Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1912-1921)

Contents: The Copper Beeches (1912), The Devil’s Foot (1921), The Dying Detective (1921) and The Man with the Twisted Lip (1921).

This collection of short British Sherlock Holmes productions begins with the French-British coproduction The Copper Beeches (1912), featuring the comically-overplayed performance by the actor portraying Rucastle, the vindictive father. Not much of a mystery and not much of a film, with its outright bad direction and overwrought acting. At least Georges Tréville makes a reasonable Holmes.

The other films in this collection come from the first 1921 series of Holmes films produced by the Stoll company. Eille Norwood portrays a believeable and satisfying Holmes.

In The Dying Detective (1921), Holmes is near death, afflicted by a rare Asiatic disease, and still manages to solve a murder case.

A family is found sitting upright and dead at their dinner table in The Devil’s Foot (1921) and Holmes must deduce both the mysterious method and motive.

For The Man with the Twisted Lip (1921), Holmes dons one of his disguises to investigate a curious beggar amid London’s seedier denizens, who is in turn accused of the murder of a well-to-do family man. Holmes solves the mystery with surprising results.

— Carl Bennett

This DVD-R collection has been mastered from 16mm reduction prints of varying quality. The Cooper Beeches (1912) appears to have been transferred from a very-good fine-grain 16mm print, which holds a reasonable greyscale range and image detail. Some of the intertitles have been windowboxed to ensure readability on all monitors. Easily the best-looking film on the disc, we would rate this film’s visual quality at a 6.

The films are accompanied by soundtracks compiled from preexisting music recordings.

For our comparative reviews of other films in this collection, see our The Copper Beeches on home video, The Dying Detective on home video, The Devil’s Foot on home video and The Man with the Twisted Lip on home video pages.

The print quality of the Stoll films brings down the overall visual quality of this disc, but it is still the recommended home video editions of these films.

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Other BRITISH FILMS of the silent era available on home video.

Other CRIME FILMS of the silent era available on home video.