Sherlock Holmes fans will be overjoyed to know that all 14 Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are now available on DVD in great-quality prints and with thorough and satisfying liner notes, commentaries and other extras. MPI Home Video, which in the last few months released the 12 Universal films of the series (produced from 1942-1946), has now released the first two, which were produced by 20th Century Fox in 1939: The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

It's ironic that The Hound of the Baskervilles is by far the most famous title in the Holmes canon since it wasn't even originally conceived as a Holmes story. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel was first published in The Strand Magazine in 1901. This was a huge pop-culture event of the time, for Doyle had stopped writing Holmes stories eight years earlier, much to the dismay of the reading public. He had grown so tired of the character that he famously climaxed The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893) with Holmes and arch-nemesis Prof. Moriarty plunging down Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland - presumably to their deaths.

But on a 1901 golfing trip with his friend Fletcher Robinson, Doyle came up with the idea for The Hound of the Baskervilles and visited his friend's home at Dartmoor to research the fog-enshrouded moor setting. There he was driven around by a coachman named Baskerville. Doyle liked the name and used it. But he realized that he needed a detective character for his new hound story; Holmes was the simplest and most logical choice so Doyle reluctantly brought him back and set the story before the Reichenbach Falls incident. Predictably, the public clamored for yet more Sherlock Holmes, and Doyle relented, bringing the detective back for real in 1903 with The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes is one of the (if not the) most-filmed characters in history, and The Hound of the Baskervilles has been filmed at least a dozen times starting with a 1914 German production. Sources vary as to who had the bright idea of casting Rathbone and Bruce as Holmes and Watson in 1939. Legend has it that it was Darryl Zanuck himself who ran into Rathbone at a cocktail party and said he'd make a great Holmes. However it happened, it was one of those casting decisions that was so perfect it seemed as if these actors were truly born to play these roles. They may be billed 2nd and 4th in the credits of Hound, but that would quickly change to 1st and 2nd in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (and above-the-title thereafter).

Basil Rathbone, who was born in South Africa as Philip St. John Basil Rathbone, had mixed feelings about the role. In his autobiography In and Out of Character, he wrote: "Ever since I was a boy and first got acquainted with the great detective, I wanted to be like him. To play such a character means as much to me as ten Hamlets." Later in the same book he wrote, "Had I made but the one Holmes picture, my first, Hound of the Baskervilles, I should probably not be as well known as I am today. But within myself, as an artist, I should have been well content." After 14 movies and countless radio programs, Rathbone tired of the role in 1946 and left the series in both mediums. He revisited it a few times here and there, including TV cameos and a short-lived Broadway play, but his career steadily declined.

Unlike MPI's previously issued Universal films, the DVD of The Hound of the Baskervilles is not from a transfer of UCLA-restored print. It didn't need to be; the print they have used looks and sounds excellent. Like the other releases, this one has a similar case design and top-notch liner notes and commentary, by Richard Valley and David Stuart Davies, repectively. The information is interesting, well-delivered, humorous and informative. There is one little item that doesn't quite gel, however: Davies notes that the studio cast as the hound a 140-pound Great Dane named Blitzen. But in 1939, he explains, the name seemed too Germanic for the studio's comfort and so the dog (like so many other Hollywood stars!) received credit under a new name: Chief. This is a great story, but the problem is that no credit for the hound appears in the film at all. (Perhaps Davies was referring to publicity material at the time of the film's release.)

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the only Rathbone/Bruce film to be adapted directly from a Doyle story. The others are all inspired or suggested by stories - in some cases, more than one at a time. And for that matter, only Hound and Adventures are even set in the proper Victorian era. (The others are set in the WWII era and often involve Holmes aiding the war effort.) The Hound of the Baskervilles' famous last line, referring to Holmes' drug addiction, was bleeped out of British prints until the 1960s.

To order The Hound of the Baskervilles, go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold