Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror

 

Elementary,
My Dear Nazi

Sherlock Holmes And
The Voice Of Terror
USA 1942 Directed by John Rawlins
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

The character of Sherlock Holmes,
created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
is ageless, invincible, and unchanging.
In solving significant problems of the
present day, he remains, as ever,
the supreme master of deductive reasoning.
Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror

So there we are. Due to bad marketing (or so the story goes), the 20th Century Fox series of Sherlock Holmes films... starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes, the inimitable Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson and supported fleetingly but regularly by Mary Gordon as Holmes’ housekeeper Mrs. Hudson... had stalled after the second film (The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, reviewed by me here) and Fox had cancelled the series. However, this was not the end of the screen adventures of the great detective starring this particular set of actors... more like a new beginning. After three years of Rathbone and Bruce keeping their interpretations of the characters very much alive and popular on the radio, Universal pictures took the plunge and decided to continue the series, with a change or two and, frankly, the changes must have worked somewhat because they made a further twelve films, starting with this one, Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original story His Last Bow but, very much updated for obvious reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

Okay, so there are some format changes with this series from now on which mark them as slightly different to the two Fox pictures prior to this. For starters, this is very much in the Universal B-movie mode, much like what their classic horrors had evolved into by this point in the 1940s... which means that they’re all just a little over an hour long from now on. Furthermore, the films start off with a title sequence of Rathbone and Bruce in character in the fog, peering out of the screen at the audience to some strident, Frank Skinner music. This sequence is reused on most (probably all, I can’t remember but will confirm when I get to the last one) the films from this point on... so they are very much ‘branded’ as a specific series of Sherlock Holmes mystery films in this way.

The other big change is that, the films are no longer set in the period in which Conan Doyle wrote them and, instead, they’re set contemporary to when the films were released. Although Holmes reaches for his Deerstalker and cape at one point, he never actually wears them and, indeed, doesn’t don them for the rest of the movies either. Instead, Holmes and Watson are dressed appropriately to the time and will take a motorised taxi rather than the traditional Hansom cab associated with them in their source stories. The way the studio chooses to obliquely underline this message is in a screen full of text... which I’ve quoted directly and in full at the top of this review.

And I have to say, as horrendous as this all sounds, it all works beautifully and this is a real masterpiece of a Holmes movie as far as I am concerned. Joining the cast and further cementing the relationship with Universal’s classic monster pictures is Evelyn Ankers as the ill-fated Kitty. She’s trying to help Holmes and Watson stop a Nazi spy ring who are broadcasting propaganda radio broadcasts to the people of Britain and then causing the deadly disasters in England that they predict in their broadcasts. It’s all set in London as Holmes and Watson are called in to help the war effort and thwart the propagandist ‘Voice Of Terror’. Which, obviously they do.

And yeah, it’s a great one and quite bleak. It’s got beautiful black and white photography throughout and there are a lot of instances in this one of cutaways to long held close ups of various actors and actresses reacting subtly to on screen shenanigans, further enhanced by very little music in most of the scenes. Kind of like a form of Eisensteinian typage but it’s extremely effective at silently enhancing the suspense and tense atmosphere of the movie. I did feel for the poor actors though, as the way they are lit with the light framing all or most of their faces for the close ups must have been very hard for them. You can see Rathbone’s and Ankers’ pupils shrinking down to just pinpricks as they face into camera, towards the light.

There are some nice little touches too... like the fact that Holmes carries around a stick or cane in this one which has a built in torch at the end for when it’s needed. Also a hokey but nice piece of visual deduction as Holmes realises there something up with the version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony played on the radio at a certain time, in that it contains some kind of message to the German spies... I think, that point is never quite made fully implicit but they do spend a long time establishing that something us up with the broadcast at a certain point.

The dialogue is sparkling too and, even if one of the main villains is fairly easy to spot, it’s fast paced fun amongst little set pieces and stock footage of Nazi propagated disasters (such as a reuse of the train crash footage from The Invisible Man, reviewed by me here). And, yes, it is very much a tool for British propaganda to help the morale and war effort but, that’s okay, so was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original story written in 1917, on which this is based (in a topsy turvy way). Something which marked these Universal versions of the films out, if memory serves, was Holmes giving a patriotic speech to Watson (or whoever was listening) at the end of each film. This one is no exception but his words here are taken directly from his closing words in the original story... except in the original the character was talking about the upcoming First World War (or The Great War as it was known then)... in the movie the words are reused to address the Second World War to good effect. And that’s me done on Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror. A cracking film and I’m really looking forward to checking in with some other old favourites soon. Great stuff.