AllMovie

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes may owe nothing to Arthur Conan Doyle (or the William Gillette play upon which it is ostensibly based) other than a handful of characters, but that's enough. While some of the plotting and dialogue is not strictly according to Doyle -- Moriarty would never reveal his secrets to his butler in such a blatantly expository manner;Holmes would never be as dismissive of the threat posed by Moriarty nor as easily fooled by the double blind that the villain uses to distract him; the boyfriend's motives would be better explained -- things are kept close enough to the spirit of the book (and characters) that the violations of the letter don't matter too much. Most importantly, the film has in Basil Rathbone an actor that is imminently suited to the role of the world's greatest sleuths. While others have matched (or even perhaps surpassed) his interpretation, it is still the benchmark by which all other Holmes are measured, and he is in superb form here. Nigel Bruce's Watson has here started to develop a bit more of the obtuseness that would become more pronounced as the series progresses, but the actors play it to good comic effect. George Zucco's Moriarty is appropriately evil, and Ida Lupino plays the damsel in distress role with a winning combination of restraint and resilience. Weighing all the evidence, it's clear that Adventures is an engaging detective thriller.