Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

MartinHafer 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.

keith-moyes In the Seventies and Eighties, in particular, I was a real movie buff. In addition to watching many of the current movies, I was frantically catching up on movie history: haunting the National Film Theatre and seeing as many old films as possible on TV. I was soon struck by how few pre-War British films were available (not much more than the main Hitchcocks and a half-a-dozen Alexander Korda pictures). I had very little sense of what routine British programmers were like in the Thirties and this has always seemed like a massive gap in my knowledge.For this reason alone I was very intrigued to see that three of the Arthur Wontner Sherlock Holmes movies were now available on DVD.Triumph of Sherlock Holmes is a decent adaptation of the Valley of Fear, bulked out to feature film length by the addition of Moriarty. Wontner's Sherlock Holmes is not as memorable as Basil Rathbone's, but is probably as close to Conan Doyle's character as any. Because this movie is based on a Conan Doyle book, there is more actual deduction in it than in most of the later Universal movies.The structure of the film is somewhat awkward (as was the book) with a 25 minute flashback in the middle, during which the actual story grinds to a halt. I cannot help feeling a good screenwriter could have handled this better. The production design is fairly basic, but not obtrusively so. The direction is strictly point-the-camera-and-shoot. If this is at all typical of British film-making in the Thirties I can appreciate why relatively few films from that era have stood the test of time.Any criticism of this movie, and the other two movies on the DVD, has to be subject to one major reservation. The prints are so poor that they are hard to watch. Apart from the very soft image, there is extensive damage, grain and dirt. The sound is often so poor that some of the dialogue difficult to understand - especially, I suspect, for those not familiar with the various British accents.The quality of these movies is so far below what audiences at the time would have experienced, I feel that, in a sense, I still haven't really seen them.I recently bought a DVD of a supposedly lost British horror film, The Ghoul, which was even worse - only to discover that MGM had released a version in pristine condition discovered in the vaults of the British Film Institute. I cannot help wondering if there are much better versions of these Sherlock Holmes movies (and many other old films) also sitting unseen in storage.The fly-by-night companies that release these old, out-of-copyright, movies frequently use ragged, degraded prints that give a completely false impression of what these movies were really like. But I don't blame them: at least they are making some obscure movies available for viewing once again. The onus is on the great film libraries to start releasing their back catalogues (preferably with digital restoration) on affordable DVDs.This surely is part of their remit as organisations.

MikeF-6 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.

jlnic I bought this DVD at a local discount store for a buck due to the fact that it stated that Basil Rathbone was staring in it. I liked Basil Rathbone played Holmes. You get what you play for. The lead in this film was played by Arthur Wontner. The plot of the film had a good plot of pacing for an early sound film of the thirties. The film itself was a fine film. But I go have a few minor complains.Possible spoiler1. Professor Moriarty was played as a 1930's gangster instead of the British upper-class anti-Holmes.2. The Scowlers ( the secret society of coal miners is right out of the 19th Century not the 20th Century). The dangers of updating older books.3.It would fall to the American Government to investigate a criminal gang and not a private agency like the Pinkertons.4. Professor Moriarty as a Crimelord would not go in person to pickup the Hit-man , but would instead get an underling to do it.Other then that it was a good Holmes movie.