Blu-ray Release: The Great Gabbo

DVD Release Date: July 13, 2021
Price: Blu-ray $19.89
Studio: Kino Lorber

One of Hollywood’s earliest — and most peculiar — musicals, 1929’s The Great Gabbo stars the inimitable Erich von Stroheim as an egotistical ventriloquist who casts a Svengali-like spell upon an ingenue (Betty Compson), against a backdrop of singularly strange numbers (including “Icky” and the spider-and-fly-themed “Caught in a Web”).

Director James Cruze (The Covered Wagon) allowed von Stroheim to endow the character with his signature flourishes, resulting in a wickedly bizarre cocktail of garish stage shows and Austro-Hungarian villainy. It’s  that is a diabolical delight.

A diabolical one to be sure, Kino Lorber’s new edition–freshly restored by the Library of Congress–includes an audio commentary by Richard Barrios, author of A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film.