NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Film Detective Blu-ray (December 2021): Film Detective have transferred four early 1930's Sherlock Holmes films to Blu-ray in a boxset they are calling "The Sherlock Holmes Vault Collection". The films are 1931's Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour, 1935's The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes, 1937's Silver Blaze aka "Murder at the Baskervilles" and 1933's A Study in Scarlet - each on their own separate Blu-ray. Three of the films have Arthur Wontner as Sherlock Holmes and Ian Fleming as Dr. John Watson. The image quality is quite poor - which would be a direct representation of the existing sources. Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour has some thick grain texture, which I can appreciate, but the next two, The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes and Silver Blaze aka "Murder at the Baskervilles", while somewhat clearer and smoother can look video-y and waxy. Not unwatchable by any standards but all the film are fraught with varying degrees of marks and scratches plus a few jump-cuts. The 1933 A Study in Scarlet in 1080P is the worst looking - horribly blow-out with poor contrast and obvious manipulation. I suppose they are what they are unless other elements are found of film-level restorations are produced. Fairly unlikely that this will happen. They are all on dual-layered discs with max'ed out bitrates and presumably escalating the sources to there highest abilities for the 1080P format.

NOTE: We have added 118 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Film Detective use lossy Dolby tracks for the four films - all in the original English language. The audio is likewise poor - scratchy and scattered with scores by the likes of John Greenwood (Another Man's Poison, Pimpernel Smith, Secret Agent, Man of Aran, Elephant Boy) and Val Burton (Deluge, James Whale's 1931 Waterloo Bridge etc.) I suspect they would all have benefited from lossless transfers as dialogue can have inconsistencies. Film Detective offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Film Detective Blu-ray offers a new commentary for each of the four films. The commentary on The Fatal Hour is by Jennifer Churchill - author of Movies Are Magic: A Kid's History of the Moving Image From the Dawn of Time to About 1939. She talks about film adaptations of Sherlock Holmes books, the era and details of the story and other pertinent details. The commentary on The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) features Jason A. Ney and he discusses the similarities between Arthur Conan Doyle's source novel "The Valley of Fear" and this film adaptation, Arthur Wontner's portrayal of Holmes and how it was received, Twickenham studios (who produced four of the five 'Sherlock Holmes' films starring Wontner), producer Julius Hagen and much more. On Silver Blaze (1937) the commentary track has Phoef Sutton and Mark Jordan Legan of the Podcast "Film Freaks Forever". They discuss how much Wontner looks like the Sidney Paget drawings - best known for his illustrations that accompanied Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in 'The Strand Magazine'. It's filled with interesting facts. A Study in Scarlet (1933) commentary track has Peter Atkins and David Breckman. Atkins describes that the film was shot in a studio down the read from where he lives now, the pre-code, Anna May Wong's career, Robert Florey's screenplay, and much more. Aside from the edifying commentaries, there are The Adventures of Sam Sherman - divided into three parts - one per the first three Blu-rays, a 40-minute recreated Sherlock Holmes radio broadcast of Sherlock Holmes and the Blue Carbuncle, A Black Sherlock Holmes from 1918, 20-minutes of The Copper Beeches a 1912 adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story about a father trying to gain control of his daughter's inheritance (does not include Watson.) Film Detective also include the first known film featuring Holmes is Sherlock Holmes; Baffled, a one-reel film running less than a minute (38-seconds on the Blu-ray), made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1900 There is a 1954 TV episode of City Detective entitled Blindman's Bluff starring Rod Cameron, a Felix the Cat cartoon, Sure Luck Holmes, and Cousins of Sherlocko, a Mutt & Jeff cartoon, Slick Sleuths, the 27-minute Elementary Cinema: The First Cinematic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, an original documentary by Ballyhoo Motion Pictures. There are also separate essays for each film by the likes of Don Stradley, Jason A. Ney and C. Courtney Joyner plus there are 4 original poster replications - one in ease Blu-ray disc case.

The character of Sherlock Holmes is to date the character most often portrayed on screen. According to Guinness, per 1988, he had appeared in 193 films (today its well over 200.) Film Detective's Blu-ray boxset "The Sherlock Holmes Vault Collection" will have the most appeal to Homesian completists. I don't mind Arthur Wontner and Ian Fleming as 'Holmes and Watson' plus it was wonderful to see Anna May Wong in 1933's A Study in Scarlet. Vintage film fans may also be keen. I don't think these escalate to the later Basil Rathbone / Nigel Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes entries but they do have the character's charming idiosyncrasies and nemesis Professor Moriarty making three appearances. There is value here. Enjoy. 

Gary Tooze