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

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) was the last of Buster Keaton’s independently-produced films with Joseph Schenck before being sold (figuratively, and then some) to MGM, who gradually exercised a growing stranglehold of control over Keaton’s stories, budgets and crew. While MGM’s The Cameraman (1928) is a funny film and was very successful upon its original release, Steamboat Bill, Jr. has Buster Keaton’s personal touches throughout and retains the feeling of an individual artist’s production and not a corporate product.

Buster Keaton as William Canfield Jr. is a buffoon to his father but, as it turns out, resourceful when needed. Ernest Torrance’s performance is always one of the highlights of the films he acted in. The instantly recognizable character actor plays Keaton’s cantankerous steamboat-captain father. Marion Byron’s bright and charming semi-flapper performance adds to the film’s charm. Tom McGuire plays the rich antagonist J.J. King.

Buster has been raised by his sophisticated mother in Boston. His father is a rough blue-collar type, and Buster arrives on the scene for a visit, his first with his father since he was a child. Their incompatible backgrounds make for quite a bit of the early comedy in the film. Buster’s father’s chief competitor turns out to be the father of one of Buster’s college girlfriends. The obligatory Romeo and Juliet conflicts are the underpinnings of the story, which climaxes with a huge windstorm that threatens the whole town.

The film includes one of the most hair-raising and infamous stunts of the silent era. A stunt that could easily have killed Buster had anything gone awry. Fortunately, nothing did and we have available for viewing one of the great moments in film history. During a high-wind storm, the side of a house falls down and nearly flattens Buster. A moment that must be seen to be believed.

— Carl Bennett

The film is accompanied by a wonderful music score composed by Carl Davis and performed by the Chamber Orchestra of London.

Supplemental material includes the featurettes “Reflections on The General” (5 minutes) and “Buster Keaton: The Luminary,” (5 minutes, both excerpted from the 2018 documentary The Great Buster: A Celebration); two modern Cohen trailers for the restorations of these two films; and an 8-page insert booklet with little useful content.

Favored for the inclusion of the Carl Davis music, this is our current recommended home video edition of the film.

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

This remastered Blu-ray Disc edition utlizes an excellent 35mm print, which has been transferred in a 2K high-definition scan with continuous greytones made-up of very-fine black pointilistic dots. The dots, which are quite a bit smaller than those that comprise the picture image of Kino’s previous BD editions, are nearly undetectable in a still frame and produce a very filmlike picture when in motion. Digital clean-up and stabilization of the picture appears to have been performed on the video master, which renders a very clean and stable picture.

The film is presented with two optional music scores, both in uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo: a new music score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock, and a music score performed on theatre pipe organ by Lee Erwin.

Supplementary material includes audio commentary by film historians Michael Schlesinger and Stan Taffel; an introduction by edition producer Serge Bromberg (in French with English subtitles) (4 minutes); and an Alka Seltzer commercial featuring Buster (1 minute).

We think that this edition makes it worth upgrading from any previous home video release.

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.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This Blu-ray Disc edition of Steamboat Bill Jr. has been mastered in high-definition. Two differing versions of the film are presented, the USA domestic version and the international export version. Our biggest rap on this high-definition edition is the coarse pattern of pointilistic dots that make up the video transfer image, seen clearly in any freeze frame, that seem like a swarm of black dots when in motion. The dots do not appear to be emulsion grains in the source print, but more that they are how the video transfer or the disc mastering rendered the continuous graytones in the source print. The resolution dots will look like very sharp picture details to some eyes but as distracting disc artifacts to others.

The films are presented with optional music scores by The Biograph Players 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo, a theater organ score by Lee Erwin, and a piano score by William Perry (Killiam version).

The edition’s supplementary material includes a complete presentation of the version from the Paul Killiam collection (70 minutes); a featurette that compares the two versions of Steamboat Bill, Jr. (13 minutes); two historic performances of the songs “Steamboat Bill” (5 minutes total); a Kino-produced montage of Keaton stunts from his sound shorts set to music, “Why They Call Him Buster” (2 minutes); and a stills gallery (69 images).

This was a preferred Blu-ray Disc edition previously but now we recommend Kino Lorber’s updated BD edition and the Cohen BD edition noted above.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This Blu-ray Disc collection contains the high-definition home video release of two versions of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., which is identical to the single-disc edition noted above.

