The Sheik / The Son of the Sheik (Special Edition)

Amazon.com

If you have the slightest interest in the phenomenon called Rudolph Valentino, this terrific disc is absolutely the place to start. The screen's great male sex god of the 1920s had a mammoth success with The Sheik, a slice of desert romance both exciting and completely absurd. Valentino plays a dashing "sheik of Araby" who rather forcefully romances an adventure-minded English lady (Agnes Ayres); if the story creaks with Victorian storytelling conventions, it also works. Five years later Valentino returned to the sands with his final film, The Son of the Sheik, playing both his original role and the sheik's impetuous boy. More madness here, and a wild saber duel on horseback at night reminds us they don't make movies like this any more. Valentino's faux-exotic allure may seem curious to modern viewers, but squint hard and you can imagine the frenzy caused by the sultry eyes and rapacious grin. --Robert Horton

Product Description

The great silent screen lover Rudolph Valentino is captured in his most famous role in this special double feature. Women fainted in the aisles when "The Sheik" (1921, 86 min.) was released, as Lady Diana Mayo (Agnes Ayres) is carried into the desert by an Arab chieftain (Valentino) who takes one look at her and wants her, right then and there. Nobody had seen anything like Valentino's natural sex appeal on the screen before, and the sequel "The Son of the Sheik" (1926, 69 min.) was designed to revive Valentino's flagging career. In the sequel, Young Ahmed (Valentino) falls in love with Yasmin, a dancing girl (Vilma Banky), but he is captured and tortured by bandits. Believing Yasmin to be responsible, he escapes and plans his own form of revenge, although true love, of course, finally prevails. In New York for the premiere of "The Son of the Sheik," Valentino collapsed and died eight days later at the age of 31. The public hysteria surrounding his funeral is documented in the original Pathe newsreel which rounds out this extraordinary DVD.

Set Contains:

A crazy 13-minute newsreel, "Rudolph Valentino and His 88 American Beauties," recounts a beauty pageant judged by the heartthrob. Winner: Norma Niblock, of Toronto. "The Sheik's Physique" is a brief scene of Rudy taking a day at the beach, and a newsreel on Valentino's 1926 funeral gives a sense of the hysteria that followed the young star's death. Newly minted music scores do an acceptable job of re-creating the musical approaches of the silent era, and The Son of the Sheik has an alternate score from a 1937 reissue; it's pretty corny. --Robert Horton, ISBN13:B000066741 ISBN10:B000066741 Material Type:dvd