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

The Scar of Shame (1927)

This crime drama from the Colored Players Film Corporation dahses in a little social commentary into its mix of two-bit hustlers, upper-middle-class stoicism, guns, attempted rape and suicide. The story by David Starkman, as directed by Frank Perugini, is melodramatic yet effective. The “all colored” cast is led by Harry Henderson, Lucia Lynn Moses, Norman Johnstone and Lawrence Chenault.

The collection is now regretably out-of-print.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a 35mm duplicate negative of the same 35mm print held by the Library of Congress utilized for the edition noted above. There is some image instability, a little speckling, moderate dust and other minor print damage, but the grayscale range is a little flat and image detail is reasonably good, with some highlight and shadow details held and some of them lost. The resulting quality of the full-frame video transfer is very-good and is comparable to the LoC/Smithsonian edition.

The film is accompanied by John Muri performing on the Barton theatre organ. The musical performance is flawless, but it has been reproduced from a slightly damaged optical soundtrack transfer, and some crackling, dropouts and infrequent distortion are audible.

Given that this is the only home video edition of this film that is available, and that it has been mastered from the LoC 35mm print, we recommend this DVD-R edition.