Starvation Blues

One of the benefits of the internet is that it's help connect people...and in doing so, lots of supposedly missing films have been found. For example, the old Vitaphone sound shorts of the 1920s had a separate sound record that accompanied each film....and often the two became separated. But thanks to the internet, the films have been reassembled. In other cases, films were only found in fragments....and the various fragments have also now been assembled to make complete movies.....and that appears to be the case with "Starvation Blues". I noticed a review from Boblipton (his reviews are excellent by the way), saying it was only in fragments and was not a complete film. But since then, it's been completed..

The film really lacks much in the way of story. Instead, it's more like a whole bunch of gags tossed into the film...with a slender thread of a story connecting them. It involves a couple hoboes (Clyde Cook and Syd Crossley) who are hungry and caught in a bad snowstorm. And, all sorts of nonsense ensues.

So it any good? Well, for 1925 it's good...though certainly not brilliant. It has a few nice laughs and is worth a look if you love silent comedies, like me.

STARVATION BLUES seems to be another vanished film.... except for a hundred-foot Kodascope cutdown, which can be looked at if you get a copy of the ACCIDENTALLY PRESERVED DVD from Amazon.com and poke around.... look at the DVD credits and it's there.

It stars Clyde Cook, one of the great fall-takers of the silent era, but one who never really made a memorable movie. If he's remembered, he's remembered for working with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy before they teamed up to become Laurel & Hardy.

Here's he's working with Stan Laurel. Stan helped write this and fans of L&H will recognize the situation: a street musician in the snow. Yes, it's the set-up from BELOW ZERO. It's all about the falls in the snow here, and Clyde takes them great.

Which is why, I suppose, this part still survives.