During the middle period of Universal’s Sherlock Holmes franchise—now thoroughly under the super- vision of producer/director Roy William Neill—the uni- verses of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the studio’s B-picture unit began to casually mingle with interesting results. MPI Home Video’s second “quadrilogy” of titles from the beloved Basil Rathbone/ Nigel Bruce series—transferred from 35mm prints restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive—is thus a more consistent set than the first [VW 103:34], collecting four Holmes mysteries unified by elements of Universal horror. Three of these four films feature a monster-of-sorts, while the other is set in an old, dark, cliffside house on a stormy night, where the inhabitants are marked for mutilation and murder.
As noted in our review of VOLUME ONE, the UCLA restorations of these films are of uneven quality and not as impeccably restored as one would hope. Correspondence from our readers in the British Isles, where these films are holiday perennials, also suggests that pristine masters have never been out of common circulation there, making the need for UCLA’s ten-year restoration program all the more mysterious. There is also an unaccustomed carelessness about MPI’s presentation that extends from the hyperbolic promises of their packaging (“Loaded with Special Features!”... hardly) to their subti- tling, commentaries and annotation. This is also reflected in the fact that, while these B&W films run only slightly over an hour at best, the average bit rate of MPI’s pressings averages 6.0 or less. Consid- ering the absence of bonus supplements on three of the four discs in any set, they could have easily been accommodated with a higher bit rate, yielding superior clarity and lustre. This inattention to detail is made immediately apparent in VOLUME TWO by the misplace- ment of THE PEARL OF DEATH in first (total: fifth) position, though it was in fact the seventh of Universal’s Holmes films, and should be the third disc in the set. Purists will want to swap its placement in the box with THE SPIDER WOMAN, which was the first of these four films to be produced and released. THE SPIDER WOMAN is one of the series’ finest hours (and change), pitting Holmes against a “female Moriarty” in a fast-mov- ing vehicle of innovative structure. In London, in a fast-paced mon- tage of stock footage and news headlines, various men dressed for bed leap to their deaths from high windows in a series of “Pajama Suicides.” Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. John H. Watson (Nigel Bruce) are vacationing in Scotland, where Holmes appears to suffer a dizzy spell and fall to his death in a river. After Watson and Scotland Yard inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) commiserate in their most emotional scene of the series, Holmes returns home in disguise, having staged his demise to lure the perpetrators of these so-called “suicides” (which he has recognized as murders) into a false sense of security. (Screenwriter Bertram Millhauser lifted Holmes’ surprise return from the grave from Doyle’s “The Adven- ture of the Empty House,” also sometimes credited as the source story of the later THE WOMAN IN GREEN, another Millhauser script.) Donning another disguise as a wealthy raja addicted to
Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in a promotional image heralding their great adventure, THE SCARLET CLAW.
THE SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION VOLUME TWO 1944-45, MPI Home Video DD-2.0/MA/+
$69.98 (4 discs), DVD-1
THE SPIDER WOMAN 1944, MPI Home Video DD-2.0, $19.98 62m 6s, DVD-1
THE SCARLET CLAW 1944, MPI Home Video DD-2.0/MA/+, $19.98 73m 44s, DVD-1
THE PEARL OF DEATH 1944, MPI Home Video DD-2.0, $19.98 68m 42s, DVD-1
THE HOUSE OF FEAR 1945, MPI Home Video DD-2.0, $19.98 69m 4s, DVD-1
THE SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION VOLUME THREE 1945-46, MPI Home Video DD-2.0/MA/+
$69.98 (4 discs), DVD-1
THE WOMAN IN GREEN 1945, MPI Home Video DD-2.0/MA/+, $19.98 67m 38s, DVD-1
PURSUIT TO ALGIERS 1945, MPI Home Video DD-2.0, $19.98 64m 59s, DVD-1
TERROR BY NIGHT 1946, MPI Home Video DD-2.0, $19.98 59m 34s, DVD-1
DRESSED TO KILL aka SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET CODE 1946, MPI Home Video DD-2.0, $19.98 71m 47s, DVD-1
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