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

Sherlock Holmes Silent Film Collection (1921)

Contents: 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 includes films 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 fair to good 16mm reduction prints, which has a persistent case of the frame jitters. Some highlights are burnt out to white but the print still retains a reasonable greyscale range. Picture details are soft.

The films are accompanied by a soundtrack of preexisting orchestral music recordings, pops and crackles included at no extra charge.

The cover artwork implies that there is an extra disc with (presumably) a presentation of the full-sound short film Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1929) but, alas, there is no second disc and no Doyle short film.

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

Not a great viewing experience but still watchable.

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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

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

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