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My Friend
from India
(1927)

This screwball comedy, directed by E. Mason Hopper, stars Franklin Pangborn and Elinor Fair, with Ben Hendricks Jr. and Ethel Wales.

Grapevine Video
2010 DVD edition

My Friend from India (1927), black & white, 74 minutes, not rated, with The Arctic (1926), black & white, 7 minutes, not rated.

Grapevine Video, no catalog number, UPC 8-42614-10418-3.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 5.5 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 224 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 12 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $16.95.
Release date: November 2010.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 5 / audio: 7 / additional content: 5 / overall: 5.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a 16mm reduction print (of a possible rerelease version of the film), which is alternately a little light and a little dark and flat. There should be no surprise that dust, speckling, long vertical scratches, and other print flaws are present. Far from a desirable level of quality, the disc is nonetheless watchable with forgiving eyes.

The film is accompanied by a virtual theater organ music score composed and performed by David Knudtson. We welcome this music as a tremendous improvement over Grapevine’s previous accompaniment method: compiling a handful of preexisting music recordings.

Supplementary material includes a Dinky Doodle cartoon directed by Walter Lantz.

For now, this is our recommended home video edition of the film.

This review was updated in 2025.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .