A true ‘must-see’ of silent cinematic majesty, Hunchback stars the unbelievably talented Lon Chaney, an innovator of pantomime and makeup artistry. The film is based on the Victor Hugo novel about Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer who falls in love with Esmeralda, a gypsy girl.

It is a classic story that is further accentuated by enormous sets, complex lighting and Chaney’s amazing ability to express suffering, humiliation,and desire for the understanding of a kindred soul. It should be noted that Chaney’s great skill at displaying identifiable human emotions under grotesque disguises can be partly attributed to the need to communicate with his deaf-mute parents. His body language and gestures are the center of this movie. He demonstrated his prowess at making us FEEL the character’s emotions in film after film until his death in 1930 after his final appearance in his only sound film The Unholy Three,a remake of an earlier silent film that he starred in. Anybody even remotely interested in the movies before they spoke should see this.

Beau (né George) Brummell, whilst little known today, was a major force in 19th century politics and fashion. Born when courtly circles were filled the ostentatiously foppish Macaronis, Brummell revolutionized English grooming by not wearing a wig, brushing his teeth daily, and developing an understated but well-tailored look known which became known as Dandyism.

In the film, John Barrymore (Drew’s grandpa aka “The Great Profile”) plays Brummel (here, with one “l” for some reason.) He pines for Lady Margery, played by 17-year-old Mary Astor (who was having an affair with the notorious 42-year-old ladies’ man and whoremonger behind the scenes). Lady Margery’s ambitious mother has other ideas, however, and rejects the low-born Beau Brummel in favor of the blue-blooded Lord Alvanley, Colonel of the Tenth Hussars.

Yes, yes, we’ve all heard of the celebrated Nosferatu – its cinematic importance, the legendary back-story of how it was almost lost to the ages due to legal injunctions, blah blah blah – and some people, having watched the film, know how bad many of the available DVD releases have been cropped and look/sound terrible, so it’s good news for jaded movie/horror nuts that Kino Video not too long ago released a specially re-done single-DVD “Restored Authorized Edition” (authorized by the F.W. Murnau Foundation, natch, NOT Bram Stoker’s widow) and a genuinely deluxe “Ultimate DVD Edition” two-disc badboy.

Ordinarily, I’m not a sucker for “re-master & re-package” jobs but I sing the praises of whomever did the deed of remastering the film elements for the DVD transfer; the movie looks gorgeous and crisp with new tinting, as per the original studio intent, and with the hi def-ready transfer many of the scenes look as if they’d been filmed just recently, not 85 years and counting. The super-treat on the two-disc edition for me, however, was the triple-whammy of the original German version (as original and complete as we’ll probably get, anyways) and an Anglo-phile version with improved English title-cards. That, and a terrific near-hour-long documentary, The Language of Shadows, laden with neat behind-the-scenes details of F.W. Murnau’s wicked life and of the failure of the producers to win in court and at the almighty box-office, really gives us some bang for our greenbacks.