The Sherlock Holmes Collection, Volume 2

Here are four strong, beautifully restored entries from the peak of Basil Rathbone's prolific, seven-year run as the definitive Sherlock Holmes for the big screen. The Pearl of Death (1944) is a then-contemporary update (set circa World War II, as were many of the Rathbone-Holmes features) of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Six Napoleons." The Scarlet Claw is an original screenplay with elements loosely inspired by Doyle's "The Adventure of the Dancing Men." The Spider Woman employs details of Holmes' apparent death and resurrection in the Doyle canon, but the movie takes a different direction when the great detective probes the involvement of a femme fatale in a series of suicides (within this set, The Spider Woman features the most familiar tropes of Doyle's fiction). Finally, The House of Fear, adapted from "The Five Orange Pips," is a chamber mystery concerning successive murders within an elite club, a tale that seems--on film--a bit ludicrous, but its conclusion is among the most startling in the Rathbone oeuvre. Recommended. (T. Keogh)