Review and news hub for movies, music and video games

Movie:		7.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		7.0
Extras:		1.0
Score:		6.0

Director(s):	Roy William Neill
Writer(s):	Bertram Millhauser and Arthur Conan Doyle
Starring:	Basil Rathbone • Nigel Bruce • Gale Sondergaard
Genre:	Mystery
Release Date:	December 08, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $17.49
Amazon:

Depending on who you ask or which article you read there’s a definitive actor who played Sherlock Holmes. It’s the more obscure version of the James Bond argument (Connery? Dalton? Brosnan?), but the candidates are far more evenly matched. For my money though, Basil Rathbone, who stars in this double feature, takes the cake. Right about now everyone is marching out their DVD releases of old Sherlock Holmes adventures to catch the buzz rolling off the release of the new film starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. In the grand scheme of all the releases, this one falls somewhere in the upper 75%.

Basil Rathbone has the essential Holmes speech pattern down pat, he played the sleuth numerous times and perfected the character. Sherlock Holmes, no matter who’s playing him, pretty much comes out the same regardless. Some people get his nuances better than others, but in the end it isn’t really a difficult character. In contrast, Watson has undergone many variations ranging from clueless and helpless to an informed and able partner to Holmes’ endeavors. Nigel Bruce’s Watson falls safely in the former and has no real purpose beyond expositional lines of dialogue meant to keep the audience updated on the insights Holmes has had.

Just as Rathbone and Bruce are on opposite ends of an acting potency scale, the two features on this disc vary wildly in quality, a problem which stems from the drastic shift in how the Sherlock Holmes stories were written. Billed as the second feature on the disc despite coming two years before The Spider Woman (the first feature), The Voice of Terror served as little more than a propaganda piece set to stir up patriotic sentiment during World War II. Luckily, by the time The Spider Woman was made, the obsession with reframing Holmes in a World War setting had passed. Thus, The Voice of Terror feels like little more than a spy thriller while The Spider Woman feels like a full-fledged Sherlock Holmes story with all the cunning intrigue a fan of the sleuth would expect.

The Spider Woman sees Sherlock and Watson defying the London press by calling a recently publicized string of suicides a deviously veiled series of murders. In the process, Holmes fakes his death, wears multiple disguises and spouts witticisms in his uniquely dry fashion. It’s a faithful recreation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale and makes it clear why Rathbone is considered one of the better Holmes actors. Were the disc a mere single-feature release, it would feel woefully inadequate, but at least it wouldn’t leave you feeling like you just saw Holmes’ reputation sacrificed in the name of wartime nationalism. A radio broadcast in England brings news of incoming disasters on a daily basis and the British high military council has commissioned Holmes to discover the source of the newscasts and the person responsible for the leaks in intel.

The double feature set definitely suffers from the disparity in the two adventures. The two don’t really make sense together. There were a few features which had the same strong mid-war emphasis as The Voice of Terror, so why one of those wasn’t paired on the disc is somewhat baffling; or, in the other direction, why one of the more classic episodes wasn’t paired with The Spider Woman is hard to explain. You’re left feeling like you’ve made half a decent purchase because in this case, there’s nothing else on the disc to increase its value: no extras at all. At best you can tell yourself The Voice of Terror is a valuable insight into how the Holmes character was used as a patriotic tool, but beyond that the double feature set will only be worth rewatching for The Spider Woman.

DVD Bonus Features

It’s not at all surprising that there are no extra features as both Rathbone and Bruce are long dead, so all we’d have is historians talking about this particular interpretation of the character. It would be interesting but ultimately an unsatisfying extra. It’s just as well that there’s nothing.