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Welcome! Like the book of the same name, this blog is an eclectic collection of Sherlockian scribblings based on more than a half-century of reading Sherlock Holmes. Please add your own thoughts. You can also follow me on Twitter @DanAndriacco and on my Facebook fan page at Dan Andriacco Mysteries. You might also be interested in my Amazon Author Page. My books are also available at Barnes & Noble and in all main electronic formats including Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iBooks for the iPad.

Friday, April 27, 2012

The Adventures of Basil Rathbone

Sometimes in a busy life there are things one just doesn't get around to.

For instance, to the best of my recollection, I'd never seen Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in the 1939 film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I may have seen parts of it on television, but not the entire movie.

That unaccountable lacuna (I'm very  familiar with all the other Rathbone-Bruce movies) has now been remedied. I picked up a nice DVD of The Adventures as a door prize at last weekend's "Gathering of Southern Sherlockians" in Chattanooga and I watched it on Sunday night.

What a great flick! I won't compare it positively or negatively to any other productions, or to the original stories. On its own merits, I thought the movie was really enjoyable.

The production notes by Richard Valley that came with the DVD from MPI Home Video were excellent and helped explain some holes in the movie by providing helpful dialogue that was unaccountably excised from the final script. Valley also provides an audio commentary which I haven't listened to yet. 

If your only exposure to the Rathbone-Bruce duo is the Universal movies set in the 1940s or even their Hound of the Baskervilles, you owe it to yourself to track down this movie.

2 comments:

  1. Billy in a dress (http://youtu.be/1HHznjHVyhE?t=1m3s) and the Watson scene "I'm dead...don't let me detain you" (http://youtu.be/CNIhnol6oZQ) are two of the better non-canonical scenes out there.

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  2. How great would the Rathbone-Bruce movies had been if they had stuck to the cannon?

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