Sherlock Holmes

Games Afoot

Sherlock Holmes
USA 1922 Directed by Albert Parker
Goldwyn Pictures Corporation
Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Some spoilers.

Well this is an interesting one... first of all though, if you want to go looking for this on the IMDB then you need to look under the title Moriarty. I’ve no idea why because, it then states in brackets that Sherlock Holmes was the original title and I can find no reasons as to why it should be called after his famous literary nemesis on the IMDB. I mean, yeah, Moriarty is the lead villain here but... what’s going on with the IMDB lately anyway?*

Anyway, restoration on this film began in the 1970s from just a few found scraps and, over the decades, we finally got to here, which I had presumed was the full film. It’s not a bad restoration, considering what it could have looked like and all I will say about that is I’m glad I watched it on a shiny Blu Ray because I’m sure it would have looked far worse on a DVD edition (or VHS transfer for that matter). 

Now, there’s a warning that this is not quite Sherlock Holmes as you know him. It is the famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle character, as portrayed by John Barrymore but, it’s actually based on a play of the same name by William Gillette. And, okay yes, there is a background element of romance in this version and, by the end of the picture, Holmes does indeed... ‘get the girl’. However, I really don’t think the portrayal is that far out and I think that, other than the character’s longing for love as a not too blatant sub plot, it’s actually quite a good screen version of the character, in all other respects. 

Now the film surprised me because the first part of the story takes place when Holmes and Dr. Watson (played here by the steadfast Roland Young, making his film debut) are both still attending college. Holmes, through Watson, becomes involved with the case of another student, a prince, who is accused by police of taking the ‘athletic funds’ of the college. It turns out to be notorious underworld criminal genius Moriarty and Holmes gets the prince off the hook and goes out of his way to meet the master criminal in a pretty classic verbal encounter between the two, where each shows they’re a match for the other. Years later, Holmes is firmly embedded in 221 Baker Street (okay, so they got the address slightly wrong but, there are some great location shots of what London used to look like at the time of filming... it was filmed in the US, London and Switzerland) as a consulting detective of some repute. When the prince from the first half is being blackmailed with letters regarding his affair with a lady from the early parts of the picture, Holmes takes the case (because he’s besotted by the lady in question’s sister, who is in peril) and once more he is matching wits with the machinations of Moriarty’s criminal network (depicted visually in the early parts of the picture as a web, with Moriarty as the spider at the centre).

And that’s all I'll say on the plot but I will say that this is the first film I think I’ve seen with John Barrymore (of a very long line of famous actors, all who seem to have had drink problems in their respective eras, right down to the modern member of the clan, of course, Drew Barrymore) and I can tell you I was very impressed with his naturalistic acting style here. It’s always about expression with silent movie acting but he’s actually quite subtle and  I really believed him as a person here, rather than just as a character in a movie. I think I’m going to have to seek out his famous portrayal of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde next, I guess. 

Also making his debut here is future movie star William Powell, far from when he was playing The Thin Man. Also, if you want to see what a young Hedda Hopper was like as an actress, rather than a lauded Hollywood gossip columnist, she also has a role here. So the film is of much interest to fans of the early talkie era of Hollywood too, for sure.

My one gripe is that, although Homes is depicted making his usual deductions and even goes full on deerstalker and pipe by the end of the movie, not to mention adopting a clever disguise at one point, there isn’t really an element of mystery to the proceedings. The audience is pretty much in on the crimes depicted every step of the way so nothing is left for the spectator to unravel along with Holmes. Also, no Mrs. Hall in this and, good, because Holmes’ Baker Street lodgings are burned to the ground by Moriarty at one point.

All in all though, apart from the somewhat dreadful organ score which has been written here to accompany the movie, I had a pretty good time with Sherlock Holmes and I think I’ll need to track down some of the other silent Holmes movies in time, if I can actually find any (my old bootlegs were in terrible shape, when I tried to watch them). Unfortunately, even after many years of trying to piece this one together, they reckon they’re still missing about 26 minutes but the film doesn’t really jump around any and, unless there’s some kind of miraculous discovery at some point (as there was with Metropolis a few years ago), then I think this is the longest version you’re going to be able to see. So if you’re looking to see this one at some point, this Kino Lorber edition is probably he best opportunity you’re going to get at present.

