One of the joys of second handing these days is stumbling on all sorts of castoff VHS tapes. There was a time when that clunky old technology was derigeur, was cutting edge, was the only damn show in town for golden oldies, cult and foreign film outside of major metro art houses and local late night broadcasting. It was a tough bit of business catching up on old favorites before videotape came along. Revolutionized fanboydom. Made us all 24/7/365 critics. Manufactured a whole legion of little Siskel and Eberts. The web is full of them, and well, here I am, too.
But I digress. The second hand world is flooded with tape right now, sometimes going for as little as fifty cents a throw. A person can whinnow through a lot of titles at that price, watch before they buy the Criterion print. What's fun is to stumble upon old favorites that you haven't bothered to find at the local Hollywood Video. I figure for a buck I can own it for as long as I want as opposed to renting it. Did that with a copy of Dressed to Kill, Basil Rathbone's last turn as Sherlock Holmes.
The bad thing was the quality of the tape. I will make it a point to watch out for Crown Movie Classics, regardless of the title. I watched M the other day and the subtitles were almost impossible to see (white type against a very old and grainy b/w film). I bought a copy of Wages of Fear a couple years ago and it was just as bad. I popped in that Sherlock Holmes piece and was assaulted by a loud background HMMMM that almost overwhelmed the dialogue. Pity as I hadn't seen that films since I was a boy.
The bad thing was the quality of the tape. I will make it a point to watch out for Crown Movie Classics, regardless of the title. I watched M the other day and the subtitles were almost impossible to see (white type against a very old and grainy b/w film). I bought a copy of Wages of Fear a couple years ago and it was just as bad. I popped in that Sherlock Holmes piece and was assaulted by a loud background HMMMM that almost overwhelmed the dialogue. Pity as I hadn't seen that films since I was a boy.
I was well versed in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Basil style, when I was a lad. My mom was a film head, totally hard core, and would drop most things to watch a long sought after film on tv. She was nuts for Sherlock. We would go into autodrive on our walks back from the Sunday afternoon swapmeet. She didn't drive so that meant hauling home her collectible treasures by hand AND pushing my baby brother along in the stroller at mach speed, in order to be home by one to catch KHJ's matinee show. We would always stop by Toy's Chinese Kitchen for a container of pork fried rice. It was as stable and preditable as a major holiday, as comforting as atole when I was ill, one of many marvelous movie memories that we shared together.
So I screened that old Sherlock, the last of it's kind on tape and then went down to my favorite rental store and picked up a copy of the latest Sherlock Holmes starring Mr Downey Jr and his sidekick Jude Law. Wow, what a steampunk adventure that was! I was enthralled once again with Victorian England, with the clothes and manners and crustiness of it all. I was wowed in the way that I was as a boy with the whole mystery and mayhem of it all. It was Guy Ritchie at his finest, a true beginning to what can hopefully be a very long franchise, just the way that Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce pulled off their run from the mid 30's to the mid 40's.
Yeah, it was a good run of Sherlock Holmes there those two days. The only thing missing was that late afternoon hustle in the sun, my mom yelling hurry up and Toy's fried rice. Ah, well, that's what memory, and these tales, are for. Sweet remembrance. Out with the old, in with the new!
Action!
Review: Dressed to Kill (R. W. Neill, 1946):
Review: Dressed to Kill (R. W. Neill, 1946):
Review: Sherlock Holmes (G. Ritchie, 2009)
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