The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Moriarty is acquitted in court and immediately sets a trap: keep Holmes occupied with a manufactured case and steal the Crown Jewels the same night. Directed by Alfred L. Werker, this is the second Holmes film Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce made in a single year, and it is still set in the Victorian period, before the wartime updating of the later entries. Rathbone's Holmes is brisk and severe, Bruce's Watson takes the comedy, and that division became the standard reading for decades. The sequence where Holmes goes undercover and sings on a music hall stage is the strangest and most enjoyable thing in it. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Holmes adaptations and thirties studio thrillers. Who it is not for: anyone wanting fidelity to Conan Doyle, since the plot is largely invented.