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SILENT ERA FILMS ON HOME VIDEO
Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2009 by Carl Bennett.
All Rights Reserved.

The Sea Beast
(1926)

This adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick stars John Barrymore and Dolores Costello.

2007 TeleVista edition

The Sea Beast (1926), black & white, 133 minutes, not rated.

TeleVista, no catalog number, UPC 0-29502-89995-0.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, single-layered DVD disc, Region 0, 4 Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, 12 chapter stops, keep case, $19.95.
DVD release date: 11 September 2007.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 3 / audio: 5 / additional content: 1 / overall: 3.

Just when you think that even the budget producers are getting the idea that DVD collectors want reasonable quality at a fair price, along comes TeleVista and their overpriced crap. From the opening frames of this low-quality disc, you know it is a rip-off. Who do they think we are?

This edition has been mastered from a fair quality 8mm reduction print, prepared many years ago by the George Eastman House film archive. Flecked with dust, debris and speckling, contrasty and blurry, this material should have stayed in its little printed cardboard box.

The film is accompanied by a hodge-podge of preexisting recordings. The supplemental section is a ridiculous set of still frames from this awful print.

Not at all recommended — avoid, avoid, avoid! — but, horrid as it is, this is currently the only DVD edition of the film available.

 
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.

Other silent era JOHN BARRYMORE films available on home video.

Other NAUTICAL silent era films available on home video.

 
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