Product Description
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Having appeared in more than 200 films and widely considered to
be one of cinema's most respected comic geniuses, Harold Lloyd
was one of Hollywood's first true movie stars. Now, entertainment
enthusiasts of all ages can enjoy the work of the man who
inspired generations of acting greats with The Harold Lloyd
Comedy Collection.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Biographies
Comparison Scenes
Featurette
Interviews
Introduction
Other:*All feature films and shorts are full frame versions.
**All content will have Spanish subtitles. Only the pictures with
sound will have English subtitles and closed captions
Photo gallery:REMASTERED! RESTORED! RESCORED!
.com
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The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection boxed set is the definitive
account of one of the silent cinema's greatest comedians--and for
a time, its most popular star. The seven discs included in this
three-volume set have virtually all of Lloyd's 1920s features,
most of his talking pictures, and a y collection of shorts.
Because Lloyd--a canny businessman--retained control over much of
his output, the films have remained under his (and his estate's)
control through the decades, and the quality of the key titles is
generally excellent.
Vol. 1 leads off with the most famous of Lloyd's pictures, the
1923 "thrill" comedy Safety Last. The bespectacled Mr. Lloyd
found his spot in comedy by playing the persona seen here: an
optimistic go-getter, energetic but not particularly remarkable,
who perseveres as he moves up the ladder. In Safety Last, he
really moves up: Harold is a department-store clerk who concocts
a publicity scheme for his store, which results in a climactic,
hair-raising ascent up the outside of the building (at one point
hanging from the hands of a huge clock). There is at least one
other masterpiece on Vol. 1, the wonderful Girl Shy (1924), in
which Harold is a small-time tailor's apprentice who can't speak
to women but nevertheless has penned a how-to book entitled "The
Secret of Making Love." There's also the 1923 Why Worry?, which
suffers just a bit with its odd milieu (tropical island beset by
revolutionaries) but has some hilariously weird routines built
around compact Harold and the giant John Aasen (8 feet, 9
inches). A trio of shorter films are included, plus two Para
sound features, the oddball Cat's Paw and Leo McCarey's
entertaining The Milky Way.
Vol. 2 has the brilliant The Freshman (1925), with Lloyd as a
college plebe whose ridiculous ideas about making himself
ingratiating to others (including hilariously inapt jig during a
handshake) makes him the laughingstock of the campus. The movie
concludes with a justifiably famous football sequence. The Kid
Brother (1927) is Harold as the weak link in the tough Hickory
family, while Dr. Jack (1922) casts him as a country doctor whose
ordinary ways prove sharper than they seem (his co-star, as in
some other films here, is future wife Mildred Davis). In
Grandma's Boy (1922) Lloyd plays a small-town fellow who lives
with his frisky grandmother; convinced of his own cowardice, he
yearns to compete for the hand of a pretty girl. His courtly call
to the girl's home is the occasion for uproarious battle with a
ridiculous "formal" suit, mothballs, and a litter of kittens
attracted by the goose grease on his shoes. The gem of the shorts
here is High and Dizzy (1920), a warm-up for Safety Last, which
has a great sequence with Lloyd tipsily navigating a ledge on a
high building. Feet First (1930), Lloyd's second talking picture,
has Harold as an upwardly-striving shoe salesman trying to
finesse his way up the ladder. Some good shipboard sequences in
the middle of this one, but the main drawing card is a throwback:
Lloyd re-visiting the Safety Last hanging-from-a-building
sequence, but this time working every variation known to
slapstick.
Vol. 3 has Speedy, his last silent picture, which packs as many
great gags per minute as any Lloyd film, and also has one of his
sweetest love stories. But the film is also notable for its
extensive location shooting in New York City. The sequences
at Coney Island, with some wonderfully hair-raising (and
understandably obsolete) rides, are gorgeous and historically
valuable. Hot Water (1924) also goes into the time of
great Lloyd features, even if it feels like a handful of shorter
films shoehorned together. This one gets its charm from basic
domestic situations. Like Hot Water, For Heaven's Sake (1926) is
an hour long; this funny one casts Lloyd as a rich twit who takes
up with a girl whose her runs a homeless mission.
There's one talking picture, the somewhat routine Movie Crazy
(1932), but the silent shorts, of which there are many here, are
better. Check out Haunted Spooks from 1920, which has its share
of good jokes but which is also fascinating for its place in
Lloyd's career. He suffered an off-set accident midway through
shooting, costing him the thumb and forefinger of his right hand;
after a hiatus, he completed shooting with a prosthetic glove
(which he used in films thereafter). A heartfelt 15-minute
documentary on Lloyd's palatial L.A. estate, Greenacres, uses
copious home-movie footage to show the marvelous place and give a
hint of Lloyd's homey, likable personality (it's narrated by
granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd). A bonus disc contains home movies,
celebrity tributes, Lloyd's collection of 3-D photographs, and
his honorary O acceptance speech from 1953. --Robert Horton
