Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
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The Man from
Nevada
(1929)
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This late western feature, directed by J.P. McGowan, stars Tom Tyler and Natalie Joyce, with Al Ferguson, William L. Nolte, Al Heuston, Kip Cooper, Godfrey Craig and Baby Frank Crane (not Frank Hall Crane).
The homesteading Watkins family are harrassed with the intent to run them off their land by Luke Baldrige (Ferguson) and his gang of night riders. Jack Carter (Tyler) encourages Virginia Watkins (Joyce) and her family to stay and fight the thugs.
The somewhat cowardly and conniving Baldrige tries an underhanded tactic to sweep Carter out of the way and grab the Watkins land. On a charge of cattle rustling, Jack and his buddy ‘Bowery’ Walker (Nolte) are arrested by the sheriff’s deputies. Deftly escaping, the duo encounter two of Baldrige’s men and manage to discover that the Watkins land filing is invalid and open for a proper claim.
Under pressure, Carter gets Baldrige’s brother, James (manager of the land office), to fill out paperwork in the Watkins family’s favor. Meanwhile, full of self-confidence and intent on evicting the Watkins family, Baldrige bullies them to prepare to leave, inflaming the elderly father to fight, but in cowardly form unfairly shoots the father. Well, here comes our hero now to duke it out with Baldrige. In short order, and in a bit of western deus ex machina, Walker arrives on the scene with damaging proof of Baldrige’s perfidy and is all is well in time for the film’s ending card.
Tom Tyler is a pleasing western hero here, two-fisted, tall and handsome. Reliable director J.P. McGowan delivers again despite his tight production budget and the all too-familiar plot. If dark Natalie Joyce (who aptly fulfills her heroine requirements) is in any way related to the two freckle-faced Watkins boys (Cooper and Craig), I'll eat that incriminating hat. William L. Nolte lends some mild humor to the film when he’s standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and with his ineffectual fighting abilities. It’s not a John Ford western but it is fun just the same.
— Carl Bennett
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 Undercrank Productions
2025 Blu-ray Disc edition
The Tom Tyler Silent Film Collection (1929), black & white, 81 minutes total, not rated, including The Man from Nevada (1929), color-tinted black & white, 45 minutes, not rated, with The Law of the Plains (1929), black & white, 36 minutes, not rated.
Undercrank Productions,
no catalog number, UPC 7-45808-09992-3.
One single-sided, single-layered, Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc (BD-R BDMV); 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in pillarboxed 16:9 (1920 x 1080 pixels) 24 fps progressive scan image encoded in SDR AVC format at 34.4 Mbps average video bit rate; Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 192 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 6 chapter stops; standard BD keepcase; $21.95.
Release date: 6 May 2025.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 9 / audio: 9 / additional content: 9 / overall: 9.
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This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered from a 2K high-resolution scan of an archival color-tinted 35mm print held by the USC HMH Moving Image Archive, which has been digitally-cleaned and stabilized. Some brief sections of footage are clearly missing from the print and from time to time some cupping of the source print renders some mild wobbling of the picture. A few scratches, some blemishes, a timing mark, and occasional emulsion chipping manages to surprise us but the viewing experience is quite pleasing. Overall, the high-quality scan of the excellent source material renders a very filmlike picture when viewed on systems capable of upscaling to 4K high-resolution images, and is so clear you can see in the insert shot of the note handed to Natalie Joyce the watermark of the paper stock.
The film is accompanied by an entertaining music score composed and performed on piano by Ben Model.
Supplemental material includes another 1929 Tom Tyler-J.P. McGowan western (review here); and the slideshow featurette “Tom Tyler: A Life in Pictures” (4 minutes).
This is unreservedly our recommended home video edition of the film and should be a treasured part of any western fan’s collection.
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This
Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc (BD-R) edition is available from
UNDERCRANK PRODUCTIONS through . . .
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 Undercrank Productions
2025 DVD edition
The Tom Tyler Silent Film Collection (1929), black & white, 81 minutes total, not rated, including The Man from Nevada (1929), color-tinted black & white, 45 minutes, not rated, with The Law of the Plains (1929), black & white, 36 minutes, not rated.
Undercrank Productions,
no catalog number, UPC 7-45808-09993-0.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 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; 6 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $19.95.
Release date: 6 May 2025.
Country of origin: USA
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This DVD edition has been mastered from from a 2K high-resolution scan of an archival 35mm print held by the USC HMH Moving Image Archive.
The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed on piano by Ben Model.
Supplemental material includes another 1929 Tom Tyler-J.P. McGowan western; and the slideshow featurette “Tom Tyler: A Life in Pictures” (4 minutes).
This is our recommended DVD home video edition of the film.
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This
Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from
UNDERCRANK PRODUCTIONS through . . .
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Other silent era J.P. McGOWAN films available on home video.
Other WESTERN FILMS of the silent era available on home video.
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