The films are presented with optional music scores by The Biograph Players 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo, a theater organ score by Lee Erwin, and a piano score by William Perry (Killiam version).

The edition’s supplementary material includes a complete presentation of the version from the Paul Killiam collection (70 minutes); a featurette that compares the two versions of Steamboat Bill, Jr. (13 minutes); two historic performances of the songs “Steamboat Bill” (5 minutes total); a Kino-produced montage of Keaton stunts from his sound shorts set to music, “Why They Call Him Buster” (2 minutes); and a stills gallery (69 images).

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed by Carl Davis.

Supplementary material includes audio commentary on Sherlock Jr. by historian David Kalat; a video interview with film scholar Peter Kramer discussing The General; a documentary on Keaton and his struggles working within the Hollywood studio system (52 minutes); an audio recording of Buster Keaton in conversation with television writer Bill Cox (58 minutes); video essays on Sherlock Jr. and The General shooting locations by John Bengtson; “Movie Magic & Mysteries” featurette; filmed introductions to The General by Orson Welles and Gloria Swanson; a video tour featurette on The General; home movie footage taken on the set of The General; a video essay on the production of Steamboat Bill, Jr.; and an insert booklet with articles on the three films, historical writings, and photographs.

Sight unseen, this is our recommended European home video edition of the film. North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region B Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This DVD edition of Steamboat Bill Jr. has been remastered in high-definition. Two differing versions of the film are presented, the USA domestic version (also known as the Keaton Estate version) and the international export version (also known as the Killiam Shows version).

The film versions are presented with optional music scores by The Biograph Players 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo, a theater organ score by Lee Erwin, and a piano score by William Perry.

The remains our recommended DVD home video edition of the film.

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 . . .

The video transfer for this Kino DVD edition, from an excellent 35mm print, is virtually identical to that originally released on laserdisc and videotape in 1991, and rereleased on both formats as part of the Art of Buster Keaton boxsets from 1995.

The theatre organ music score performance by Gaylord Carter is identical to all of Kino’s 1990s home video editions (DVD, laserdisc and VHS) and is well reproduced in Dolby Digital mono sound here.

Also included in this edition are two of the most reputedly incomplete Keaton films, Convict 13 (1920), a two-reel film identified for years as having only survived in one reel and Day Dreams (1922).

Previously recommended, we now advise passing up this edition for one of Kino’s new HD remastered discs noted above.

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.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The films feature musical accompaniment by The Alloy Orchestra.

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 . . .

The film is likely accompanied by a modern music score soundtrack.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 2 PAL DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a very-good 35mm print (and the video transfer may have been lifted from another company’s laserdisc or DVD home video release). The picture is reasonably detailed but slightly dark and has a very light amount of speckling and dust but overall looks pretty good.

The film is accompanied by a low-fidelity music score performed on a theatre pipe organ (not the recordings by Gaylord Carter or Lee Erwin) that likely originates from the source print’s optical soundtrack.

Over the years, this company has released DVD-R editions under a number of company names, with the same catalog number and UPC number, including Nostalgia Family Video, Hollywood’s Attic, RetroFlix, and (as of 2015) Reel Vault. The lower catalog number may indicate that this disc was originally offered as a Nostalgia Family Video release in the mid-2000s. If you are on a tight budget and are looking for a low-cost home video option you would be OK with this disc but, honestly, you might be happier with one of the Kino DVDs noted above.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is likely to be accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is likely to be accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

We seriously doubt this edition is worth the money being asked for it these days.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

Supplemental material includes four Buster Keaton short films.

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 . . .

This DVD edition was mastered from a soft analog video transfer from a 16mm reduction print. The results are only moderately passable, with plugged-up shadows, nearly blasted-out highlights and smeary image details.

While the temptation is to get three discs for a low price, the quality of prints used for the video transfers are commensurately low.

For years, Steamboat Bill, Jr. has been available in higher-quality home video editions. Why bother with cheap discs? Not recommended, and it’s out-of-print now anyway so no big loss.

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

Other FILMS FROM 1928 available on home video.

Other silent film music scores by CARL DAVIS available on home video.