The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes is based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle original story The Valley of Fear.  Filmed in 1935, this movie comes three years before the last one I watched (they’re out of sequence on the DVD) but Dr Watson is played by Ian Fleming again and Lyn Harding is back as Professor Moriarty.

I’m not as familiar with Valley of Fear as I am with most other Sherlock Holmes outings, but the actual story and detective work is very recognisable, so it’s certainly based on a Conan Doyle story.

The movie lasts for 78m, but almost half of that is shown as a flashback that doesn’t include Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, or Lestrade (Less-traid, again).  I’m fairly sure that Moriarty wasn’t in the original story and has again been added for the purposes of giving the movie a proper ending.

The story begins with Holmes starting his retirement (his bee farm that is “seen” quite a lot in the radio series).  Dr Watson and his wife are moving into Baker street as Holmes moves out.  This isn’t true to the Conan Doyle original.  Neither Holmes’ retirement starts during this story, nor is Dr Watson still married when Holmes retires, nor does Dr Watson move into Baker Street at that time, nor does Mrs Hudson go with Holmes when he retires.  So there are a fair number of liberties taken to keep Sherlock Holmes in the character we recognise.

It would seem that the only purpose of Holmes’ retirement is to have Moriarty coming to see him saying, in quite a few more words than this, “I beat you, you should retire when you’re beaten, and if you change your mind I’ll kill you…” and other similar rants.  I’m fairly sure that Moriarty wasn’t active anymore at the time of Holmes’ retirement in the books (although the radio series does have him resurfacing during the war).

Despite the rant and the threats, Holmes’ retirement begins well until he receives a cryptic message from an informant in Moriarty’s gang, and Dr Watson visits on the very same day that Lestrade turns up with news of a murder.  Short retirement, this!

The murder follows the old “killed with double-barrel shotgun/face blown off” idea – so you know from word one that the body isn’t the victim that everyone assumes he is.  A mystery that’s very easy to solve.

That said, the movie progresses well with the flashback helping to inject some action and lively characters into the proceedings.

The transfer to DVD is a little worse for wear.  Most of the video is okay, with occasional minor dropouts (on some occasions, it looks like someone’s been doing a bit of recovery work).  The audio sounds like someone has tried to enhance it, but it has a strange bass level on it.  All the voices and sounds are deep, making it virtually impossible to understand what the female characters are saying, and giving an almost imperceptible deep drone in the background that threatens to cause headaches.  Certainly this is one movie you wouldn’t want to watch too frequently.

Now that I’ve finished watching all five curiosities, I’m pleased that I bought the DVDs.  There are curiosity pieces and it is easy to find fault with them.  They are a product of their era.  However, they have all be interesting and most have followed the Conan Doyle originals with a degree of faithfulness.