*Since I wrote this, I’ve found out that Moriarty was the British release title... why it should be called that on the IMDB, though, is anybody’s guess. 

Dressed To Kill

No Chime To Die

Dressed To Kill
USA 1946
Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Dressed To Kill is the third of five movies that I know of, to bear the exact same title as each other. However, for our purposes here, it’s the fourteenth and final of the Sherlock Holmes films made by first 20th Century Fox and then Universal, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as the faithful Dr. Watson (I’ll get into why it was the last a little further down the page). It also, once again, features Mary Gordon as Holmes housekeeper/landlady Mrs. Hudson, although the interior room of 2212B Baker Street seems to have grown considerably in size again for this one. Inspector Lestrade as played by the incomparable Dennis Hoey does not make any appearance here, he already had his series swansong on the previous film, Terror By Night (reviewed here) but he is mentioned in it at least. Actually, I’m guessing he must have already been engaged in shooting another movie because this one is firmly set in London and features a large police presence.

The plot is similar in some ways to The Pearl Of Death (reviewed here), which was loosely based on The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons. In this one it’s three music boxes made by a prisoner and sold off at auction which are the things everyone is looking for. Holmes has a photographic memory for the tune that’s played on one of the three when an old friend of Watson, a music box collector who has bought one of them, is showing off his collection. It’s a good job Holmes can remember it note for note because he’s suddenly also trying to track down the music boxes when Watson’s friend is murdered by a henchman of lady antagonist Hilda Courtney (played by Patricia Morison), the super-villainess of the story who needs the boxes because they contain the key to the whereabouts of some forged Bank of London plates for five pound notes (the proper, big old five pound notes of yesteryear, I might add).

Holmes figures out, from his music box and a remembrance of the other, that a few notes have been changed on each rendition of the tune, Once A Jolly Swagman... so he consults with a criminal who he cleared of murder by proving he was cracking a safe somewhere else, who he knows is an expert on music. Eventually he figures out the coded messages in the tune variations and it’s one of those films where the villains are racing to get there first and murdering people as they go. Holmes himself eludes a deathtrap just in time while Watson is being duped by the lady in question. It’s been a while since Rathbone’s character went in disguise in the movies and, he doesn’t on this occasion either, but Patricia Morison does to steal one music box right from under the noses of Holmes and Watson.

And, yeah, it’s another entertaining, Holmesian romp with the added extra, if it’s your thing, of Nigel Bruce doing a Donal Duck impression. It doesn’t go down well with the young girl he’s trying to cheer up, for sure. It’s interesting to see the racially targeted humour of the day has stood the test of time and continued over the years too, nicely preserved here. For example, when Holmes is querying the price each music box sold for with the owner of the auction house, he asks why such a low price was paid for the third. Was there something wrong with it. The answer was, of course, that Mr. Kilgore, the man who bought it so cheaply, was a Scotsman. Yeah, alright then. if you say so.

Another point of interest, although it’s been mentioned in the films before, is Watson’s role as Holmes’ sensationalist biographer. In the short stories, originally published serially for many years in The Strand Magazine, it’s known to Holmes that Watson publishes lurid accounts of their adventures in that very magazine. In this film... and much more than a passing reference this time, much is made of Watson’s stories published in The Strand which, was just about still going when this film was made and set contemporary to its time... the magazine was going from late 1890 (with a January 1891 cover date) until it ceased publication in March of 1950 with Issue 711. Much is also made of the famous, ‘The Woman’ from the Arthur Conan Doyle story A Scandal In Bohemia, aka Holmes’ female nemesis Miss Irene Adler (who, although only actually appearing in one of Conan Doyle’s stories, has been used in various forms by many writers and in many films since).

As usual, Rathbone and Bruce are absolutely brilliant and everyone does very well. Indeed Miss Morison was so convincing in her disguise as a lowly housekeeper that, when she went to eat lunch in the studio canteen still in costume, she was told to get out and eat with the rest of the extras as she wasn’t supposed to go near the stars. She must have been delighted that her disguise on this day’s shoot was so good it even fooled the canteen staff.

