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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Breakin’ Loose
(1925)
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Pee Wee Holmes and Ben Corbett star in this two-reel western comedy that features beautiful Virginia Bradford in an early role as the object of romantic competition.
When Lucy Wittaker (Bradford) returns home from finishing school, ‘Magpie’ Simpkins (Holmes) and ‘Dirtyshirt’ Jones (Corbett) compete for her attentions in a few pointless gags. Then, everyone attends the Ringworm Circus, where chaos breaks loose.
Jack Gavin as Lucy’s father entertains and Lottie Fletcher gives marmish support, but the film comes up short as a comedy. Algebra the monkey is funnier than the two comic leads. However, the film is one of the few Virginia Bradford films that are known to survive.
— Carl Bennett
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 Grapevine Video
2005 DVD edition
The Buckaroo Kid (1926), black & white, 65 minutes, not rated, with Breakin’ Loose (1925), black & white, 24 minutes, not rated.
Grapevine Video, no catalog number, UPC 8-42614-10100-7.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in windowboxed 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? Kbps audio bit rate, PCM 48 kHz 2.0 mono sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles; 6 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $16.95 (reduced to $14.95).
Release date: September 2005.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 5 / audio: 5 / additional content: 4 / overall: 5.
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a very-good Show-At-Home Movie Library 16mm reduction print, but the older analog video transfer doesn’t capture the image detail of the source print. The picture is soft but reasonably balanced in its range of greytones rendered. Some print warpage causes the picture to go in and out of focus about 11 minutes into the film. Overall, the viewing experience is OK.
The film is accompanied by a cobbled-together music score from sourced film soundtrack recordings that is more than a little annoying.
This is currently the only known home video edition of Breakin’ Loose.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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