The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection

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S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vols. 1-3 + Bonus Disc (7 discs)

Directed by Hal Roach, Fred C. Newmeyer, Clyde Bruckman, Sam Taylor, Alfred J. Goulding, Ted Wilde and Leo McCarey
USA 1920 - 1936

A message from Chuck Johnson of the Harold Lloyd Trust found at the Harold Lloyd Message Board located HERE:

"The Harold Lloyd DVDs are here!

Suzanne Lloyd and I would like to thank all the people who participated in this truly special collection. Thank you to all those who contributed to the interviews, commentaries and documentaries. Big thanks to Leonard Maltin for hosting the collection. Sparkhill who put the special features together. The creative teams that organized menus, designed artwork and tweaked audio and video. And thanks especially to all the people at New Line for taking the time to release this set with such care. Everyone has done a wonderful job, we couldn’t be more proud of this box set.

If you have the money I would encourage all Harold Lloyd fans to get the box set that includes the bonus disk. This special features disk has more stuff on it than you ever thought a disk could hold. And the Maltin timeline is a great introduction to the new Harold fans.

You must check out the vintage interviews. The rarely seen USC interview with Jack Lemmon and Steve Allen hosting is wonderful. It shows Harold very relaxed having a wonderful time talking about his career. Thank you USC.

I really pushed to get Harold’s Oscar speech on this set. (I’ve never seen it and I thought this might be the only way I would ever get the chance.) It’s short and sweet, but I’m glad to finally see it and have it included. Thanks to the Academy.

The Social Security in Action has a nice interview with Harold describing the climb in “Safety Last!”

The radio shows are a throwback to another era. There’re very entertaining. We have more shows in the vault that we hope to make available in the future, but here are four of the best.

We worked so hard on the mini docs. I hope you all like them. My personal favorite is the one on Greenacres. That house is awesome. Even though 10 acres are gone, it’s still overwhelming. Suzanne’s memories of growing up there are quite heartfelt. Poor Anthony the editor who sat patiently with us into the wee hours as we tweaked and tweaked.

The home movies with HL playing with his kids are a real treat. I love to hear Gloria Lloyd talking about her father in the interview with Leonard Maltin. She’s got some great stories.

Richard Correll showing the contents of Harold’s make up kit is not to be missed.

And be sure to view Annette D'Agostino Lloyd's featurette, "Harold's Hollywood: Then and Now." It contains locations of Lloyd films and how they look today. Thanks Annette.

The 3-d photos are really fun! I couldn’t get them work too well on my TV. (Too old perhaps?) But they look amazing on my computer screen.

Which brings us to the DVD ROM/Online features. You’ll want to load the bonus disk onto your PC and view the special features through the InterActual software. It’s included on the disk. (One of my computer’s loaded it automatically, the other I had to click on the drive that holds my DVD. If you use your computer’s DVD viewer you won’t get the online features. ) It’s a great way to view Harold’s bonus materials. It also has more info on the photos and keeps track of what you’ve viewed. You’ll want to check it out.

We’ve included hundreds and hundreds of photos on the bonus disk. I do wish that some of the notations on the photos had made it onto the disk. We included many cut scenes from the films that have never been seen before. Die hard fans will of course recognize the scenes as not being in the films but I wish they had been labeled.

There are other omissions that are unfortunate -- I wish that Gaylord Carter had been given credit for his alternate organ scores. A glaring error, which we really regret. Richard Simonton is responsible for us hearing those magnificent scores and for his work on preserving the radio shows.

You will no doubt find other errors on this set. (The color test of Greenacres was shot around 1930 not 1920. The house wasn’t even built in 1920.) But when you see the amount of material on this disk I hope you’ll understand the amount of work that went into presenting these DVDs.

The films look great. I am so happy that New Line released 28 titles at the same time. There is so much here to enjoy.

I hope you’ll let us know some of your favorite features, and have fun viewing the films of Harold Lloyd!!!!"

Chuck Johnson
Harold Lloyd Trust

Excerpt from the Harold Lloyd Message Board located HERE

Titles of the 28 Harold Lloyd Films in the Boxset

Theatrical Release: various from 1920 - 1936

DVD Reviews

DVD Review: New Line Home Entertainment - Region 1 - NTSC

DVD Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	New Line Home Entertainment - Region 1 - NTSC
Runtime	Many, many hours
Video	1.33:1 Original Aspect Ratio Average Bitrate: 4.87 mb/s NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Sample Bitrate:
Audio	English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Subtitles	Spanish, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: New Line Home Entertainment Aspect Ratio: Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Edition Details: • Disc 1 includes: Safety Last!, Eastern Westerner, Ask Father, Girl Shy with alt. organ score, From Hand to Mouth, The Cat's-Paw, The Milky Way, Why Worry? • Commentary by critic Leonard Maltin & director Rich Correll on Safety Last! Featurette: "Harold's Hollywood: Then and Now" • Disc 2 includes: Kid Brother, Bumping Into Broadway, The Freshman, Billy Blazes Esq. with alt. organ score, Dr. Jack, Feet First, Grandma's Boy, Now or Never, High and Dizzy • Commentary by Leonard Maltin, Rich Correll and film historian Richard Bann on The Freshman • Commentary by Harold Lloyd's granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd, author Annette Lloyd and Rich Correll on Kid Brother Photo galleries Featurette: "Scoring for Comedy" Disc 3 includes: Speedy, Never Weaken, Haunted Spooks, Hot Water with alternate organ score, Movie Crazy, Get Out and Get Under, For Heaven's Sake, Number Please?, A Sailor-Made Man, Among Those Present, I Do • Commentary by Suzanne Lloyd, Annette Lloyd and Rich Correll on Speedy and Haunted Spooks Photo galleries Featurette: "Greenacres" Production and publicity galleries Bonus Disc (#4) includes: (see menus listed below for some of the extras) and a pair of 3-D Harold Lloyd cardboard glasses in an envelope DVD Release Date: November 15th, 2005 4 Keep Cases inside cardboard box Chapters: Most shorts have 4 chapters each

Comments:

NOTE:: The Blu-ray of Safety Last (Criterion) is reviewed HERE and The Freshman on Blu-ray (also Criterion) is reviewed HERE, and Speedy Blu-ray (also Criterion) (with Bumping into Broadway.)

NOTE: Each Volume contains 2 discs - one single sided and one dual sided - all I checked were dual layered.

We have waited ages for these films to come to digital. I watched these for the first time on PBS some 25 years ago - I can still recall the theme song of the show "Hooray for Harold Lloyd...". Truly Lloyd's silent work is some of the most charming comedy I can ever remember - even my two small boys were getting a big kick out of him.

Some may have had excessively high expectations for the quality of this release. Harold Lloyd owned his own films and hence they are in very good condition considering their age. The transfers are not exceptional and due to frame rates (I assume) combing can be seen in many of the early films - unfortunately these compromise the vast majority of the collection. Technically there is a way to match up the frame rates which I was informed through BFI last year - it involves duplicating every 6th frame or something akin to that. It doesn't appear that a lot of work was done to these films - which can be a positive - I see no digital manipulations. To be sure - they are not perfect, but it is our guess that they will not look any better, anytime soon. I am so thankful to finally own these delightful films on DVD. And before I forget - the scores ! - the audio is WONDERFUL!

The Bonus disc is truly amazing and although each volume is available separately we strongly encourage you to purchase the entire collection boxset which also includes a pair of cardboard Harold Lloyd glasses (3-D). The bonus disc has such depth I can see going through it for the next month! This set is a DEFINITE contender for DVD of the Year!