But things were troubled with Rathbone and he decided to quit the role, both in the films and on the radio (although he would occasionally play Holmes on stage and was, in other ways, dogged by the role throughout his career). He felt that, since his first film for Fox, The Hound Of The Baskervilles (reviewed here), the role had been like a cookie cutter template producing repetitive impressions. I’d myself argue that Rathbone was so good in the role in every one of his fourteen Holmes films (all made between 1939 and 1946 with a two year break in between the Fox and Universal periods... so they were really knocking these things out quickly, to be fair) that it was criminal to leave a role which was evidently so popular with cinema goers internationally and, to this day, I’d argue that, despite the obvious intentional differences to the original stories, he was the one, definitive Holmes. On the radio, they recast Tom Conway in the Holmes role opposite Nigel Bruce’s Watson for a while... and having seen him in a fair number of Falcon movies and a few other things... that might not have been a bad choice. They also considered recasting the films with him in them and continuing the series but... well, I don’t know why that didn’t happen but, perhaps it possibly had something to do with the fact that the producer/director of the majority of the series, Roy William Neill, dropped dead of a heart attack seven months after the release of this film. I don’t know.

All I do know for sure is that Dressed To Kill is another high point in the series and that Rathbone and Bruce certainly went out on a good one. Heavily recommended and a fitting, if early end, to one of the greatest film sequences in cinematic history. And that's me finished with the Rathbone Holmes reviews but, fear not, more Sherlock Holmes reviews will be coming to this very blog in the not too distant future.

Terror By Night

Murder On The
Scottish Express

Terror By Night
USA 1946 Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some obvious spoilers here.

Terror By Night, the penultimate entry of Universal’s ongoing Sherlock Holmes series featuring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, was also the last of the series to feature Dennis Hoey’s brilliant performance as the long suffering Inspector Lestrade and, he does seem to have more to do in this one in terms of the story. However, because almost the entirety of the story is set on a train, as it makes it’s long overnight journey from London to Scotland, Mary Gordon has no opportunity to make an appearance as Mrs. Hudson... although I believe she was back for the very last of the series.

This one concerns a jewel called The Star Of Rhodesia which, according to the narrator at the start, actually detailing its history direct to the audience for once (rather than being a surrogate section for something being explained to Holmes), has a violent history. But not much of one, really... it’s just an attention grabbing statement because the real violence surrounding the star happens over the course of the train journey, which comprises the running time of the movie here.

So, yeah, we have an undercover Inspector Lestrade (who isn’t undercover for long as Holmes and the audience are obviously onto his game right from the outset) plus Holmes and Watson escorting the current ‘old lady’ owner of the star back to Scotland as they expect another attempt will be made by thieves to abscond with it before the train reaches its destination. So it’s actually pretty similar in some ways to the setting of the last movie on board a moving vehicle... only this time the cruise ship is substituted for model railway stock shots of the train on its journey and the musical sections have been quickly abandoned.

Quite honestly, it’s not the best in the series and it goes through all the Agatha Christie style ‘questioning all the people aboard the carriage’ shenanigans you would expect, while the villain (the right hand man of the deceased Professor Moriarty), and his henchmen murder various people and make attempts on various other people’s lives in order to acquire the jewel, which Holmes has already switched with a fake version in an early part of the movie. It’s entertaining enough, though and does have some points of interest.

For instance, there’s a scene when Holmes and Lestrade are discussing the many suspects and, as they do so, a series of wipes catches up to each of the characters and what they are doing at this time (mostly sitting around in train compartments looking vaguely mysterious). Which is not in itself an unusual thing to do in a mystery movie but I believe it’s the first time that Roy William Neill has employed this technique in one of his Sherlock Holmes movies.

Another thing is that Lestrade does see some action himself, when a very sinister looking assassin knocks him unconscious and is then himself killed by his boss with a poison dart gun, his dead body slumped and left against Lestrade’s. However, when Lestrade is brought back to consciousness, he very quickly falls in with Holmes elabourate plan regarding a, not necessarily so surprising plot twist, towards the end of the movie and helps turn the tables on the main culprit and his gang of accomplices.

Thirdly, there’s actually a genuine action sequence in this movie, where Holmes is trying to fight off an assassin and finds himself locked out on the exterior of the train for a bit before he manages to smash his way back to safety... again, not what I’d expect to see in one of the movies in this series.

