Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet

Edwin L. Marin's A Study In Scarlet (1933), starring Reginald Owen as Sherlock Holmes, comes to DVD is a decent edition from Alpha Video. It's been decades since a 35mm print of this movie has been sighted anywhere, but the makers of this disc have come up with a passably well transferred source off of a clean, reasonably intact 16mm source. The contrasts are nothing great, and the resolution has its limits -- there are some missing and damaged individual frames, places where vertical lines can be seen in the source print, and the second half of the movie is in rougher shape than the first -- but this reviewer has seen much worse presentations of the movie on television. The sound is more solidly represented on the disc, mastered at a high volume level with some fluctuation between shots and scenes; the volume brings up a certain level of noise, none of it overly distracting -- as with most talkies of this era, there is no musical accompaniment, but the dialogue is sharp and clean, except when missing frames intrude. As with other Alpha releases, the movie gets six chapter designations, and the disc opens on a simple dual-layer menu. The box claims a running time of 77 minutes, but most sources say the film runs 70 minutes, which is the running time of this disc.