Ray Charles Video:

		List Price: $24.99		Label: Image Entertainment Salesrank: 35536 Released: February 24, 2004
		Our Price: $22.49
		Used Price: $69.95
		MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
Who is Charley Bowers? The inventor of the no-slipping banana skin, unbreakable eggs, and cat-pushing trees! At the end of the 1920s, this unknown genius created and directed a score of cinematic burlesques filled with surrealist imagination, crammed with fantastic sights and animated puppets, among which the most delicious include "Egged On," "Fatal Footstep" and "Now You Tell One." His body of work is unique, though the astonishing course his career took has been chronicled by few and left him as one of the more enigmatic figures of American cinema. After a childhood spent with the circus, he became interested in animated drawing, adapting comic strips for the cinema including the "Mutt and Jeff" series created by Bud Fisher. Advances in animation which developed during this period explain the astonishing illusions which emerged in these comedic shorts. In the 1930s he directed "It#s a Bird," his first sound film. Bowers returned to animation for advertising films, in particular the first short film by Joseph Losey, the oil-commissioned "Pete Roleum and His Cousins," while also continuing his puppet films. He died in 1946, completely forgotten. To this day, 11 of the 20 short comedies are still considered lost. At the end of the 1960s, vault discoveries provided more of his story and three of the exhumed films were shown in 1976 at the Annecy Animated Film Festival, where they were met with enthusiasm. After 1992, worldwide research retrieved surviving prints of the missing films with requests to the world#s notable cinema collectors, who allowed access to their original elements. For the first time this extraordinary collection assembles the complete films of Charley Bowers which survive today, magnificently restored from the original elements with the collaboration of ten cinema societies.

Charley Bowers: The Rediscovery of an American Comic Genius Reviews:
brilliant f/x in cute slapstick
2007-06-01 - I saw Bower's films at the Art Institute in Chicago in the 80's, was astonished at his flair for special effects and contraptions design. He just came to mind recently, and I found I could buy the films, so...
Computer f/x take 3rd place, and Harryhausen 2nd...after Bowers. We still don't know how he did it. That he sets the magic in a charming Keatonish, young-man-strives-to-succeed-and-win-the-girl storyframe, permits the effects to delight, unlike the overachieving, blow-em-away 'aesthetic' of modern f/x.
How did he do it?!

A great rediscovery
2007-02-23 - A friend who despises silent films watched this and was amazed. He said, "I can't believe that they were doing those kind of special effects back then." That is how spectacular these films are. Charley Bowers should have been bigger than he was. Most silent film books don't even mention him. He deserved to be the fifth great american silent film comic, after Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Langdon. Yes, he is THAT good. His special effects are wonderful (stop motion animation, speed altered film, reverse filming, etc.). His stories are as good as any of the great's shorts. His character was developed - he was usually the guy courting a girl and impressing her with his know-how and inventions. It is amazing that he was forgotten. It is wonderful to discover him; anyone who thinks they have seen all the silent movies worth seeing will find a treasure here.
Ok, it is time for a complete revival, including a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Where the heck did THIS come from?
2006-08-04 - While wandering the local big box store's section of soulless, bland movie collections, this little gem caught my eye.

I have to ask, who the HECK allowed this to come out? Don't you dvd companies know that you aren't supposed to release anything this good? You are supposed to re-re-re-release knockoffs of other's people's low-quality dubs of badly-made copies of films that are public domain, not come out with as complete a collection as possible of an undeservedly forgotten comedy genius! What went wrong here?

Seriously, this is a great collection. My favories -

It's A Bird - seeing a Model T hatch from an egg is just amazing. Absolute genius filmmaking.

Believe it or Don't! - a really stupid film, but the scene of a lobster-animal playing xylophone and having the time of his life is possible the wierdest thing I've ever seen. It cracks me up every time.

Wild Oysters - Again, not the best film, but the ideas are so original that it's oddly compelling. Very wierd stuff.

And all of the silent films on disc 1 are great stuff.

I'm shocked that the quality of most of these is so good, and I'm also shocked that there's nothing better for some of the films.

Really, this is not for everybody. In fact, I think this is not for most. If you aren't sure that you will like this, PLEASE rent it first so that you can be sure. But if you like, say, City of Lost Children, then this is right up your alley.

Very Pleasant Surprise
2006-03-15 - I was impressed by the technical production innovations. the cleverness of the comedy and the humanity. I feel obligated to introduce this great talent to everyone and would encourage them to purchase this DVD. Its appealing to all ages.

