Sherlock Holmes Double Feature
152 min. / B&W / 1.37:1 / 1080p / DTS-HD MA English 2.0, SDH
What a find! When I was a kid, British mysteries of the 1930s were relegated to fuzzy UHF channels and aired so late at night one had to be an insomniac or a bat to watch them. The new double-feature from Film Masters offers such beautiful prints that I’ve had to re-evaluate my entire opinion of the Holmes movie canon: as a devout Sherlockian scholar of Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary output, the only Holmes/Watson tandem I fully appreciated onscreen was of course Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who may not have closely reflective of the story characters but who were so entertaining that I didn’t care. And now along comes Arthur Wontner and Ian Fleming, who provide more faithful adherence to both the plots and the spirit of the Holmes novels and short stories, but are just as entertaining as Rathbone/Bruce. I have new favorites! Wontner starred as Holmes in five films, one of which (the second, The Missing Rembrandt) is now lost. The pairing here gives us the fourth and fifth films in the series.
The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes is loosely based on the novel The Valley of Fear; Holmes is retiring to the countryside, and the notorious Moriarty tries to kick him in the rear as he exits the door of 221B Baker Street. Moriarty’s new racket is murder for hire, but one of his associates has slipped a coded warning to Mr. Holmes, who drags himself away from his bees long enough to assist Insp. Lestrade in solving a puzzling and extremely violent shotgun murder attributed to an obscure American cult but that may or may not have actually been the work of Moriarty. The chemistry of Holmes and Watson is intact, and so is Holmes’ straight-faced belittling of the ratiocination skills of the always-off-the-trail Lestrade (Holmes offers his assistance to the good inspector to “supplement your usual happy mixture of cunning and audacity”).
The second feature, Silver Blaze, from the similarly-named short story, gives us Holmes (all thoughts of retirement forgotten) investigating the heist of a champion racehorse, which has led to a double murder and – what else – the involvement of Prof. Moriarty. The story’s been rewritten to place Holmes & Watson at Baskerville Hall, site of their greatest triumph several years earlier, revisiting old friends, although there isn’t a hound in sight.
Wontner looks exactly as I’d picture Holmes; Ian Fleming (no relation to the author) is perfect as Watson, easily impressed by his famous partner’s observations and extremely off-base when he tries to duplicate the skill. Lyn Harding is an able (if rather portly) Moriarty in both films; we are given two different Lastrades, Charles Mortimer in the first and John Turnbull in the second. We liked the first one better. American actor Ben Welden is a welcome treat in the first film; we remember him fondly as a not-too-bright Moriarty-type in several episodes of TV’s The Adventures of Superman with George Reeves.
The restoration work done on these two films is laudable and thankfully, neither film looks overly scrubbed, in fact, they both presented quite a pleasing presentation in sound and picture. Dare we hope that Film Masters will someday present the two existing Wontner Holmes films, The Sleeping Cardinal and The Sign of Four, in a vol. 2?
The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) Dir. Leslie S. Hiscott
Olympic Pictures
84 min. / B&W / 1:37:1
Silver Blaze (a/k/a Murder at the Baskervilles) (1937) Dir. Thomas Bentley
Associated British Pictures
68 min. / B&W / 1.37:1
There is no bonus material.
