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Rating: 
Summary: Get the Pop Corn and Coke!
Review: I am writing this pre-review to express my Great Expectations and excitement over the upcoming DVD release of the 14 Sherlock Holmes movies made by Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.
For those of us who have loved and worn out our VHS versions of these films, I am sure that I speak for many of us in expressing incredible anticipation and near shock that someone has finally recognized the need to release a "restored version" of these timeless classics.
We are told that they have been "Preserved and restored in 35mm by the UCLA Film and Television Archive." This is marvelous and I have already pre-ordered Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 from MPI Home Video.
I so hope that the entire 14 movies, are ultimately released in restored condition. Especially the rarest of them, "The Scarlet Claw" which has rarely been shown on televison and only been available on VHS sporadically.
To me and many others I know, Basil Rathbone is the definative Holmes. Not just because he looks alarmingly similar -as much as is humanly possible- to Sidney Pagets drawings of Holmes from the Strand Magazine illustrations, but mostly we love Rathbone because he portrayed the same Holmes that we as readers get through the buffer of Dr. Watson explaining away not magnifying Holmes' shortcomings.
Jeremy Brett chose to amplify every negative aspect of Holmes' personality that in the written versions Watson explained away. Rathbone's Holmes has been demeaned visciously over the past years and hopefully the respect and dignity that he gave his portrayals will be seen in all their accuracy and glory with these new digitally restored releases. ... these will have to be the best quality versions of these classics ever released...
Rating:
Summary: Creepy thriller is one of Holmes' best
Review: With this, the fifth film in Universal's Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone, the studio dropped the great detective's name from the title, confident that other aspects of the production were powerful enough to attract audiences. "Spider Woman" was a perfect entry in which to deemphasize the appearance of Sherlock Holmes since Gale Sondergaard's performance as Andrea Spedding, aka the Spider Woman, would have been good enough to make this episode memorable even if she had matched wits with a less formidable opponent. Her character was so well received that it inspired an unofficial sequel, "The Spider Woman Strikes Back" (unofficial because she technically played another character and Holmes was not involved) in which another alumnus of the series, "Pearl of Death"'s Rondo Hatton, was also featured. For fans of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, it's fun to see how screenwriter Bertram Millhauser uses Doyle's "The Dying Detective" as a source for our first glimpse of Holmes here, and, as always, Roy William Neill creates a beautifully eerie atmosphere with scenes draped in shadows the likes of which can only be found in German Expressionism (and don't miss the scene in Ordway's lab, perhaps the most frightening moment in any of the 12 films). Neill deserves more acclaim than he's received, and the fact that he never rose above the assembly line of B movie making is a damning indictment of Hollywood's inability to properly utilize its talent. Rathbone is superb, as always, and Dennis Hoey as LaStrade also shines especially in the affecting moments early in the film when the Inspector believes his rival has died. And Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, though bumbling as amusingly as ever, is given the opportunity to demonstrate his intelligence, even showing Holmes up for once. The only drawback to this creepy thriller is a disappointing climax. Otherwise, "Spider Woman" has bite to spare.
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