Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2026 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Easy Street (1916)

This classic two-reel comedy pits little Charles Chaplin as a new neighborhood policeman against big bully Eric Campbell. Lovely Edna Purviance, Albert Austin, Henry Bergman, Loyal Underwood, Charlotte Mineau and Leota Bryan support.

The film is presented with a music score composed by Neil Brand and performed by a small orchestra. An optional improvisational piano score performed by Donald Sosin is also available. Fine work all around.

Supplemental material includes the documentary The Birth of the Tramp (2013); the documentary Chaplin’s Goliath (1996) on Chaplin star heavy Eric Campbell; and an insert booklet with notes on the films by Jeffrey Vance.

For information about other films in this collection, see our Chaplin’s Mutual Comedies 1916-1917 on home video page.

This is our enthusiastically recommended home video edition of this film.

This Region A Blu-ray Disc edition is available directly from . . .

This dual-format Blu-ray Disc / DVD edition has been mastered from a high-definition pillarboxed scan of a good to very-good 35mm nitrate print held by the Museum of Modern Art, and a 35mm nitrate print held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Missing footage has been inserted from 35mm nitrate prints held by the British Film Institute and by the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image animée [CNC], and from a 35mm diacetate fine-grain print held by La Cinémathèque française. Most of the footage was sourced from the American release version with missing footage supplied from the European export version of the film. New intertitles were reconstructed from intertitle list documents held by the Library of Congress. This edition was a cooperative project of Cineteca de Bologna, Film Preservation Associates and Lobster Films, Paris, in cooperation with Association Chaplin. Digital restoration work was performed by Lobster Films, Paris, in 2014, which includes clean-up of print flaws and image stabilization.

The film is presented with a music score composed by Neil Brand and performed by a small orchestra. An optional improvisational piano score performed by Donald Sosin is also available. Fine work all around.

Supplemental material includes the documentary The Birth of the Tramp (2013); the documentary Chaplin’s Goliath (1996) on Chaplin star heavy Eric Campbell; and a 28-page insert booklet with notes on the films by Jeffrey Vance.

For information about other films in this collection, see our Chaplin’s Mutual Comedies 1916-1917 on home video page.

The collection is issued in limited-edition steelbook packaging, which we feel must be handled gingerly to avoid damaging its discs and the case itself.

This review was updated in 2026.

This Region A Blu-ray Disc / Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The special features include the documentary The Gentleman Tramp (1975), narrated by Walter Matthau, with excerpts from My Autobiography read by Laurence Olivier; Chaplin family home movies, including scenes of Chaplin at home near Vevey, Switzerland; the documentary Chaplin’s Goliath (1996) on Chaplin star heavy Eric Campbell; “The Mutual-Chaplin Specials,” an appreciation by Jeffrey Vance, author of Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema; “Making The Gentleman Tramp,” a reminisence by Richard Patterson; and a stills gallery containing more than 90 images from the collection of Jeffrey Vance, many never before published.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

That being said, readers have noted that there is surviving footage from these films that does not appear in this home video edition. Our understanding is that most (if not all) of these films have originated from the Van Beuren Company 35mm negatives that were prepared in the 1950s. Those prints featured music by Winston Sharples and synchronized sound effects, and they can be viewed in their 1950s form (transfered at sound speed) on early laserdisc and VHS collections from Image and Republic. While these 35mm negatives feature superior visual quality, portions of the original footage and intertitles were removed in the 1950s. Some early 16mm reduction prints from Blackhawk Films and others, which originated from other surviving positive prints, feature footage that doesn’t appear in this DVD edition. Logic would lead some to assume that this extra footage survives in 35mm prints held by the world’s film archives and by private collectors.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The film is accompanied by a custom music score by The Alloy Orchestra and is the principal reason to own this collection (if you like their music).

This edition was later reissued on manufactured-on-demand DVD-R disc and both the DVD and DVD-R editions are now out-of-print.

This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Don’t consider buying this collection for the Chaplin Mutual films. The Mutual films have all been released on DVD home video in far superior editions transferred from 35mm prints. Cobra Entertainment (successor to Delta) rereleased remaining stock of this disc onto the market in 2010.

DELTA ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .

This DVD boxset is full of low-quality video transfers of short and feature-length films. At the time of its release, the majority of the titles were previously available from other budget disc producers of similar low-quality. This edition has been transferred from a dark 16mm reduction print.

While the temptation is to get three discs for a low price, the quality of prints used for the video transfers are commensurately low.

Easy Street is available in higher-quality home video editions elsewhere. Not recommended and it’s out-of-print now, anyway. No loss.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other SHORT COMEDY FILMS of the silent era available on home video.