Noon) and Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry) teamup for a magnificent action-packed western from director Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen) and screenwriters Roland Kibbee and James R. Webb. With sweeping vistas and larger-than-life heroicsit's a tale as bold and rugged as the characters it so brilliantly depicts. Cooper and Lancaster portray Benjamin Trane and Joe Erin two daredevil mercenaries who journey to Mexico in search of adventureand cold hard cashduring the 1866 revolution. But they get more than they bargained for when the wealthy and beautiful Countess Duvarre (Denise Darcel) hires them to escort her (and a fortune in gold!) to Emperor Maximilian's fighting forces in Vera Cruz. The trail is fraught with danger betrayal and murder...and when Ben is swept up in the revolutionaries' fervor he and Joe find themselves at odds with the Mexican Armyand each other!Disc 2: VERA CRUZDisc 3: THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTHDisc 4: COWBOY AND THE LADYRuntime: 375 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 027616076533 Manufacturer No: M107655

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It actually underscores the power and distinctiveness of Gary Cooper's movie stardom that this isn't so much a true collection as gleanings from the odds-and-ends table. That's not a knock; three of the four films are solid entertainments and would be well worth recommending on their own. But the only thing unifying them is the beauty and enigma Cooper brought to them, and the professionalism with which he addressed these wide-ranging assignments.

Three of them date from the '20s and '30s and were produced by Samuel Goldwyn. The 1926 silent The Winning of Barbara Worth gave Western stunt man and bit player Cooper his first featured role (by accident--the actor originally cast didn't report for work!). A cowboy whose visionary surveyor father aims to "redeem the desert and make it one fine garden," Cooper's character is the third corner of a romantic triangle, ordained by the Hollywood caste system to lose lifelong sweetheart Vilma Banky to engineer Ronald Colman. Colman has lots more screen time than Cooper and bears the moral-ethical brunt of the eco-conscious drama; he's also surprisingly persuasive wearing a sweat-stained Stetson and trading gunshots with the bad guys (if this were a sound film, Colman could never have gotten away with it). But the camera and the audience are locked onto Cooper whenever he's on screen. In longshot or vulnerable closeup, he's already one of the gods of the cinema. As for the movie, the quality of the print is excellent, its clarity intensified by bronze, yellow, and moonlit-blue tinting that often seems on the verge of resolving into full color. Director Henry King shows a good eye for action and bold vistas, and a visual adventurousness mostly absent from his later work.

Next up chronologically is The Cowboy and the Lady (1938), and the best thing about this misbegotten movie is Garson Kanin's description, in one of his Hollywood memoirs, of how Leo McCarey sold the idea for it to Sam Goldwyn. McCarey was, of course, a comedic master (recently Oscared for directing The Awful Truth), and his exuberant pitch convinced Goldwyn and his staffers that audiences would "piss" themselves laughing at this romantic comedy about a daughter of privilege (Merle Oberon) who falls for a rodeo rider (Cooper) and learns homespun values. Goldwyn paid McCarey off, assigned some writers to the script, then realized there was no real story--"no there there," as Gertrude Stein might have put it. The resultant unfunny and unromantic endeavor oozes bad faith from every pore, with neck-snapping life changes foisted on the hapless Cooper and Oberon from reel to reel, and excruciating scenes (jitterbugging in a drawing room, playing house back on Cooper's ranch) that strain charmlessly for McCarey's patented brand of fey. H.C. Potter directed, understandably without conviction.

We and Cooper are back on track with The Real Glory (1939). The reliable Henry Hathaway helmed this second cousin to his and Cooper's The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, with Cooper as an Army doctor assigned to the Philippine Constabulary on Mindanao in 1906. The movie was well-received when it came out; encountered in the shadow of the Iraq War, its tale of U.S. occupiers trying to help the local populace "stand up" against a fanatical and murderous insurgency takes on new fascination. There are some amazing passages--two horrendous murders by bolo knife--and the final battle sequence puts the CGI-riddled action films of the present day to shame. But the most impressive element is Cooper, and we can't improve on the verdict of that astute film critic Graham Greene: "Mr. Cooper ... has never acted better.... Watch him inoculate [Andrea King] against cholera--the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think any more."

For the final film in the set we jump into the '50s--the century's and Cooper's. Vera Cruz (1954) casts him as a former Confederate officer who's ridden into Emperor Maximilian's Mexico, hoping to make a fortune in the new civil war south of the border so that he can rebuild his own devastated homeland. Costar Burt Lancaster (whose company Hecht-Lancaster was producing) plays another mercenary, a real sociopath, and it's fascinating to watch these two stellar icons of very different Hollywood eras make common cause--Lancaster at the height of his grinning-predator mode, Cooper an aging knight whose aim is still true. Director Robert Aldrich keeps finding dynamic uses for the SuperScope format and flavorfully fills it with sublime uglies like Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, Charles Horvath, Jack Lambert, and Charles Buchinsky-about-to-become-Bronson. Pieces of this movie found their way into the dreams of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. --Richard T. Jameson