What is it with Charleys and Comedy?
2005-12-04 - When I first heard about this set, I thought, "Is that the fake guy from Peter Jackson's Forgotten Silver?" I had no idea who Charley Bowers was or that he truly was a comedian whose career spanned over a long period of time. Thanks to this set, classic film fans are able to peek into the career of a forgotten comedian who used some truly unusual techniques to make his audience laugh.

The first disk in this collection focuses on Bowers' appearances in film.
First is Egged On, a film with cute gags. The story is about a man who invents a machine that creates unbreakable eggs. However, the eggs are not turned to stone; the shell just simply refuses to break unless cut, in which case a regular inside is expelled. The machine is large and elaborate; the idea of using one to utilize stuttery animation is used in several Bowers shorts. At the end of the film, there is water on the camera which is a bit distracting.
He Done His Best is a scratched film featuring a machine and animation. The story revolves around a man going to ask his girlfriend's father for her hand in marriage. Instead, he gets roped into taking a job as a waiter in the father's restaurant. Bowers is reminiscent of Buster Keaton in this film because of his agility and lack of expression.
A Wild Roomer features an average print of a film about a man who wins and inheritance if his machine to do anything works. There is lots of animation in this film which becomes a bit tedious and many elaborate gags.
Fatal Footsteps is the story of a man who tries to learn to Charleston using placemat footprints in his room. However, this Charleston is like none that I've seen before. The gags are funny and more traditionally slapstick although some are used for too long. There is only a little bit of animation in this short, but it is fitting.
Now You Tell One is a good short to use animation in. It is about a club whose goal is to tell the best lie. There are animated elephants, hilarious mice, and cats.
Many A Slip is a film with a great music score. It is about Bowers' quest to make the no-slip banana peel. There is some animation used and a very strange ending.
Nothing Doing is the last short on disk one, a damaged print. It is about a man who wants to join the police force to win a girl. In the process, he thoroughly ruins the town with his comic ignorance.
All of the shorts on this disk are in French with English subtitles. A few of the shorts have two available scores.

Disk two features shorts in which animation was used a lot or in all of the film. This disk is the better of the two.
Grill Room Express is a cartoon short in black and white about a day in a restaurant. It is similar to the live action short He Done His Best. The drawings look similar to Popeye; they are cleanly drawn and fun to watch.
AWOL is another fully animated short about a man who goes AWOL from the military in order to gallivant around town with a beautiful woman. It is a fun and cute film.
Say Ah-h! is a film that was preserved in The Library of Congress. For this, it is a gorgeous, clear print when it is not irrevocably marred. It seems that the first half of the film is missing and two scenes of the film are badly deteriorated almost to the point of being unable to understand what it going on. There is also no sound for the film, although one can hear the actual projector's sound. It is a pretty funny film about a man who is ordered to give his employer untainted ostrich eggs. He feeds the ostrich a combination of household items like pillows and feather dusters and the egg hatches a cloth ostrich, the major animation in the film.
Its A Bird is a great talking film with animation, much more fluidly done than in the silents. It is similar to that done in The Incredible Mister Limpet although not in color. The animated bird has an annoying voice, but the rest is great. There are hilarious random practical jokes but a strange ending.
Believe it Or Not is a film done completely in animation. It shares a few similarities with other Bowers films like cars being hatched from eggs, also done in Egged On.
Pete Roeleum and His Cousin is a very very strange fully animated color film about the history of oil and how great it is. It is very long and tedious, seemingly only used to show off the animation.
Wild Oysters is a really funny story based on a trite plot reminiscent of the Marry Melodies cartoons of Warner Brothers: a family of mice tries to skirt the family cat to steal some food. It is purely animation.
A Sleepless Night is very similar to Wild Oysters; several of the jokes are re-used. It has no sound thought it was obviously meant to be a talkie. The film does not suffer from the lost soundtrack though, partially because Wild Oysters proceeds it in this collection. It too is a very funny fully animated short.
Looking For Charley Bowers is a short documentary that explains the finding of the Bowers films and who exactly this man was. It is great simply because he is such an obscure figure in comedy. The documentary is in French with English subtitles.

Overall, this collection certainly exposes a man with many ideas not really used in the mainstream. It is nice that his films were not left to completely deteriorate from consciousness forever although he certainly is no comic genius the way Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton are seen to be.