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The Devil’s Foot
(1921)

This collection of short British Sherlock Holmes productions includes films from the first 1921 series of Holmes films produced by the Stoll company. Eille Norwood portrays a believeable and satisfying Holmes.

A family is found sitting upright and dead at their dinner table in The Devil’s Foot (1921) and Holmes must deduce both the mysterious method and motive.

— Carl Bennett

Alpha Video
2019 DVD edition

Sherlock Holmes Silent Film Collection (1921), black & white, 80 minutes total, not rated, including The Devil’s Foot (1921), black & white, 29 minutes, not rated.

Alpha Home Entertainment, distributed by Oldies.com,
ALP 8220D, UPC 0-89218-82209-3.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 3.8 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 30 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 384 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; no chapter stops (within the film); standard DVD keepcase; $7.98 (raised again to $9.99).
Release date: 16 April 2019.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 3 / audio: 3 / additional content: 2 / overall: 3.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a fair to good 16mm reduction print, which has a persistent case of the frame jitters. Picture details are soft and the print is more contrasty than others in the collection with plugged-up shadows and occasional burnt-out highlight details.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting orchestral music recordings, pops and crackles included at no extra charge.

Not a great viewing experience but still watchable. A slight visual quality edge is given to this edition over the Grapevine disc below. For now, this is our recommended home video edition of the film.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from
ALPHA VIDEO through . . .

Grapevine Video
2002 DVD edition

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1912-1921), color-toned black & white and color-tinted black & white, 105 minutes total, not rated, including The Devil’s Foot (1921), color-toned black & white, 27 minutes, not rated.

Grapevine Video, no catalog number, unknown UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 4.5 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 224 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; no chapter stops (within the film); standard DVD keepcase; $16.95 (reduced to $14.95).
Release date: 2002.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 2 / audio: 3 / additional content: 2 / overall: 3.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a poor to fair 16mm reduction print, which is even worse than most reduction prints as some of the intertitles are barely readable; most have been freeze-framed to hold the most-legible frames long enough to be read, but does little for those that are too dark in the best of frames. Even so, despite its too-dark print, the film’s action can still be followed.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting low-fidelity music recordings.

For our notes on the other films in this collection, see our The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on home video page.

The print quality of the Stoll films brings down the overall visual quality of this disc.

This review was updated in 2025.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .