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Charley Chase
Rarities
(1915-1926)

Contents: Peanuts and Bullets (1915), The Rent Jumpers (1915), His First Flat Tire (1920), The Sleuth (1922), The Poor Fish (1924), Isn’t Life Terrible? (1925) and Dog Shy (1926).

Alpha Video
2016 DVD edition

Charley Chase Rarities (1915-1926), black & white, 90 minutes total, not rated, including Peanuts and Bullets (1915), black & white, 10 minutes, not rated, The Rent Jumpers (1915), black & white, 11 minutes, not rated, His First Flat Tire (1920), black & white, 11 minutes, not rated, The Sleuth (1922), black & white, 12 minutes, not rated, The Poor Fish (1924), black & white, 9 minutes, not rated, Isn’t Life Terrible? (1925), black & white, 15 minutes, not rated, and Dog Shy (1926), black & white, 20 minutes, not rated.

Alpha Home Entertainment, distributed by Oldies.com,
ALP 7862D, UPC 0-89218-78629-6.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 3.8 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 384 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $7.98 (raised again to $9.99).
Release date: 27 September 2016.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 3 / audio: 3 / additional content: 3 / overall: 3.

This DVD-R collection has been mastered from poor VHS videotape copies transferred from 16mm and 8mm reduction prints held in the Streamline Films collection. As would be expected, the picture for all of the films is full of analog videotape artifacts including shadow ghosting to the right of white picture elements and residual interlacing artifacts that cannot be totally removed by HD systems capable of progressive scan upscaling.

His First Flat Tire (1920) has been mastered from a fair to good 8mm reduction print that is contrasty and a bit blurry.

The Sleuth (1922) has been mastered from a fair to good 8mm reduction print that is a bit blurry.

The films are accompanied by soundtracks compiled from preexisting music recordings.

For our comparative reviews of some of the individual films in the collection, see our Dog Shy on home video, Isn’t Life Terrible? on home video, Peanuts and Bullets on home video, The Poor Fish on home video and The Rent Jumpers on home video pages.

Easily one of the worst-looking examples among the handful of Charley Chase film collections. A truly poor disc that is not really recommended, but it is the only known home video edition of two of these films.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from
ALPHA VIDEO through . . .