Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Rounders (1914)

This one-reel comedy, directed by and starring Charles Chaplin, featuring Roscoe Arbuckle, Phyllis Allen, Minta Durfee, Al St. John, William Hauber and Harry Russell. Two drunks avoid their wives and disrupt a restaurant.

This four-disc DVD collection has, for the most part, been mastered from 35mm source material to render the best-looking editions of these Keystone films on home video. The prints are often conflated from two or more 35mm prints, with missing footage duplicated from 16mm reduction prints. The results are generally very-good to excellent, with moments of fair to good footage. Many of the 35mm source prints are worn, but the picture clarity allows the identification of supporting actors and extras much easier than from earlier home video editions from substandard 16mm and 8mm reduction prints.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed by Robert Israel.

Supplemental material includes Charlie et sa Belle [Charlie’s White Elephant] (1916); Inside the Keystone Project (2010) documenting the Chaplin Project (10 minutes); Silent Traces: The Keystone Locations (2010) with John Bengtson, author of Silent Traces (12 minutes); and a stills gallery.

Overall, the improvement in quality over previous home video editions is so great that you’ll toss your other Keystone Chaplin discs when you see this collection. Highly recommended!

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is available directly from . . .

This DVD edition has been mastered from a very-good 16mm print that is missing its main title and the intertitles that still exist in other prints. The print and transfer are far better than the home video edition of the film from Kino International available on VHS, also previously released on laserdisc in 1988.

The film is accompanied by a music score by Robert Israel, performed by an ensemble.

For the number of films and the gargantuan length of the program, this DVD set is well worth the comparatively modest cost. We highly recommend this DVD edition of the Slapstick Encyclopedia.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The film is accompanied by a music score by Robert Israel, performed by an ensemble.

We caution that disc mastering makes a huge difference in the visual quality of DVDs. Since the content has been manufactured onto five double-sided discs, and if proper care has been taken to master the DVDs, the visual quality is comparable to the 2002 Image edition noted above.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The presentation features newly-created music scores by Philip Carli, David Drazin, Ben Model, The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, Rodney Sauer and Donald Sosin.

As of 2008, this four-disc collection is out-of-print and can only be found as a used item.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Don’t consider buying this collection for the Chaplin Mutual films. The Mutual films have all been released on DVD home video in far superior editions transferred from 35mm prints. Cobra Entertainment (successor to Delta) rereleased remaining stock of this disc onto the market in 2010.

DELTA ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .

Other KEYSTONE comedy films available on home video.

Other SHORT COMEDY FILMS of the silent era available on home video.