Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2013 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Hollywood the Unusual (1927)

Hollywood the Unusual (1927) is a fascinating look at the unusual architecture of late 1920s Hollywood. If you thought that Los Angeles had only recently lost touch with reality, take a look at these views of southern California buildings from the late 1920s. The film includes a view of the recently-opened Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre. — Carl Bennett

Hollywood the Unusual (1927) has been transferred full-frame from an excellent 35mm color-toned print supplied by the Library of Moving Images. The video transfer sports a persistent LMI logo in white type in the lower right-hand corner. Since the video sources on a DVD are usually protected against unauthorized copying by digital encryption scheme, the logo identifying LMI’s prints are unnecessary and are annoyingly intrusive. Source print credits after the end of the films and in the disc’s packaging should be enough promotion to suit LMI — the logos do not belong in the video transfers.

The film is accompanied by music performed on piano by Alan Boyd.

We certainly welcome the future efforts of this new home video company — especially if they will be bringing more generally-unknown, quality silent era films to the home video market. We recommend this disc.

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 edition is also available as an NTSC burn-to-disc download from EZTAKES.