The Sign of Four (1932 DVD)

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Murder at the Baskervilles (1937 DVD)

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1985-86 DVD)

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The Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes

There are few movies actually called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as that title refers to Arthur Conan Doyle's first collection of short stories about the late Victorian-era detective. However the stories have been made into many films and television features over the years, as have the stories from Doyle's subsequent collections. So we'll run through the various Holmes series focusing mainly on the stories without worrying overly about which collection they're from.

Original Sherlock
Over 70 actors have played the detective in film and on television, The first widely acclaimed Holmes of the talking-picture age was that of Arthur Wontner who was in late middle-age when he began a series of five films in the 1930s.

Wontner's Holmes is a dignified if solitary figure of the Edwardian period, offset by a bon vivant of a Watson, played four times by Ian Fleming (no relation to the author of the same name) and once by Ian Hunter.

The plots of the films were taken from Doyle's stories and novels, as well as from entirely new material. The first, The Sleeping Cardinal (1931, originally called Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour), combines two middle-period Doyle stories, "The Empty House" and "The Final Problem". A print of the film has only recently been discovered, and it seems not to be available on DVD yet. It was followed in 1932 by The Sign of Four, taken from the novel of that name, and The Missing Rembrandt, adapted from the story "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton". You can find
The Sign of Four on video but you may never see the The Missing Rembrandt as its prints are missing. The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) is adapted from Doyle's novel The Valley of Fear, in which Holmes appears only about a third of the time, but the film gives the sleuth a bigger role—as well as drags in Holmes's arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty who is not in the book. The last film in the series, Murder at the Baskervilles (1937), is partly adapted from "Silver Blaze", the lead story in Doyle's second Holmes collection, but changes it drastically, bringing in elements of the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and, again, Moriarty.

The available Wontner films are in generally poor condition, with sound especially deteriorated. The mysteries are rather slow moving and the production stagey, as might be expected in such early movies. But they are worth catching for what many consider the closest Holmes to Doyle's conception.

Updated Sherlock
The most popular Holmes in the public mind though is probably that of Basil Rathbone, who with Nigel Bruce as his bumbling assistant, starred in fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies from 1939's The Hound of the Baskervilles (see The Hound of the Baskervilles movies page for review) to 1946's Dressed to Kill.

Oddly, Hound is the only one of the series that takes place in Victorian times, as the later entries are updated to the 1940s to involve Holmes in more modern adventures, such as foiling Nazis. At times the series also takes on an atmosphere of American film noire which was then current, though it always remains British and the stories always end with happier conclusions. As with the Wontner films, the plots often veer radically away from Doyle's mysteries. Many of the films have no relation to any original stories except for having the same lead characters.

Rathbone's Holmes is more outgoing and cosmopolitan than the iconoclastic calculator of Doyle's stories. Nonetheless he set the standard for cinematic Holmeses to come, popularizing the deer-stalking get-up, penetrating gaze and "Elementary, my dear Watson". (Actually Rathbone's Holmes didn't invent this catchphrase, as it had appeared in previous Sherlock Holmes movies, though never in the books.) Many Holmes fans however find Bruce portrays Watson as too much a buffoon to be the observant literary and medical man of the books. Still it's great fun to watch the two leads interact. In a way, Rathbone and Bruce created enduring characters quite different from Doyle's heroes, which drives Holmesian purists mad but has delighted audiences for many years.

Sherlock for the ages
In the years after Rathbone retired his magnifying glass, the most noted Holmes may have been Peter Cushing. He started with Hammer Studio's The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1959 (see Hound page), which co-starred his horror-film buddy Christopher Lee (not as Watson though).

Cushing reprised his role in the 1968 series Sherlock Holmes for British television, when he replaced another actor who had been on the show since 1965. Cushing's Watson was played by Nigel Stock and the two of them are said to have created a memorable duo, acting out episodes that were often adapted from Doyle's stories. Some are available on video and come highly recommended by fans.

