Nathaniel Hawthorne's Classic Tale of Sin & Redemption!
Features: DVD
Taking its place alongside many of the screen's classic thrillers of the 1930s, The Scarlet Letter has never been seen in a high quality version on home video... until now. Though inspired by one of the all-time classic novels, the story told here is as bizarre as any told by Hollywood as revenge-crazed madman Chillingworth proves to be one of the of the movies' greatest figures of the macabre. In Puritan New England, an era of torture and witch burnings, Chillingworth's mind snaps upon hearing of his wife's adultery and illegitimate child. This man of medicine becomes a "mad doctor" and uses his insane power over people's minds and bizarre medical treatments to attain his vengeance. Having lived with Indian tribes, the doctor possesses a knowledge of weird, primitive drugs, which he uses to torture his victims -- such as a peculiar plant harvested from a dead man's corpse in a graveyard, used to torture the Reverend Dimmesdale in one of the eeriest sequences. This classic 1934 film was the first sound version of the great American masterpiece by Nathaniel Hawthorne and was produced on a spectacular scale, now specially restored for the first time from the 3mm nitrate original camera negative.System Requirements:Running Time: 73 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE
Editor's Note
This faithful adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1851 novel about a woman who is forced to wear a scarlet letter A on her bosom because she has an illicit affair is a damning depiction of Puritan life in 17th Century Salem, Massachusetts. When her husband Roger (Henry B. Walthall in the same role he played in the 1926 version) is declared dead after being missing for years, Hester Prynne (Colleen Moore in her last film) falls into the arms of Reverend Dimmesdale (Hardie Albright). She delivers a child out of wedlock and is tortured by the prudish residents of her town when they ostracize her from the community and taunt her as she tries to raise her child alone. The reverend wants to let everyone know that he is the father, but the pious Hester refuses to let him shame his name. To make matters worse, Roger returns and vows revenge for his wife's misdeeds. THE SCARLET LETTER is a penetrating examination of the devastation of Puritanism on the human soul and the evils of intolerance in 17th-century Massachusetts.
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