The Freshman (1925)

Directors: Sam Taylor and Fred Newmeyer
Writers: Sam Taylor, John Grey, Ted Wilde and Tim Whelan
Star: Harold Lloyd

Index: That's a Wrap!

I watched a lot of Harold Lloyd features back in 2005 and ranked this one up there with the best of them, but it doesn’t stand up to a fresh viewing the way that Safety Last! did two years earlier for its centennial. It’s cleverly funny, both because of Lloyd and its intertitles, but it has precious little substance to prop it up.

The premise is almost ludicrously simple. A young man, Harold Lamb, wants, needs, aches to go to college and he’s been accepted to one, Tate University, “a large football stadium with a college attached.” He wants to be popular, so prepares with glee, copying a movie character, The College Hero, right down to the little jig that its star, Lester Laurel, does as he greets people. In his mind, he’s already replaced Chet Trask, the most popular student at Tate.

Of course, that makes him seem ridiculous, a little endearingly, sure, but still ridiculous. It’s enough to gain unwelcome attention from the college cad, who pranks him quickly and often enough for it to become a big deal. Harold has become quickly known to the student body, a feat he interprets as popularity but isn’t. Only late into the movie is it made clear to him that he’s just the college boob.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Director: Rupert Julian
Writer: uncredited, “from the celebrated novel by Gaston Leroux”
Stars: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin and Norman Kerry

Index: That's a Wrap!

Just six months after a mysterious phantom wreaked havoc at the famous Paris venue, the Moulin Rouge, in the feature by René Clair, a fresh phantom followed suit at an even more famous Paris venue, the Opera House.

Lon Chaney’s make-up, designed himself, is a marvel that had the audience screaming and perhaps fainting in their seats when Christine unwisely rips off his mask to reveal the horror of his disfigured features. The scenes at the Bal Masque, shot in Process 2 Technicolor, are still gloriously striking, the Red Death’s robe a vivid reminder of blood. No wonder it meant a series of Universal horror movies that would define the genre for decades. After all, Chaney had given them their most successful film two years earlier, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The success of this thematic follow up guaranteed a whole lot more. It merely took the advent of sound to progress the genre further.