Then in 1984 Cushing played his final Holmes, The Masks of Death, as an elderly Holmes who comes out of retirement for one more case. Co-starring John Mills as Watson, as well as Ann Baxter and Ray Milland, the British television film was a triumph, despite not being based on a Doyle story.

Sherlock for the aged
Interestingly, Christopher Lee has also had a lifetime association with Holmes. Apart from being featured in Hound with Cushing in 1959, he played the title role in Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962), a Scandinavian produced film involving Cleopatra's jewellery and Moriarty or some such nonsense, unrelated to any Doyle tale.

Then in 1970 he was Sherlock's brother Mycroft in Billy Wilder's better, though still Doyle-unrelated, film of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

Finally Lee was back as the big guy himself in a couple of European made-for-television mini-series, Incident at Victoria Falls (1991, aka Sherlock Holmes: The Star of Africa) and Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1992). The overall title of these series is The Golden Years of Sherlock Holmes. As with Cushing's last outing as Holmes, Lee plays the detective being drawn out of retirement. Old age has sweetened him though. Lee's Holmes is downright sociable and charming. Patrick Macnee (of Avengers fame) is an even more affable Watson. Worse for purists, Holmes has a love interest in the second film—no less than Irene Adler (she of "A Scandal in Bohemia"), played by no less than one-time TV sex symbol Morgan Fairchild. The two mini-series are both sumptuously produced. Not bad little adventures, but a fallible, congenial gentleman is probably not what most fans are looking for in an aging Holmes. (I'd prefer a cynical, drug-taking, going-out-in-a-blaze dotage for the guy myself.)

Eccentric Holmes
Holmes aficionados were overjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s to get several series produced by Granada for British television that were most faithful to the novels and stories. Jeremy Brett gave an eccentric but brilliantly effective portrait of an eccentric but brilliantly effective Sherlock Holmes—someone you could imagine being both a drug addict and an incisive genius, both a cynical introvert and a flamboyant upholder of society's values.

The Granada films presented Doyle's oeuvre almost completely, starting with the series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1984-85. The
Return of Sherlock Holmes followed from 1986 to 1988, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in 1991, and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in 1994. In between these episodic series. longer individual films were produced, including The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Master Blackmailer (based on "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"), The Last Vampyre and The Eligible Bachelor (from "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor").

Brett had two actors play Watson to his Holmes. The first series featured David Burke who was an energetic Watson, although he often gave the impression of suppressing an annoyance at something. When he left to take a role elsewhere, he was replaced by Edward Hardwicke who seemed older and more laid back, a more traditional Watson. Together Brett and Hardwicke created on screen the pair that most resembled Doyle's vision—the plodding but wise Watson (like Doyle he's a doctor and an author, after all) acting not only as foil but as an essential aid to the brilliant, moody and slightly scary Holmes.

Smart-alecky Sherlock
Then there's the more recent Canadian TV movies, starring Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) and esteemed Canadian actor Kenneth Welsh, that can't decide whether they're serious or comic.

Frewer's Holmes is wrong in so many ways—zany and mean-spirited by turns and with an obviously fake Brit accent—although Welsh makes a believable Watson. But the production is quite good and some might find Frewer's smart-alecky detective refreshing, as sort of an anti-Brett.

The series starts with The Hound of the Baskervilles (of course) in 2000 and moves on to adapting another novel, The Sign of Four, in 2001. A Royal Scandal the same year is a very loose and unbelievable adaptation of the story "A Scandal in Bohemia" in which Holmes is up against his female nemesis Irene Adler. In 2002 the series closes with The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire, which you might think is based on "The Last Vampyre" again but is really a new story—probably the low point in an mediocre, if offbeat, entry in the never-ending adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

If you've had enough Sherlock, or if Matt Frewer wasn't odd enough as Holmes for you, you might take a break with The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975), a Gene Wilder film that veers from hilarity to grimace-inducing silliness and back again several times. Also starring Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman.

— Eric