Product Description

In Prelude to Murder the legendary Sherlock Holmes must apply his keen ear for music to help solve this thrilling case. A trio of music boxes contains the hidden secret to vast riches, and a group of criminals is willing to kill for them. When the first of these victims is a friend of Dr. Watson, Holmes is on the case. This is the last of Basil Rathbone's portrayals of the iconic Sherlock Holmes, and certainly one of the best. This amazing colorization, created with a new cutting-edge digital technology, breathes new life into this already excellent film. Also included on this DVD is the original black-and-white version, beautifully restored as well. This is the definitive DVD edition of Prelude to a Murder.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29373 in DVD
• Brand: LEGEND FILMS
• Released on: 2008-07-01
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 72 minutes

Features

• In Prelude to Murder the Legendary Sherlock Holmes must apply his keen ear for music to help solve this thrilling case. A trio of music boxes contains the hidden secret to vast riches, and a group of criminals is willing to kill for them. When the first of these victims is a friend of Dr. Watson, Holmes is on the case. This is the last of Basil Rathbone's portrayals of the iconic Sherlock Holm

Customer Reviews

In colour and black and white-restored to perfection
Don't be put off by people slating the colourising techniques/results.
As a lifelong fan of Rathbone and Sherlock Holmes, all the these colourised dvds are a delight. the colours come across well, and the picture and sound is excellent.
It's simply snobbish to complain about these colourisations-it's not as if it's been done permenantly and you do have the option to watch in black and white.
Oh, and nothing is cut from these films in these editions.

For Rathbone fans-buy them! For fans of the films-buy them!

Name That Tune
Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce star in their final film as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. This time, the duo is on the tracks of a gang stealing music boxes that mysteriously hold key information that will lead to much money. The music boxes are made in prison by a bank robber, who encodes the clues, but they are sold at an auction before his partners can buy them. There's nothing they won't do to get their hands on the boxes, including murder. There's not much new in this film that hasn't been seen in the other films of the series, although the music box angle is an interesting way of transferring information. Rathbone doesn't play this one with much energy ... maybe he was getting tired of the role, while Bruce is his usual, bumbling self. Although hardly the best in the series, fans of the duo will want to check it out.

Dressed to Kill
The last of the Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series, Prelude to Murder was likewise the last of an era for British filmmaking. By this time, the actors and writers had begun to show their age, and their enthusiasm for the characters they were portraying had noticeably slipped--such is the case for any film series that extends on for fourteen installments (imagine if James Bond never cycled actors, for instance). Prelude to Murder is also the last and latest Legend Films entry into the Sherlock Holmes world, for the time being. By this point in time, having three other Holmes films under their belt, Legend has perfected its application of their colorization technology, resulting in a quite beautiful job that is among their best. Judging from the relatively poor quality of the public domain versions of the film, Legend had their work cut out for them in cleaning up this classic to the presentable state it finds itself.

But just because this may be one of the best colorizations of a classic film doesn't mean that you have to watch it that way, because Legend has included the cleaned-up black and white version on the same disc. This way, those who prefer to watch their films in the traditional, nostalgic way can do so, while those of us might enjoy a little added spice of color can have our druthers as well.