Cheap The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vol. 1 (DVD) (Mildred Davis, Harold Lloyd) (Sam Taylor) Price
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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. A stream of terrific gags (look for how Lloyd employs a dog on a train) and a nice love story blend smoothly, and the movie has an extended chase sequence using car, horse, streetcar, motorcycle, and firetruck. There's also the 1923 Why Worry?, Lloyd's last feature with longtime producer Hal Roach, 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, including 1920's From Hand to Mouth, which puts Lloyd in a Chaplinesque down-and-out situation. A new nine-minute featurette, Harold's Hollywood: Then and Now, visits Hollywood location sites from Lloyd films. Indeed, one of the pleasures of watching Lloyd's films is his outdoorsy use of 1920s L.A. locations and outmoded vehicles such as streetcars. Two Paramount sound features are also here, the oddball Cat's Paw and the entertaining The Milky Way. The latter has Harold as a milkman who boxes his way to a title fight; the comedian's spirit jibes well with the breezy direction of Leo McCarey.
Lloyd was a canny businessman who kept control of his own films, which is one reason most of these prints look so good. His estate, and granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd, were closely involved in assembling these treasures. --Robert Horton
| ACTORS: | Mildred Davis, Harold Lloyd |
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| DIRECTOR: | Sam Taylor |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 01 April, 1923 |
| MANUFACTURER: | New Line Home Video |
| MPAA RATING: | NR (Not Rated) |
| FEATURES: | Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Restored, Subtitled, NTSC |
| TYPE: | Comedies, Comedy, Comedy Video, Feature Film Comedy, Feature Film-comedy, Movie |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 2 |
| UPC: | 794043844621 |
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Customer Reviews of The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vol. 1
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>Harold Lloyd was a top star in his day; and for good reason. <
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>This has "Safety-last", Harold Lloyd's best film, produced by Hal Roach, producer of "Little Rascals, Our Gang", and "Laurel and Hardy". "Safety Last" is very clever, has an interesting story, very funny, laugh-out-loud-funny in one scene, unique, with some danger. It is not a film with just music; rather a film designed so you understand the action, just by watching, at a good pace. A lost art. (I did not care for Harold's later, talking-pictures.) <
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>Harold was funny, when chased by bullies, as Harold was short, skinny, had straw-hat and glasses, looking unathletic. So convincing, film critics today still believe him unathletic. However, Harold was very athletic. Harold was very quick, nimble, balanced, and had unusually strong, climbing strength; getting him away from the bullies just in time. <
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>Also worth seeing are Harold's movies: "The Kid Brother", and "The Freshman", both in volume-2 or in the 3-volume-set. "Speedy" is also interesting, though not as funny as these others, if you are budgeting, is in volume-3, or the 3-volume-set. <
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The Napoleon Dynamite of the 1920s rocks on!
I've been a Harold Lloyd fan since I was a teeanger and the television show "Hooray for Harold Lloyd" came on and films like "Why Worry" (which, ironically, I saw on TV the night a riot took place in my neighborhood when I was 15) and "Safety last" occasionally appeared on late night television.
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>In seeing this set, I'm reminded of why I prefer Lloyd to Keaton and Chaplin. Chaplin's films have always struck me as more interesting than funny and while I enjoy the Bus man (Keaton, that is), his characters tended to be too bizarre to relate to, so you laughed AT him and not WITH him. Harold Lloyd was different. Most people can identify with wanting to become successful, trying to overcome bullies, getting a girl, and being popular among one's peers. So although he occasionally got into wild and unlikely predicaments, you still laughed WITH and rooted for him because you could see a lot of yourself in Harold Lloyd.
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>Now on to the films. WHY WORRY is an amusing tale of Harold unwittingly coming across a Latin American revolution. John Aasen as the giant makes a good comic partner with Harold. SAFETY LAST is the masterpiece with our man as the "Human Fly" (the famous clock tower scene). When I saw this at the university of South Carolina sixty years after its original release, audiences STILL gasped in shock as I did while seeing this film for the first time since then. GIRL SHY is an underrated masterpiece. Similar in some ways to the Bus man's SEVEN CHANCES, the audience really takes to our man and his troubles in this one, as the tries to overcome a crippling shyness to get a girl and the INCREDIBLE chase scene. You'll really root and cheer for Harold in this one.
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>THE CAT'S PAW is again loosely similar to the Bus Man's SPEAK EASILY in plot. Here our hero is a white man raised among the Chinese (his parents are missionaries) who comes to America and unwittingly stumbles into corrupt politics. I'd keep the kiddies away from the last few minutes (if you've seen it, you'll know why. One poster has alluded to this scene but I will not spoil it-obviously pre-code censorship). In AN EASTERN WESTERNER, our man actually fights off a Ku Klux Klan-type group out west.
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>Since most of these films were done at Hal Roach Studios, some of the original Our Gang kids make cameos from time to time. But in either case, these films are still wonderful to watch today and will return Harold Lloyd to the fond place he had among moviegoers 80 years ago. So sit back and enjoy the Napoleon Dynamite of the 1920s as he rocks on (quite literally in the first scene of AN EASTERN WESTERNER where he's kicked out of a dancehall-see why)!
Essential Survey of Lloyd's Work
This volume is the best to buy if you are not planning to develop a complete library of Harold Lloyd's work. This volume contains Safety Last, with the iconic image of Lloyd dangling from the clock hands as he tries to scale a high rise to execute a publicity stunt for the department store he works for. This movie is not nearly the most satisfying of Llyod's output, but it is entertaining. Much funnier and better executed is Why Worry, about a millionaire hypochondriac who takes a vacation for his health in a volatile Latin American country in the grips of civil war. The sheer quantity and continuity of funny moments in this movie is breathtaking, and is about the best introduction to Lloyd's genius as you can get. By the time of this movie, Lloyd had developed his most successful formula: his character typically has a flaw (shyness, hypochondria) that needs to be overcome. Challenged by a bully and/or the love of a beautiful girl, Harold jumps into almost super-human action. We see this formula in An Eastern Westerner and Girl Shy as well. But Why Worry is, in terms of sheer persistent laughter, the best of this collection.
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>The other movies made at the prime of this career, including Girl Shy, An Eastern Westerner, and From Hand to Mouth, are also priceless gens. This collection also contains glimpses into the early and late careers of Lloyd, and effectively demonstrates that his productivity spanned a long interval of time. The earliest film in the collection, Ask Father, is remarkably charming, funny and creative. Lloyd's early glasses character tended to be all energy, with few character flaws except perhaps obsessiveness. Here Lloyd's character is infatuated with a businessman's daughter, and much of the humor derives from his repeated attempts to gain access to the elusive father to ask his permission to marry his fickle offspring. Bebe Daniels, Lloyd's first romantic partner in his movies, is very funny and appealing in this and other of Lloyd's movies of the time.
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>This collection also shows that during the sound era Lloyd, while no longer in his prime creatively, was still producing interesting, creative ventures. Of the two sound movies in this collection, by far the best is Cat's Paw, in which Lloyd portrays a naive but determined Chinese missionary's son who returns to the big city to find a woman to marry. Some of the gags here, especially the faked execution sequence at the end, is a bit forced, but the story is interesting and there are still moments of genius to witness. Milky Way, chronologically the last in the series, has very little going for it and will be of interest only to die hard Lloyd enthusiasts.