Watch The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes For Free

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This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

*Spoiler/plot- The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes, 1935, Holmes and Watson investigate a strange murder that involves a secret society, intrigue, skin branding, and double cross.*Special Stars- Arthur Wontner, Ian Fleming, Lyn Harding *Theme- Clear binary thinking from simple observations give you detective work.*Trivia/location/goofs- NOT the Ian Fleming author of the James Bond books. Based on the Doyle book, Valley of Fear.*Emotion- A long winded and too complex story involving the first actor to take on the historic role of the master detective. This film did not have the Holmes dynamic action or detective work we have come to associate with this Victorian genre.

While IMDb says that this was based on a Conan Doyle story, you'd have a hard time recognizing the original. That's because so many details were changed and the entire Moriarty plot line was ridiculous--having nothing to do with the original stories. For the Sherlock Holmes fans out there, Moriarty died at Whisteria Falls--and the whole angle about Holmes going into retirement is poppycock. What also is VERY problematic for me, and it's less because it violates the Holmes canon, is the way the story is told. About half the film is told in flashback!!! What a sloppy and boring way to tell a story! Overall, because of the many problems, this is among the worst of the Arthur Wontner films of Sherlock Holmes. There are some very, very good ones and some bad ones. This is a bad one--due less to the acting and more for the bizarre and convoluted storytelling.

Arthur Wontner does the honors as Sherlock Holmes in this 1935 film, while the non-Bond Ian Fleming portrays a dapper Dr. John Watson. This was my first experience of their pairing, and they play off each other well, though the running gag of Watson's nudging Holmes to be introduced to every new character wears thin after a while. Somehow, I think Holmes was sharp enough to get around to it eventually.The story is told in large part via flashback, taking us to America and a secret organization known as the Scowlers, a band of murderers and blackmailers in an area of Pennsylvania. It relies on the recollections of Ettie Douglas (Jane Carr) recounting the story of her husband John, who went undercover as a member of the Freemen Scowlers, infiltrating their number for the local police. In doing so, Douglas earned the wrath of Scowler goon Balding (Ben Welden), who in present time has hired the evil Professor Moriarty to kill Douglas. Moriarty, here portrayed by Lyn Harding, is presented as somewhat of a magician, eerily appearing and disappearing in a compact room to Balding's amazement.Holmes' unique powers of deduction include a scene where he turns his attention to Watson's shaving routine. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that he leads Watson down a path to decoding a numerical message pointing to a murder at Birlstone Castle. Since the murder already took place, it's up to Holmes to uncover the perpetrator.A lot of attention is centered on the rate of burning candles and a missing dumbbell (not a human) to solve the crime, and it's uncanny that Holmes knows enough to trawl the moat with an umbrella handle (?) outside a castle window to find a clue. A better one would have been checking the dead body, since the actual victim (Balding) had a different build and was shorter than Douglas. I'm sure Holmes took that into account, it just wasn't mentioned.Though the story was interesting enough, and is recommended for Holmes fans, I was dismayed by the apparent death of Professor Moriarty. Granted, this film was released in 1935, but I viewed it after seeing 1943's "Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon", and 1945's "The Woman in Green". In all three films, Moriarty meets his apparent demise by falling from a height. I would have appreciated some originality, at least in the latter two.

An excellent Holmes story that benefits greatly by going directly to the source (mainly Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Valley Of Fear") and not only sticking pretty much to the original plot but also using a lot of the great dialog that Doyle wrote for Holmes. The problem with translating Sherlock Holmes to the screen (or writing new Holmes stories in full-length novel form) is that Doyle's original creation was such a brilliant detective he solved most mysteries almost instantly. Therefore, the short story was the best medium in which to present his adventures. If a story has to be stretched out to novel or feature film length, some other means had to be found to fill out the time and pages. Thus, beginning with Basil Rathbone (or maybe even earlier with William Gillette's original play), Sherlock Holmes became an action hero rather than a thinker. Arthur Wotner's Holmes and the script of "Triumph" retains the original essence of "the best and wisest man I have ever known" and shows us that he can delight and thrill us even more by seeing him as he was intended to be seen.