I will always have a special place reserved for Harold Lloyd for it was he who first introduced me to silent movies with his 1962 compilation HAROLD LLOYD’S WORLD OF COMEDY. But it has been very difficult to see his films since then as he and later his family have kept them under lock and key. A number of his best known features such as SAFETY LAST (the one where he hangs from the clock hands) were released on VHS by HBO back in 1992 but they have long been unavailable.
Harold’s granddaughter Suzanne, who now heads the Lloyd Family Trust, was responsible for those releases. This collection from Kino and Lobster Films contains his first feature film GRANDMA’S BOY from 1922 (one of Harold’s personal favorites and a blueprint for many of his later films) along with 7 shorts that show off Harold at his best. Some of the earlier shorts feature a young Bebe Daniels as his love interest while the later ones and GRANDMA’S BOY feature his future wife Mildred Davis
Lloyd was a superb athlete and some of the physical stunts he pulls off especially in BUMPING INTO BROADWAY, I DO and AN EASTERN WESTERNER rival anything done by Buster Keaton. What makes some of them even more remarkable is that in 1919 while filming the short HAUNTED SPOOKS (not in this collection but available elsewhere from Kino), he lost the thumb and first finger of his right hand in a freak explosion and wore a glove with special appendages for the rest of his career. If you look carefully during GRANDMA’S BOY and the Mildred Davis shorts you’ll be able to see it.
This collection is a must for any fan of silent comedy and especially the long suffering fans of Harold Lloyd who, except for the 1992 releases which disappeared all too quickly, have had to put up with second and third rate copies. All of the shorts are restored and most of them look pretty good while GRANDMA’S BOY looks great. As in the other releases in Kino’s SLAPSTICK SYMPOSIUM series, the musical accompaniment is by Neil Brand who does his usual fine job…POSTSCRIPT: -Harold Lloyd’s major feature films have been released by Suzanne Lloyd in a 7 DVD set called THE HAROLD LLOYD COLLECTION. The DVDs are also available separately.
The Capsule Critic 