The Basil Rathbone films (1939–1946)
Fourteen films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, made between 1939 and 1946.
Holmes is a type as much as a man, and these fourteen films played the type for eight straight years.
You want the Hollywood Holmes of the 1940s, one film at a time.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the two 1939 films at Fox — The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — in Victorian London.
Changes: nearly everything after that: Universal’s twelve films move Holmes and Watson into the London of the 1940s.
Whose story is it?
Holmes’s, with Nigel Bruce’s Watson beside him in all fourteen.
How much time does it ask?
Fourteen films over eight years: two at 20th Century Fox in 1939, twelve at Universal from 1942 to 1946.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive restored twelve of the fourteen.
Where to find it
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection on Blu-ray — Amazon
Other ways to get it: The same collection on DVD — Amazon · Find where it’s streaming — JustWatch
More versions: Sherlock Holmes, Granada Television (1984–1994) · Sherlock (BBC, 2010–2017) · Sherlock Holmes (2009) and A Game of Shadows (2011)