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Slapstick Encyclopedia

Actors: Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy
ASIN : B00005Y6YV
Sales Rank : 58135
Director : Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Charley Chase, Al Christie, Alfred J. Goulding
Studio : Image Entertainment
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0014381069921
UPC : 014381069921
Release Date : December 23, 2002
Publisher : Image Entertainment
Manufacturer : Image Entertainment
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Image Entertainment
Running Time : 1089

Description

The clowns of the American silent screen bring laughter to a new generation in this wonderful box set, featuring 53 short films from the era's funniest comic talents: Laurel and Hardy, Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, Will Rogers, Ben Turpin and more. Meticulously prepared for DVD with fresh new musical scores, "Slapstick Encyclopedia" is a unique collection of silent comedy gems.

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A veritable gold mine of rarities and little-known treats, Slapstick Encyclopedia lives up to its title as a stupendous compendium of silent-era comedy. Spanning the entire spectrum of slapstick from 1909 to 1927, this definitive collection (curated by film historians David Shepard and Joe Adamson) dutifully credits Keystone Cops creator Mack Sennett as the founder of the slapstick phenomenon. But it reaches far beyond Sennett (who alienated most of his popular stars) to acknowledge nearly every major and minor slapstick star and style. The development of slapstick, which had its roots in vaudeville, is witnessed chronologically, mixing the manic pie-fight sensibility of Sennett's Keystone hits with the lesser-known, more sophisticated parlor-room comedy of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, while legendary black vaudevillian Bert Williams plies his popular trade in a Biograph short from 1916.

Early appearances by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Ben Turpin, Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, and others demonstrate the gradual emergence of the popular personalities (like Chaplin's Little Tramp) that would dominate silent comedy at its peak, establishing timeless screen icons and forever altering Hollywood's way of doing business. But the real strength of this set is its wide scope, unearthing neglected talents ripe for rediscovery (like Charley Bowers and Larry Semon), and allowing the viewer to witness the evolution of gags from simple improvisation to the elaborately planned chase-oriented routines that emerged in the early 1920s. With print quality ranging from good to pristine, and original musical accompaniment by six of the world's leading silent-movie musicians, this 18-hour, 50-film laugh-athon is surely one of the finest DVD sets ever produced. --Jeff Shannon

Price: $79.95

More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931

Actors: Irene Rich, May McAvoy, Bert Lytell, Ronald Colman, Bebe Daniels
ASIN : B0002JP1VW
Sales Rank : 51842
Director : A.E. Weed, Alice Guy, Alvin Knechtel, Ashley Miller, Charles R. Bowers
Studio : Image Entertainment
Region Code : 0
Format : Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Dolby, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780974709918
ISBN : 0974709913
UPC : 014381227123
Release Date : December 07, 2004
Publisher : Image Entertainment
Manufacturer : Image Entertainment
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Image Entertainment
Running Time : 573

Description

Like the first "Treasures from the American Film Archives" produced by the National Film Preservation Foundation, "More Treasures" takes as its starting point the preservation work of our nation's film archives. More Treasures covers the years from 1894 through 1931, when the motion pictures from a peepshow curio to the nation's fourth largest industry. This is the period from which fewest American Films survive. Five film archives have made it their mission to save what remains of these first decades of American film: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, The Library of Congress, The Museum of Modern Art and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. More Treasures (made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities) reproduces their superb preservation work-fifty films follwed by six previews for lost features and serials.

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Weird Cinema: 15 Freaky Flicks

Actors: Shirley Mills, Bob Bollinger, Dorothy Carrol, Diana Durrell, Warner Richmond
ASIN : B000V1Y4A0
Sales Rank : 57942
Director : Dean Riesner, Harry Revier, Sam Newfield
Studio : Passport
Region Code : 0
Format : Box set, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0025493745092
UPC : 025493745092
Release Date : December 06, 2007
Publisher : Passport
Manufacturer : Passport
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Passport
Running Time : 930

Description

The first all-midget western! Dennis Hopper in love with a murderous mermaid! Pia Zadora and Santa Claus on Mars! Homicidal Siamese twins! A transvestite writer-director-leading man! Lon Chaney Jr. singing! This is just a taste of the weirdness that awaits you in this offbeat and eclectic collection of certifiably strange cinema.

These 15 rare and bizarre films, spanning four decades, are sure to amaze, intrigue, unsettle, and bewilder family and friends for years to come!

The Terror of Tiny Town (1938) Child Bride (1938) Hitler: Dead Or Alive (1942) Bill And Coo (1948) Chained For Life (1951) Glen Or Glenda (1953) Mesa Of Lost Women (1953) The Killer Shrews (1959) Teenagers From Outer Space (1959) Night Tide (1961) Carnival Of Souls (1962) Wild Guitar (1962) The Sadist (1963) Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964) Spider Baby (1968)

LONG DESCRIPTION: Disc One

The Terror of Tiny Town (1938) – Billed as "The First All-Midget Western" (there’s a safe bet), this western saga features "little people" riding Shetland ponies and entering saloons under the swinging doors. The hero (Billy Curtis), the girl (Yvonne Moray), and the villain (Billy Rhodes) would all portray prominent Munchkins the following year. (62 mins.)

