The Marx Brothers - Chico, Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo - are one of the cornerstones of American comedy and highly influential across the globe. Starting out in vaudeville, they conquered Broadway and the big screen in their own inimitable style, at once innovative, irreverent, anarchic, physical, musical, ludicrous and hilarious.

With the advent of the talkies the Brothers signed to Paramount Pictures and brought their stage act to cinema audience. They made five films in five years, all of which are collected here: The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and one of the greatest comedies of all time, Duck Soup (1933).

The Paramount era represents the Marx Brothers at their absolute finest, retaining all of the energy and controlled chaos of their stage shows. Plots are unimportant: it's the gags, set-pieces and one-liners that matter.

All five films are presented on high definition Blu-ray (1080p), transferred from original film elements by Universal, with the original 1.0 mono audio.

First released: Monday 15th May 2017

Extra features

• Commentary on The Cocoanuts by film scholar Anthony Slide
• Commentary on Animal Crackers by film historian Jeffrey Vance
• Commentary on Monkey Business by Marx Brothers historian Robert S Bader and Bill Marx, son of Harpo Marx
• Commentary on Horse Feathers by film critic FX Feeney
• Commentary on Duck Soup by Bader and film critic Leonard Maltin
• The Marx Brothers: Hollywood's Kings of Chaos - A feature-length documentary containing interviews with Leonard Maltin, Dick Cavett and others
• Three excerpts from NBC's The Today Show featuring interviews with Harpo Marx, Groucho Marx and Bill Marx
• FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Perfect-bound book featuring new and archival writing on the films