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 Peacock Fan
(1929)
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This murder mystery from B-studio Chesterfield Motion Picture Corporation is a fairly good film that treads familiar ground. When a rich man is found dead, nearly everyone who has been in the house in the last 12 hours is a suspect. Is it murder or suicide?
Lucien Prival stars as Dr. Chang Dorfman (we’re not kidding here), an unofficial detective who is something of a prototypical Charlie Chan.
Prival gets support from Dorothy Dwan, Tom O’Brien, Rosemary Theby, Carlton King (as the victim), Gladden James, David Findlay, James Wilcox and Spencer Bell.
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 Alpha Video
2014 DVD edition
The Peacock Fan (1929), black & white, 85 minutes, not rated.
Alpha Home Entertainment, distributed by Oldies.com,
ALP 7398D, UPC 0-89218-73989-6.
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 7.0 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 384 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 6 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $7.98 (raised again to $9.99).
Release date: 24 June 2014.
Country of origin: USA
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a VHS videotape copy of an analog transfer of a very-good 16mm reduction print of, what may be, the British distribution version of the film.
The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.
To our knowledge, this is the only available edition of the film on DVD home video.
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This
Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from
ALPHA VIDEO through . . .
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Other CRIME FILMS of the silent era available on home video.
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