The Philo Vance Murder Case Collection

"A Variety Of PHILO VANCE's Escape The Warner Archive......"
Hot on the heels of their Perry Mason Mysteries: The Original Warner Bros. Movies collection comes the PHILO VANCE MURDER CASE MYSTERIES COLLECTION. During the '20s and '30s, the undisputed leading light of popular American detective fiction was S.S. Van Dine's Philo Vance. The brilliant and often overweening Manhattan sophisticate appeared in a dozen best-selling adventures that became coveted properties for the Hollywood studios, as Paramount, Warner and M.G.M.. jockeyed for the rights. The six black & white films (on three discs) spanning the decade from 1930 to 1940 feature a variety of Vance portrayals, and a variety of styles along with a variety of film conditions. In my summaries I try not to give away the plots, but there are some minor spoilers, so use your own judgement. Let's investigate......

The first selection, THE BISHOP MURDER CASE (1930) from M.G.M. stars a dapper pencil mustached...

Some Philo Dough
Mr. John H. McCarthy's excellent review of this collection offers all the necessary details, so I'll keep mine as short as possible, since I largely agree with Mr. McCarthy's assessment of the films.

THE BISHOP MURDER CASE (1930) ***
I give this three stars mainly for its historic interest as a bridge between the silent and sound eras. I'll disagree slightly with Mr. McCarthy's assessment of the acting in this being "amateur theater" and say that it rather shows the actors struggling to get away from silent movie-style acting and into a more natural, fluid style. Roland Young is the best actor in the lot -- even better than Basil Rathbone here -- and everyone aside from Young and Rathbone remain constrained by silent movie histrionics. For that latter reason alone, this entry is worth seeing, even if the story itself is rather dull. Still, it's fun to see the actors struggle to speak into the microphones (reminiscent of the scene from "Singing in the Rain")...

No Problems
Wonderful DVD, have bought many of the Warner Archive discs and they work perfectly for me. I have one DVD player that won't play them, but its a very old, low end model attached to a secondary TV. I think these kind of cheapy or early units can't handle the DVD writable discs that Warner Archive uses for their on-demand products.

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