His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914) on

In the mid-1910s, author L. Frank Baum decided to further cash in on the popularity of his Oz children’s books by producing his own motion picture adaptations. This allowed him to control the cinematic productions, presumably to ensure they captured the tone of his books, but also to reap more profits than if he’d simply license the stories to another film company. The adaptations were inexpensively and imaginatively made, but the company lasted only a few months before production was suspended.

His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914) features the familiar Baum characters, including Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion, and also other characters that are familiar to Oz book fans, including King Krewl and Mombi the witch.

In this film adaptation, we like watching the bat witch character most of all. — Carl Bennett

Our first look at this budget collection shows that this edition of His Majesty has been transferred from a very-good 16mm reduction print produced by Em Gee.

The musical accompaniment composed and performed by Paul David Bergel on MIDI synthesizers shows marked improvement over his previous compositions for silent film.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This edition collects all four films previously released on VHS videotape.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

The video transfer for this edition of the film utilized a good 16mm reduction print at a proper running speed. The resulting transfer is a little flat, but we prefer this over a more contrasty transfer. The reduction print obviously has little of the quality of the original 35mm prints, its being compromised by some exposure fluctuations, speckling, emulsion chipping, scratches, dust, and the beginnings of print decomposition, but the intertitles are easy to read (if you don’t like having them read to you, as they are in this disc) and the action is easy to follow. The transfer framing appears to be too tight (King Krewl is too tall to stay in frame when he stands closer to the camera), but that is likely the faulty cropping of the reduction print.

The presentation on this disc includes narration (with reverberation effects) of the intertitles by Jacqueline Lovell. Clearly, the intent is to make the film accessible to children that are too young to read the intertitles, but the narration is likely to annoy older viewers who are capable of reading (thank you very much). We encourage Brentwood, in the future, to consider providing separate DVD audio tracks that would provide a music and narration track and a music-only track.

Accompanying the film is an adequate music score (with bubbly sound effects) by Steffen Presley, performed on digital piano and synthesizer.

As a supplement, the disc includes the Little Rascals short Came the Brawn (1938) in an OK print.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This DVD-R edition has likely been mastered from a 16mm reduction print, with both films accompanied by a music score performed by Donald Sosin.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc is available directly from Reel Classic.