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.