Silent Era : Home Video Reviews

Silent Era Home Page > Home Video > Lloyd Hamilton: Silent Comedian

Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved.

Lloyd Hamilton
Silent Comedian
(1919-1928)

Contents: His Musical Sneeze (1919), Dynamite (1920), The Simp (1920), April Fool (1920), Moonshine (1920) and A Home-Made Man (1928).

This collection, mainly comprised by films made in 1919-1920, gives us the opportunity to see Lloyd Hamilton films (most of them) unreleased on home video before.

Look for a young John Wayne in A Home-Made Man (1928).

D&D Productions
2017 DVD edition

Lloyd Hamilton: Silent Comedian (1919-1928), black & white, color-tinted black & white and color-toned black & white, 117 minutes total, not rated, including His Musical Sneeze (1919), black & white, 12 minutes, not rated, Dynamite (1920), color-toned black & white, 20 minutes, not rated, The Simp (1920), black & white and color-tinted black & white, 22 minutes, not rated, April Fool (1920), color-toned black & white, 19 minutes, not rated, Moonshine (1920), black & white, 19 minutes, not rated, and A Home-Made Man (1928), black & white, 15 minutes, not rated.

D&D Productions, no catalog number, UPC 6-47213-97024-1.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in pillarboxed 16:9 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 6.0 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 30 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 192 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; £24.95.
Release date: 2017.
Country of origin: England

Ratings (1-10): video: 5 / audio: 8 / additional content: 0 / overall: 6.

This DVD-R collection has been mastered chiefly from 16mm reduction prints held by Robin Cook, and by edition producers David Wyatt and David Glass, with a 35mm print held by Det Danske Filminstitut. Missing footage in the main prints has been added from 16mm and 9.5 reduction prints. Some prints look pretty good while others are blurry and marred with advanced nitrate decomposition, emulsion scrapes and blooms, vertical scratches, visible splice tape, dust and speckling, schmutz, and other print flaws.

The films are accompanied by music scores composed and vigorously performed on piano by Meg Morley.

The original Kickstarter discs included a two-page insert sheet, which is not included in retail copies of the collection. The publisher has kindly provided a PDF copy of the insert for collectors’ reference.

While we had hoped that the films would look better than they do here, this is our recommended home video edition of the films (for now).

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.