Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s deathless detective, has been recreated on screen in every decade, for every generation. Whether the Morton Downey Jr. portrayal, out in theaters this month, stirs anticipation or apprehension depends on your confidence in director Guy Richie and your appetite for innovation when it comes to one of the world’s most recognized fictional figures.
The upcoming Holmes movie has triggered the release of several DVDs that encourage us to look back at how the character was depicted in the past. “Sherlock Holmes Double Feature” packages a pair of World War II era films featuring what many call the classic Conan Doyle cast—Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as his amiable sidekick, Dr. Watson. “The Sherlock Holmes Collection” gathers the five surviving episodes of a 1960s BBC-TV series, called simply “Sherlock Holmes,” staring Peter Cushing in the title role.
The BBC series stuck close to the spirit of Conan Doyle’s text for “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and other classic stories. Like most British television of that era, an excellent cast offset its pinched budget and clumsy special effects. Cushing plays the part like a patrician Oxford don, persnickety in the face of mystery. In “The Sign of Four,” Watson recounts, “I remember in Afghanistan, I used to feel scared stiff waiting for something to happen.” Funny how history is like an epic poem with rhyming verses.
The two films on the Basil Rathbone double feature set a precedent for refashioning Conan Doyle to the needs of the times. Both The Spider Woman and The Voice of Terror took place in the ‘40s; the latter specifically addressed the moment, with Holmes doing battle against Nazi saboteurs and fear mongers. Although the plot is pulpy and high strung, the cinematography is superb, bathing Holmes and Watson in film noir shadows as they battle English traitors in the service of foreign evil. Rathbone exudes cool hauteur as he applies Holmes’ uncanny powers of observation and deduction against the Nazi conspirators.
Morton Downey Jr. is stepping into a role with impressive pedigree.
