Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Scar of Shame (1927)

This crime drama from the Colored Players Film Corporation serves a little social commentary into its mix of two-bit hustlers, upper-middle-class stoicism, guns, attempted rape and suicide. The story by David Starkman, as directed by Frank Perugini, is melodramatic yet effective. The “all colored” cast is led by Harry Henderson, Lucia Lynn Moses, Norman Johnstone and Lawrence Chenault.

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered in high-definition from a 35mm print from the Library of Congress. This edition contains an additional four minutes of footage previously not in prior home video editions.

The film is accompanied by a music score by Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky).

The collection is supplemented with an 80-page booklet that includes notes on the films and essays by collection curators Charles Musser, Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, and others.

This is our recommended home video edition of The Scar of Shame.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by a music score by Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky).

The collection is supplemented with an 80-page booklet that includes notes on the films and essays by collection curators Charles Musser, Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, and others.

This is our recommended DVD home video for those collectors who have not yet adopted Blu-ray Discs.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This 34-film collection contains a high-quality edition of The Scar of Shame, the first on DVD home video, transferred from a 35mm print.

This valuable early DVD collection is now regretably out-of-print.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a 35mm duplicate negative of the same 35mm print held by the Library of Congress utilized for the edition noted above. There is some image instability, a little speckling, moderate dust and other minor print damage, but the greyscale range is a little flat and image detail is reasonably good, with some highlight and shadow details held and some of them lost. The resulting quality of the full-frame video transfer is very-good and is comparable to the LoC/Smithsonian edition.

The film is accompanied by John Muri performing on the Barton theatre pipe organ. The musical performance is flawless but it has some audible crackling, dropouts and infrequent distortion.

Given that this home video edition is now out-of-print (and that is no loss), we recommend the Kino editions noted above.

ENCORE ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this DVD-R edition is . . .

The film is likely presented with a music score compiled from preexisting recordings.

With other high quality editions noted above, we cannot recommend this edition.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .