Slapstick Encyclopedia Overview

SLAPSTICK ENCLOPEDIA

Fifteen hours and 53 films worth of silent slapstick is a LOT of silent slapstick. Before you go any farther you should realize this isn't the greatest 15 hours worth of silent slapstick available. If you want to get the best - the funniest stuff - buy the boxed sets of Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton and Laurel & Hardy, and then see if you can find a compilation disk with some Harry Langdon and Fatty Arbuckle on it. Oh, the heavy hitters are here, but it's the inclusion of so much by the other guys that sets this set apart. If you like silent movies and are willing to sit through some strange stuff for no other reason than to see what folks were laughing at 100 years ago, this set is for you. I think it's a gold mine. A sprawling gold mine, but priceless to anyone interested in the history of filmed comedy. Each disk is divided into two sections. To give a sense of the breadth of this set, I'll briefly mention the highlights - or lowlights - of each section.

All of the films are transferred full-frame, except The Rink. Some of the 16mm prints are tightly cropped, which makes some of the insert shots of telegrams and some intertitles incomplete on some television monitors.

Much of the musical accompaniment is very-good to excellent. We are most pleased with the music by Robert Israel, Rodney Sauer and Ken Rosen.

Overall, we are less than impressed with the three bonus films included in this new DVD set — all of them have previously appeared on Shepard-produced home videos. However, we are generally overjoyed at high-quality of many of the films that are presented here. Some of these films have been available on public-domain videotapes for years, but here they are presented in their best available form on home video from the best surviving materials. The introductions to the films have a number of typographical errors in them, but provide brief and sometimes valuable background information to each of the films. 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.