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South of Panama
(1928)

This B-studio comedy-drama, directed by Charles J. Hunt, features Carmelita Geraghty, Edouard Raquello, Lewis Sargent and Philo McCullough.

As the comic relief, Lewis Sargent does what he can to channel Harold Lloyd and, later, Creighton Hale.

Grapevine Video
2005 DVD edition

South of Panama (1928), color-toned black & white, and color-tinted black & white, 67 minutes, not rated, with Wandering Willies (1926), black & white, 19 minutes, not rated.

Grapevine Video, no catalog number, UPC 8-42614-10057-4.
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 6.5 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); MPEG 2.0 mono sound encoded at 224 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $14.95.
Release date: November 2005.
Country of origin: USA •

Ratings (1-10): video: 4 / audio: 4 / additional content: 4 / overall: 4.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a good to very-good 16mm reduction print. The video transfer is a bit on the dark side (Luke, join me!) with closed-up shadow details but fairly controlled highlights. The source material contains a reduction print’s usual amount of dust, speckling, schmutz, splices, vertical scratches and other print flaws. The bouncing frame jitters are the most distracting of these.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting low-fi recordings lifted from crackling LP records.

Not a great presentation but this is the only home video edition of the film that we know of.

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