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In my continuing quest to satisfy my enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes stories, I recently picked up a couple of DVDs of old Sherlock Holmes adventures. I watched one of them tonight, the oldest one in the set.  It’s called The Speckled Band and it follows the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story really quite faithfully considering…

…considering this was filmed in 1931.  Yes, you heard that right, it’s 76 years old this year.

Sherlock Holmes is played by Raymond Massey in his “screen debut” (as the DVD sleeve kindly tells us as though we’re all going to rush out and hire him to play James Bond next week or something).

Why bother with watching such an ancient Sherlock Holmes?  Well, having been listening to the radio adventures on my iPod recently, and after watching the Rathbone “movies” for the first time a year or so ago, I’m intrigued to see who else played the role.  The advantage these ancient recordings have is that they’re from the “pre-Rathbone” era.  The actors who play Holmes and Watson in this virtual Dark Age of talky-cinema didn’t have anyone else’s version to fall back on.  Every actor to play the characters of Holmes and Watson after 1946 have been compare with Rathbone and Bruce and their performances must have been affected by their predecessors.

That’s not necessarily so true for these “pioneer Holmes” who had to create their characters based mostly on the written page.

Raymond Massey plays a likeable Holmes who’s first appearance in the “movie” is in relation to his files being “computerised”.  Outside his room in Baker Street there are three hard-working women who are typing up notes and facts, collating them into a filing system, and then making the information available as cross-referenced cards.  The system looks more efficient than anything Microsoft has given us since the 80s!

Of course the main purpose of this filing system is to show us that Holmes’ brain is even more alert and accurate than even the most efficient of filing systems.  The equivalent of having “Doctor Who” being better than a computer or calculator today, I guess.

The story itself roughly follows the original story of The Speckled Band although in this instance, Dr Watson is called upon at the coroner’s hearing to offer evidence.  Holmes becomes indirectly involved because he’s read about the story in the papers.  Already Holmes is suspecting there’s “devil’s work afoot” and instructs Watson to tell him immediately should the remaining daughter get engaged.  A year later, this is what happens and the remaining daughter feels a strange threat of dread and doom about the old house and she confides in Dr Watson (at Baker Street, so Holmes is on hand too).  The rest of the investigation proceeds apace and the mystery is solved, the girl is saved, and the murderer is hoist by his own petard.  (If you know the story, you’ll know what happens and, if you don’t, I don’t intend to spoil it for you here – all popular Holmes’ actors have done this story).

It is interesting to see, in this pre-Nigel Bruce era, a version of Dr Watson that is not in the least bit bumbling.  Nor is Watson forever asking questions – although that probably has a lot to do with the fact that Holmes doesn’t really get involved in any investigation until towards the end of the story.

All the staple elements are in place, and the story flows along fairly well – with sufficient about it that’s different to the definitive telling of the story to keep the interest up.  And the story ends with Holmes briefly musing about his lot in life.

The transfer of the recording to DVD leaves a lot to be desired.  The visuals are fully of scratches and lines, which is only to be expected.  The audio seems to have been enhanced a little bit – all of the dialogue is easy to hear, yet there’s a lot of noise and static (hisses and cracks) on the soundtrack.  It’s certainly watchable enough given how old the original must be, but it’s not going to win any “restoration” awards.

The DVD case states that the “movie” runs for 66m but it, in fact, only runs for 49m.  I suspect that the originally broadcast version would have lasted for 66m, but there are an awful lot of drop-outs and cuts in the version presented on the DVD.  That, again, is presumably due to the age of the original material.  In short, it helps enormously if you already know the story of The Speckled Band and you watch the Massey version only as a curiosity piece.  All of the elements of the story are there and the transfer lasts just long enough to get the resolution thrown in, but some of the drop-outs are quite large – sufficiently large enough to distract you and to make you think that ITV’s been having a go with their censor-scissors.  Safe to say, though, this is not censorship.

To conclude-  this is an excellent curiosity piece that offers an invaluable insight to what people like us were able to watch at the cinemas almost 80 years ago.  It’s a rare find and I’d rather have it released in this, frankly, quite awful transfer to DVD than to not have it released at all.