More Hollywood than Holmes, 1 Dec 20071932's A Study in Scarlet is a creaky Sherlock Holmes movie shot in California with a predominantly American cast and only a passing relation to the novel. Reginald Owen just about gets by as Holmes, but he's an insufferable know-all in the script who makes pronouncements of guilt without ever once being required to explain the deductions that led to them: people just blindly accept his word because, well, he's Sherlock Holmes. Anna May Wong at her worst makes for a poor femme fatale, Warburton Gamble makes an anonymous Watson and even Alan Mowbray, playing sober for a change, isn't able to liven up Lestrade. Eminently missable, especially in this ropey public domain DVD transfer.