Customer Rating:
Summary: Poor pucture quality.
Comment: I'm actually a fan of "NUMBER 17", I like Hitchcock's use of light & shadow to create the mood. Yes it is a little slow & stagey, but I get engrosed by the visuals.

And there lies the problem with this Laserlight/Delta DVD. The picture quality is horrible, full of digital artifacting that makes the picture appear to freeze in sections then play again. The details get lost in the pixilation. How can you enjoy a visually engrosing movie if it looks terrible.

I have an old Japanese Laserdisc of this movie, and it looks much better!
Japanese videos are NTSC format, so they will play on U.S. televisions. I would rather watch the Japanese Laserdisc with Japanese subtitles on screen that this awful Laserlight/Delta DVD.

And about "THE RING", Studio Canal / Lionsgate has released a nice 35mm mastered copy in a DVD box set: Alfred Hitchcock, The Early Years of the Master.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: good early effort from Hitchcock
Comment: Surprisingly good early effort from Alfred Hitchcock. One of the only original screenplays written by Hitchcock himself, this film shows remarkable story structure. It kicks off with a rousing boxing match in which carnival champ "One Round" Jack loses to a challenger from the audience who happens to be a professional prizefighter. The movie then slows down to develop the characters and introduce a love triangle between Jack, his girl and the professional boxer. The rest of the film is a dramatic buildup to the rematch between the two men, this time for the heavyweight crown. Even in this early film, Hitchcock shows his talent for meaningful cinematography and prop placement. An armband bought for the girl by the boxer continues to pop up throughout the movie as a symbol of her unfaithfulness. The only big detractor of this film is that the art of filming a boxing match had not yet been perfected in 1927. The final match, as a result, ends up being somewhat anticlimactic. The story, though, is what carries this film through.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Another of Alfred Hitchcock's well written Screenplays!
Comment: As a life-long fan of Alfred Hitchcock, I've read most of his screenplay/books. He's truly one of the Sci-Fi, Horror, Mystery, Thriller "Movie" Leaders! I can thank him for my creative writing today! He is one of the Leading Great's of today's Sci-Fi Movies, you can not expect his "technoloy" to follow today! His first completed film was in 1925! Imagine that! With his education at the St. Ignatius College in London England so many years ago, (the college-a School of Engineering) he was great in his time! Born in 1899, his untimely death in 1980, his last film (which he directed only) was in 1976, he was great! His Screenplay-The Ring is the best! Take a look! He more than deserves my five star rating and my lifelong respect!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Marred by poor technical quality
Comment: Laserlight claim to have used the best available source material for the "best possible" transfer to DVD. I find this hard to believe. The picture lacks black/white contrast, is noticeably cropped and slightly rotated in the field of view. If you can get hold of a UK Universal copy of 'Number 17', you won't have any of these problems. (American readers beware that if you get a UK video it will be in PAL VHS format.) I haven't seen any other copy of 'The Ring', but I suspect the same criticism will hold.

I rather like both these films. The Ring is very much a 1920s period-piece, but Hitchcock throws in occasional odd filming angles that seem ahead of their time. Number 17 does have a plot (despite disbelief elsewhere!), and there's a summary on the box. The scene where the hero and heroine are handcuffed to the bannister of a gallery in the Number 17 house is very Hitchcock. Worthwhile, but it needs a better transfer than this.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting, to say the least....
Comment: I tend to dwell more on the technical side of the these Hitchcock Laserlite DVDs, than the movies themselves and this one may end up being that way for no better reason than the fact that this movie is just plain confusing! My recent viewing of the film "Number 17" was only the second time I'd ever seen it and I can easily assure any reader of this essay that I am more confused than I was after the first viewing. I can't decribe the plot because I don't really know what's going on. It starts with a tramp and a seeming gentleman finding a dead body in an old house, then the victim's daughter happens upon the two men, the body disapears, some jewel theives come to the house and cause havoc, then somehow they all (including the dead man who's not dead) end up in a train which leads to the grand finale: a chase between the train and a tour bus that comes out of nowhere. The special minerature effects at the end have often gotten flack for looking fake, but I believe now, as I did with my first viewing, that they don't look any worse than King Kong's stop motion animation on top the Empire State Building.

The second feature, "The Ring," is a lesser known and surprisingly entertaining Hitchcock silent drama about a circus ticket girl torn between two potential lovers: one a prize fighter, the other his sparring partner who happens to be the only man that can beat him. The plot sounds typical and forgettable, but don't let that fool you. Hitchcock adds a lot of very innovative visual flair to the film and the acting is pretty passionate not overly dramatic as a lot of silent acting performances tend to be.

The DVD transfer of "Number 17" is fair. The sound is full of annoying hiss which can be reduced by turning off the surround sound and turning up the bass up on your stereo, the contrast is annoyingly jumpy (too bright in some scenes and too dark in others,) however, it does remain flat for the most part, which is better than scenes being washed out all the time like some film transfers. Of "The Ring," I understand that not everyone can handle the silent treatment, but the intelligently chosen mucial accompaniment by Laserlite makes the movie an easy one to get through, even though the film was transferred at a slow speed, making the movie about 15 miutes longer than it was intended to be.

Rumor is Hitchcock was forced to do "Number 17" and even though it's far from his best film, it's almost just as far from his worst film too, and since it's obscure enough that it probably wont get a full-on restoration any time soon, it deserves a better treatment than what Laserlite has given it. But, to Laserlite's defense is the fact that they didn't have to release it at all and the low price tag on the disc plus the addition of "The Ring" makes it a good collectible for the budget-minded Hitchcock nut.

3 stars to Hitchcock for his confusing but, at times, entertaining film "Number 17," and his entertaining Silent treat "The Ring" and 3 stars to Laserlite for trying but not trying harder.

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