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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The Hope Diamond
Mystery
(1921)
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This crime mystery serial, starring Grace Darmond, George Chesebro and Harry Carter, is the earliest surviving featured role of Boris Karloff.
A large diamond, originally stolen from a Hindu temple, is offered for sale to English Lord Francis Hale. It is also the target of criminal Sidney Atherton (Carter), who disguises himself as Nang Fu.
Some location photography was taken at the home of producer Samuel S. Hinds, as is verified by the reflection of his mailbox in Sidney Atherton’s automobile window 11 minutes into chapter one.
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 The Serial Squadron
2014 DVD edition
The Hope Diamond Mystery (1921), black & white, color-tinted black & white, and color-toned black & white, ? minutes, not rated.
The Serial Squadron, no catalog number, no UPC number.
Two single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R discs, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles; 7 chapter stops (disc one) and 8 chapter stops (disc two); standard two-disc DVD keepcase; $39.95.
Release date: 2014.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 6 / audio: 7 / additional content: 0 / overall: 6.
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from print materials held by the Library of Congress. The results are good, with speckling, dust, occasional heavy scuffing, processing flares,
Some digital stabilization has been performed, which likely took care of pronounced frame movement, but there remains a small amount of frame movement.
The film is presented with music scores compiled from various performances on MIDI synthesizers by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com). Occasional sound effects have been added to the soundtrack.
The serial is presented with chapter one (18:19), chapter two (16:23), chapter three (18:56), chapter four (15:04), chapter five (21:03), chapter six (22:29) and chapter seven (16:58) on disc one; and chapter eight (19:48), chapter nine (16:52), chapter ten (17:21), chapter eleven (16:45), chapter twelve (16:55), chapter thirteen (21:51), chapter fourteen (19:29), chapter fifteen (21:16) on disc two.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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