7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Sherlock Holmes takes a vacation and visits his old friend Sir Henry Baskerville. His vacation ends when he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a double-murder mystery. Now he's got to find Professor Moriarty and the horse Silver Blaze before the great cup final horse race.
Starring: Arthur WontnerMystery | 100% |
Crime | 78% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (320 kbps)
English, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of The Sherlock Holmes Vault Collection.
Several online sites offer the presumed fact that the character of Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most portrayed personage in the entire annals of
film
and, later, television. The sheer number of Holmes adaptations for either the large or small screens is so overwhelming in fact that some fans may
have a challenge in choosing their favorite. Some may go with more venerable classic interpretations like those from Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes: The Complete
Collection) or even Jeremy Brett (Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Granada Television Series), while others may prefer more modern performances from
the
likes of Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock: The
Complete Series) or Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary). The Basil
Rathbone - Nigel Bruce Holmes films are an interesting assortment, for a couple of reasons. As fans no doubt know, the first two films in the
series, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, were set in Victorian
England, while all the subsequent entries in the franchise were "updated" to an explicit World War II setting mimicking their production era and no
doubt tied to a perceived need for cinematic heroes to vanquish various enemies. That aspect clearly presages some of the latter day revisions to
the character as seen in both the Cumberbatch and Miller television series, but as will be mentioned in a moment, is not the first such instance of
that particular strategy. But as a film franchise regardless of any time shift, the Rathbone -
Bruce films are often the first to come to mind, at least in terms of Holmes films from that general period. In that regard, three British productions
aggregated in this collection might reasonably be deemed to be one of the major groups of Holmes films to come in the sound era at least prior to
the now legendary teaming of Rathbone and Bruce, with Arthur Wontner starring as the venerable sleuth and Ian Fleming (not that one) as Dr.
Watson. The Wontner - Fleming films in this set were produced in 1931, 1935 and 1937, while the fourth film in the set, A Study in Scarlet,
features Reginald Owen and came out in 1933. The Wontner films in particular but also the Reginald Owen film presage the World War II era
Rathbone films
by at least somewhat
contemporizing events.
Silver Blaze is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Film Detective with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. The Film Detective doesn't provide any substantial information about the element or elements utilized for this set. This particular presentation struck me as a kind of middle ground between Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour and The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes. While it still has a somewhat filtered appearance as with The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes, there is more of a grain field consistently in place in this presentation. Things are still relatively fuzzy and not especially well detailed a lot of the time, and as I mentioned with regard to The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes, I'd say that fine detail fares best in terms of patterns (like the checkerboard on Mrs. Hudson's apron in screenshot 4) rather than actual textures, which can often appear smooth and relatively featureless. There are a couple of sudden increases in brightness which throw contrast off momentarily. As with The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes, there's an ebb and flow to how organic the grain looks, or frankly how much grain there is. Parsing through the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review should give some indication of the variances on display.
Silver Blaze features a Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track that is probably overall the best sounding of the films in this set, though that's a relatively low bar. The film's somewhat later production era probably accounts for some of this, as there's an at least somewhat more fulsome midrange in this track, though the overall sound is still thin and boxy. Dialogue is generally rendered cleanly. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.
A larger budget probably could have helped the horseracing aspect of this story, which is covered here mostly via description, but that's only part of the problem with this film, which arguably spends too much time speechifyin' and not enough time investigatin' (if linguistically minded Anglophiles will forgive a couple of dropped "g"'s). Video and audio once again encounter some obstacles, but the supplements are enjoyable, for those who may considering making a purchase.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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