Keystone Films for Toy Projectors

In article <1143758788.309214.102630 RemoveThis @i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
Shush <shushfilmseznospam RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote:

> Could you guys name some of those little 50' and 100' toy projector
> films of the Chaplin Keystones... the ones that actually look good?
> I've heard that some of them look fantastic, but that most of them look
> horrible. Which ones are worth buying?

It's an area of film collecting that interests me, because sometimes
rare footage (or better quality footage) will show up in a toy film.
This isn't very often, though, and most of them are just cut-downs of
material that's available in more complete form elsewhere, or just poor
quality (but, of course you already know that).

The ones to look out for, not surprisingly, are the early, amber tinted
prints - I have a couple of small reel (50 feet) excerpts from "Easy
Street," "The Adventurer" and "Vagabond" that look fantastic (the same
as the full Kodascopes would look, if I could ever get my hands on
them). Empire Safety Films was also putting out amber excerpts in the
1920's, though not as good quality as the Kodak films. Some of the
Hollywood Film Enterprises shorts are nice - the excerpts from "His
Trysting Place" ("Charlie The Nurse Maid," "Charlie Spills the Beans"
etc.) and "His Prehistoric Past" ("Charlie in The Stone Age," "Charlie
The Caveman") look very nice. "Charlie And Tillie's Elopement" is also
great, because it's the fence scene from "Tillie" that's missing from
most prints (including the Image DVD).

The most common toy films are those from Keystone - but I can't recall
any of them that were really exceptional. What I've seen from such
companies as "Star Film," or "Novelty Film Co." (the '40's, I guess)
look pretty lousy.
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