 Thanhouser Company
Film Preservation
2004 DVD edition
The Thanhouser Collection, DVD Volumes 1, 2 & 3 (1911-1916), black & white, 262 minutes total, not rated, including Only in the Way (1911), black & white, 12 minutes, not rated, Get Rich Quick (1911), black & white, 13 minutes, not rated, The Coffin Ship (1911), black & white, 15 minutes, not rated, Cinderella (1911), black & white, 14 minutes, not rated, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912), black & white, 12 minutes, not rated, The Cry of the Children (1912), black & white, 31 minutes, not rated, Petticoat Camp (1912), black & white, 15 minutes, not rated, The Star of Bethlehem (1912), black & white, 15 minutes, not rated, The Decoy (1914), black & white, ? minutes, not rated, A Dog’s Love (1914), black & white, 11 minutes, not rated, Crossed Wires (1915), black & white, 31 minutes, not rated, The Soap Suds Star (1915), black & white, 15 minutes, not rated, and The World and the Woman (1916), black & white, 66 minutes, not rated.
Thanhouser Company Film Preservation, no catalog number, no UPC number.
Three single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R discs; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; insert booklet; double-wide three-disc DVD keepcase; $24.95.
Release date: 2004.
Country of origin: USA •
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This DVD-R collection, originally released on VHS videotape, of surviving Thanhouser films has been mastered from prints held by world film archives.
The print used for the video transfer of Only in the Way (1911) appears to be a 16mm reduction dupe print of a 35mm original, with moments of damage in the form of decomposition, film splices, speckling, scuffing, vertical scratches, mild warping, and frame jitters. A momentary frame line adjustment is forced by a couple of improperly executed print splices. The transfer has been done full-frame, but is generally open framing, with all intertitles clearly readable. The print has no main titles. Generally, the greyscale range is reasonably broad, with reasonably well-defined shadow detail. Image detail is not the best.
The films are presented with musical accompaniment performed on organ by Andrew Crow.
Supplementary material includes an insert booklet of Thanhouser history and film notes by Victor Graf.
For our comparative reviews of some of the individual films in this collection, see our The Cry of the Children on home video and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on home video pages.
As several of these films have not appeared on home video elsewhere, we recommend this collection.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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