The
Essential Sherlock Holmes (Delta DVD Box Set)
Picture
/ Sound / Extras / Films/TV Shows:
Silver
Blaze (1937) C-/C-/D/C+
A
Study In Scarlet (1933) C-/C-/D/C+
The
Secret Weapon (1942) D/D/C-/B-
The
Woman In Green (1945) D/C-/B/B-
Terror
By Night (1946) D/D/C-/C+
Dressed
To Kill (1946) D/D/C-/C+
Original
TV show (1954-55) C+/C-/B-/C+
The
Real Sherlock Holmes (2004) C+/C+/B-/B-
A
new round of Sherlock Holmes programs on DVD [this review was first
posted in 2005] continues with Delta's 8-DVD set The Essential
Sherlock Holmes. We have recently covered all 14 of the Basil
Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Homes films as recently restored to 35mm film,
then issued by MPI, which are all as impressive as those films are
going to look until HDTV versions arrive [see the Blu-ray review
elsewhere on this site!]. However, even though this box features
awful old prints of four of those Universal Pictures-produced films
(The Secret Weapon, The Woman In Green, Terror By
Night, Dressed To Kill) it also offers two rarely seen
Holmes films, six episodes of an early 1950s Holmes TV series, a
pretty good documentary look at Holmes and nine episodes of the
little-heard but long-running radio show that Rathbone & Bruce
starred on for the longest time.
Two
different actors play Homes and Watson in the other B-movie films
that preceded the Rathbone/Bruce series. Silver Blaze (aka
Murder At The Baskervilles, but not a film of The Hounds Of
The Baskervilles book) has Arthur Wootner as Holmes in the final
of five films he did as the character, while A Study In Scarlet
has one time Dr. Watson Reginald Owen as Holmes. Wootner is more
successful than Owen, who seems awkward in the role. Both make for
interesting comparisons to Rathbone and what might have been. The
problem is that they are not as clear or direct as Rathbone, whose
theatricality, voice, statue and snap succeed where they failed.
Some of each film feels a bit more British by comparison to the
Hollywood product, but they just do not make it.
Those
two DVDs have no extras and the mysteries are not bad for B-movie
material, but they also feel like they are playing second fiddle to
Doyle's original work, which is bad, as if to say film was a
secondary art form to the printed page instead of one unto itself.
Hollywood would not make that mistake. As for the four Rathbone
DVDs, each one comes from different points in Universal's series, but
the great thing about these DVDs is that they feature the best part
of this set, the radio dramas.
The
show was very successful, running with the co-stars from 1939 - 1946,
then Tom Conway took over from Rathbone as Holmes for one last
season. The final Real Sherlock Holmes DVD includes one of
those installments. The Rathbone shows are from sponsors Bromo
Quinine (discontinued as they found out injecting bromide could kill
people!) and Petri Wine, plus some made with Armed Forces Radio in
mind. The Conway installment is sponsored by Kreml hair care
products, with all but one Armed Forces-only copy without the fun
advertisements the great days of radio offered. The pretense of each
of the shows in this series is that the host visits Watson after the
launch announcement that the show has begun and who is the sponsor.
The
TV series ran only 39 shows (most of which WGBH in Boston, one of the
greatest of all PBS affiliates, is saving and restoring). Until
then, these six shows will do to show what is remarkably still the
only regular U.S. series ever produced on Holmes. Despite their
last-minute TV funny endings, they are decent and the producers even
pushed the format occasionally in certain shots. Ronald Howard
played Holmes and H. Marion Crawford played Watson, not badly cast
and competitive with other pairings before and after the series run
and it was a sincere attempt to do the character despite the
restrictions of early TV.
All
the mysteries here, even those of the Rathbone/Bruce films, tend to
be in the mode of the shorter stories creator and original author Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle did with such snap and cleverness. The Liam
Dunn-narrated documentary on Doyle titled The Real Sherlock Holmes
is another in the very amusing series of such programs Delta is
making on various interesting real-life subjects that happen to be
brought to the big motion picture screen. Troy, for instance
(with Brad Pitt's unreal dying scene), was also a hoot, as reviewed
elsewhere on this site, and like that program, there are some
interesting things to learn from this nearly hour-long program. Shot
recently on professional analog PAL video, it looks good for that and
there are some location shots that are obscure and alone worth
watching the program for.
All
the footage is 1.33 X 1 full screen throughout and it occurred to me
that hardly any of the Holmes features are even widescreen in the
long history of the character on film. The films and documentary are
offered in PCM 2.0 sound, with the documentary being stereo and the
six features films in mono. The six TV shows are in lossy Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono, as are the seven radio dramas. I like to hear the
old radio in PCM preferably (many hundreds have been nicely restored
since this first posted!), but many are out on DVD in Dolby and all
over the web as MP3s. I think they loose their impact as the
recordings, off of old acetates, has enough audio obstacles without
more compression. In the case of the Rathbone DVDs, the shows are so
good, they make the shot film prints seem like bonus reference
material, and then if you had these on CD only, you could only fit
two complete programs per disc anyhow.
As
to whether this is an 'essential' collection, the answer is essential
enough as there is plenty of material here you will find nowhere
else. Obviously, even an 8-DVD set only scratches the surface of the
Holmes legacy in broadcast and film media, something that can be even
said of MPI's 14 Rathbone DVDs (and later, still amazing
Blu-rays!!!). The missed opportunity here was to have audio
commentary tracks like those MPIs often do. Delta could have easily
found someone to talk about Holmes, especially in the early British
films. The Essential Sherlock Holmes is a decent set for fans
and those who want to see sides of Holmes they have not seen or heard
before. Those who are interested will not be disappointed.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
