The Scarlet Claw

Sanity Claws

The Scarlet Claw
Directed by Roy William Neill
USA 1944
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

The eighth of the series of wonderful Sherlock Holmes movies finds Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson without the aid of Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, for once. This is because the story of The Scarlet Claw... which is one of the concoctions of the studio writers as opposed to being based on anything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle actually wrote, asides from the main protagonists, of course... is set not in England but Canada.

This film more closely aligns to the kind of set up of the classic Universal Monster movies of the time (indeed, Rathbone had already played the lead role in Son Of Frankenstein, reviewed here) as it starts off with a woman with her throat ripped out, ringing a church bell for help while, on this dark and foggy night, the rest of the village of La Mort Rouge (yeah, the Red Death... great name for a village, I guess) are hiding in their beds or in the local pub. The rumours have started up again, midst a bunch of nightly sheep killings (found with their throats torn out) that the famous monster of La Mort Rouge has once again returned to prowl the village. So, yeah, this werewolf sounding premise is certainly in keeping with their current flock of horror movies at Universal and, luckily for most in the village, Sherlock Holmes and his trusty Watson happen to be in the area, 12 miles over, to attend an international meeting of The Occult Society... primarily to debunk the idea that there are various sinister phenomena at work in the world (something certainly in keeping with the spirit of Holmes, of course, but Conan Doyle would surely have found himself standing in strong disagreement with his most popular creation on this issue).

Lord Penrose, who opposes Holmes involvement, happens to be married to the lady who perished at the start of the film and, against his wishes, Holmes and Watson soon find themselves working the case in La Mort Rouge, primarily due to the delivery of a letter asking for Holmes assistance, sent to them by the murder victim but arriving long after she has left this mortal coil.

This one’s a real good one, yet again (did they ever make any bad ones in this series) and there are lots of village pubs and scenes of sneaking around on the boggy mires... I suspect the writers were asked to come up with something similar in tone and spirit to the famous Hound Of The Baskervilles, which had kick started this franchise when 20th Century Fox started it (you can find my review here). This would make sense for Universal, when you think of all the fog shrouded, stalking monsters of their horror output.

This was the third of the series to include actor Gerald Hamer in its cast and he does a good job here in a more expanded role. He would also be in a couple more of these films after this one and the series certainly seems to have a good stock of actors regularly called upon to fill these roles out. He’s just one of many who interact with Rathbone and Bruce in some wonderful scenes with the usual amazing performances. 

I remember discovering once how Warner Oland used to pause when speaking in a conversation when he was playing Charlie Chan to give an authenticity to a character who would have been trying to work out in his head the best way of saying his thoughts in English. Rathbone is similarly thorough in his performance of Holmes and this is another one where he proves his worth as an actor. Look at the intensity of his gaze at various people when conversations are going on around him. He perfectly conveys someone who is watching everyone like a hawk... studying and noticing any and every clue and always alert for any giveaway a suspect may accidentally drop in his words.

And Nigel Bruce is on his usual fine form as both the bumbling comic relief (probably a little more overtly here, even, than usual) but also someone who is willing to share the dangers of Holmes’ cases and, indeed, even manages to inadvertently save Holmes’ life at one point. There are some wonderful conversations he has with the locals including a long set of tongue twisters about whether a certain sound made by a car horn is a honk or a hoot. Bruce finally concludes “I don’t give two hoots whether it’s a honk or a hoot!” Rathbone’s lines are no less ostentatious but he also delivers them very well, making lines like “His orgy of crime is not complete!” seem positively common in their usage.

The murders in this one are committed by an ex-actor who goes about disguising himself as various characters and commits the murders using a five pronged garden instrument to mimic the claws of the mythical beast... probably the very same prop, I suspect, as the one used in a similar fashion two years later in She-Wolf Of London (reviewed here and a film which, incidentally, included Dennis Hoey in its cast playing a very similar role to Inspector Lestrade, who doesn’t turn up in The Scarlet Claw, again... because it’s set in Canada).

One of this murderous actor’s roles is a ghostly apparition which, his clothes covered in a phosphorescent coating, looks particularly effective as he stalks Holmes on the marshes (I’m surprised Universal didn’t use this ‘special’ effect more often). It’s unusual to see somebody else donning the disguises in a Sherlock Holmes film but, by the end of the picture, Rathbone does indeed adopt a disguise in order to catch the villain... made up to look like one of the other actors in the cast, although I did spot it beforehand this time around.

And that’s me done with The Scarlet Claw, I think. Another mini masterpiece in this amazing franchise of movies, one of the best series of films about a running character that’s been committed to celluloid. And, yes, although it has its detractors, not least because of the way the source material has been changed (including the obvious contemporisation of the characters), I still believe these are the best Sherlock Holmes films to date and are a real treat for all fans of the art of cinema. Once again Rathbone concludes with a patriotic quote from Churchill about the importance of Canada, “the linchpin of the English speaking world” and, yeah, it’s clichéd but even that brings a smile to the face at the end.