Blu-ray, DVD Release: Outside the Law

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Oct. 20, 2020
Price: DVD $13.99, Blu-ray $19.99
Studio: Kino Lorber


While under contract at Universal Studios, filmmaker Tod Browning (Freaks) crafted a series of melodramas with strong female protagonists, women on the wrong side of the law, who stood defiantly against the men who tried to control them. No actress better personified this tough, glamorous anti-hero than Priscilla Dean (Drifting, White Tiger).

In the 1920 silent crime thriller Outside the Law, Dean plays hard-boiled jewel thief Molly Madden. When her father is framed for murder by Black Mike Sylva (Lon Chaney, The Phantom of the Opera), Molly partners with safecracker Dapper Bill (Wheeler Oakman) to stage a double-cross of their own.

Outside the Law was Browning’s second film with actor Lon Chaney, whose gifts for elaborate makeup and ruthless villainy would flower under Browning’s direction, setting the stage for a series of monstrous characterizations that would revolutionize the melodrama and lay the foundations of the American horror film.

Special features on this Kino Lorber release include the following:
-Audio commentary by film historian Anthony Slide
-Musical score by Anton Sanko
-Alternate ending
-Footage comparison

Buy or Rent Outside the Law

About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.