Child Bride (1938) – A schoolteacher in the Ozarks campaigns to end the practice of older men marrying underage girls. Twelve-year-old Shirley Mills (The Grapes of Wrath) and 2’11" Angelo Rossitto (Freaks) are among the few professional actors. Genuinely unsettling. (62 mins.)

Hitler: Dead Or Alive (1942) – A tycoon offers a million dollars to bring back Hitler dead or alive. A group of ex-cons takes him up on his offer – and succeeds! (Wishful thinking.) Bobby Watson holds the dubious distinction of having played Adolf Hitler more often than any other actor. (70 mins.)

Disc Two

Bill & Coo (1948) – An all-animal motion picture! Yes, actual birds, kittens, and puppies play all the parts in this story of the residents of Chirpendale who are terrorized by an evil crow. This cinematic curiosity set the record for world’s smallest film set (30’ x 15’). (61 mins.)

Chained For Life (1951) – Vaudeville and Freaks stars Daisy and Violet Hilton (the original Hilton sisters) are actual Siamese twins, one of whom murders her husband. How do you punish one without punishing the other? You won’t see this on Judge Judy! (81 mins.)

Glen or Glenda (1953) – Ed Wood’s transvestite trifecta: He wrote, directed, and stars as a man who is afraid to tell his girl friend (Wood’s real-life girl friend, Fuller) that he likes to dress in women’s clothing. Bela Lugosi plays a scientist who babbles on about devils, snails, and puppy dogs’ tails. (71 mins.)

Disc Three

Mesa of Lost Women (1953) – A mad scientist (Jackie Coogan, in-between The Kid and The Addams Family) creates super-women, giant spiders and male dwarves in his Mexican laboratory. Future Plan 9 From Outer Space costars Lyle Talbot and Dolores Fuller add to the fun. (70 mins.)

The Killer Shrews (1959) – Giant carnivorous shrews (developed by a doctor who was attempting to shrink humans) terrorize a group of people who are stranded on a desert island. James Best (The Twilight Zone, The Dukes of Hazzard) is the hero. (69 mins.)

Teenagers From Outer Space (1959) – A young alien and a pretty Earth girl fall in love, then join forces to try and stop his fellow aliens from taking over the Earth. King Moody, who plays the Spacecraft Captain, was the world’s very first Ronald McDonald. (72 mins.)

Disc Four

Night Tide (1961) – Eerie tale of a young sailor (25-year-old Dennis Hopper) who becomes enchanted by a beautiful and mysterious woman who plays a mermaid in a side-show – and who may be an actual mermaid – who kills people! Luana Anders, who later appeared opposite Hopper in Easy Rider, is the third side of this bizarre love triangle. (84 mins.)

Carnival of Souls (1962) – Atmospheric, Twilight-Zone-like story of a young woman (Candace Hilligoss of Curse of the Living Corpse) who somehow survives a horrific traffic accident and is irresistibly drawn to a strange abandoned carnival. Filmed in Salt Lake City (in three weeks). (78 mins.)

Wild Guitar (1962) – Ray Steckler (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies) directed and costars in this tacky tale of an ambitious young rocker (Arch Hall Jr. of The Sadist) who gets sucked into the sleazy world of the recording industry. Arch Hall Sr. (Eegah) plays the owner of the record company. (92 mins.)

Disc Five

The Sadist (1963) – A homicidal psychopath (Arch Hall Sr.) and his equally unbalanced girlfriend terrorize a trio of hapless travelers. Based on real-life thrill-killers Charlie Starkweather and Caril Fugate, who also inspired Badlands and Natural-Born Killers. If this low-budget thriller looks better than it deserves to, it’s because it was the first American film for famed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. (92 mins.)

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) – Camp classic starring 10-year-old Pia Zadora (The Lonely Lady) as a green-faced Martian girl who witnesses a plot to kidnap Santa Claus and take him back to Mars so he can give presents to Martian children. (81 mins.)

Spider Baby (1968) – Aging horror icon Lon Chaney Jr. (who sings the title song!) and lovely Carol Ohmart (House on Haunted Hill) star in this truly bizarre tale of an inbred (and homicidal) rural family. Beloved character actor Mantan Moreland (King of the Zombies) and Sid Haig (House of 1000 Corpses) costar. (81 mins.)

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Getting Married in Buffalo Jump

The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vol. 1

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The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vol. 2

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Gary Cooper MGM Movie Legends Collection (The Cowboy and the Lady / The Real Glory / Vera Cruz / The Winning of Barbara Worth)

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Legends of Hollywood - Bob Hope Series

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Slapstick Encyclopedia

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Crossfire Trail

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More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931

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Calamity Jane

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Weird Cinema: 15 Freaky Flicks

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