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 Dying Detective (1921), The Devil’s Foot (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