I’ve not much more to say on this one other than the story is, well, okay hardly original but it’s not a specific Arthur Conan Doyle story, although Terror By Night apparently has elements of The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Empty House, The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax  and The Sign of Four added into the mix. All in all though, while not a high point of the series, it’s all very entertaining and fast paced and Rathbone, Holmes and Hoey all do a wonderful job playing the roles we’ve come to love. Looking forward to revisiting the last in the series, which also bears the name of a later and, perhaps, much more famous Brian De Palma movie... at some point soon.

Pursuit To Algiers

Clues On Cruise

Pursuit To Algiers
Directed by Roy William Neill
USA 1945
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Just two of the regular characters are in this, the 12th of the ongoing Sherlock Holmes series, those of Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson although, saying that, a lot of the recurring actors who have been popping up in several different roles as part of the repertory company which populates these movies are still on hand. No Mary Gordon though, since none of the action takes place near Baker Street. Nor indeed is Dennis Hoey on hand to have Lestrade give any of his dubious but entertaining assistance.

Pursuit To Algiers starts off with Holmes and Watson being recruited by a foreign government to escort the son of an assassinated king back to his homeland in a bizarrely convoluted manner, in which Holmes has to solve clues both in the street and in a local fish and chip shop in order to piece together the information that he is wanted at a certain address at a certain time. It’s all good secret agent style stuff and lots of fun although, in the context used here, it very much seems like unnecessary overkill, to be honest.

Once they are on the case, Holmes takes Nikolas, the heir to an empire (if Holmes can get him to said empire unscathed) with him on a three manned plane while Watson is sent to their destination in Algiers by cruise ship, to act as a decoy. Alas, after only a short while Watson is faced with the knowledge that the plane Holmes and his client were on was shot down above treacherous mountains by unscrupulous villains. It’s not long, however, before Holmes and Nikolas are found waiting for Watson in the adjoining cabin, as Watson had been used as more than a dupe than he thought, in order that the two could take a safer but slower way of travel and avoid the plane tragedy that Holmes expected to happen all along.

After that it’s a joyous affair, as the three stay on the cruise ship for the remainder of the film and try to ward off various assassination attempts while Holmes indulges in verbal jousting with his would be assassins... in a strictly gentlemanly way, of course, since everybody knows he knows but, they don’t want to say it out loud.

Well I say gentlemanly but, when Holmes figures out that one of the assassins is recruited from a circus act where he uses his skills at throwing knives, he not only avoids being a pin cushion himself but manages to break the gentleman’s hand as it comes through the cabin porthole to make the kill. Which is unusual for Holmes but it’s good stuff and certainly Holmes character doesn’t lose any of his credibility pursuing such quick justice in a certain scene.

This is what I call a comfy film. For some reason I feel relaxed when watching movies that take place on a cruise ship and this one follows the old Agatha Christie method of populating the cast of characters with a number of possible suspects who all look like they’ve got something on their minds and could be a possible threat to the main protagonists. This proves to be the film’s undoing on a certain twist near the end (which I won’t spoil here) as one of the more twitchy fellows in this, one of the stewards, is acting too suspiciously to be a neutral member of the cast and, since the director almost goes out of his way to make you assume he’s a villain, he’s obviously not and, by a certain point in the film, you realise that there’s only one person who this person could now be revealed as. There’s more than one dupe on the ship, for sure.

One of the characters in this is a singer who seems to be in a state of distress whenever she is near Holmes but who makes friends with Dr. Watson. What this means practically is that, for the first time since the second film in the series by 20th Century Fox, The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (reviewed by me here), there are a fair few musical numbers but producer/director Neill doesn’t allow them to slow the film down and often concentrates on the histrionic tension of some of the characters watching and listening, as he allows the audience to wonder who is friend or foe. It also means we get a chance to hear Watson sing. Now, the dub as he warbles Loch Lomond is so intensely different in terms of the background ambience and clarity of the sound, I was convinced this was a comical overdub from a professional singer but, according to a couple of sources, this was Bruce singing himself. Now, I’m not so sure of that but can’t disprove it either so... hmm.

Bruce’s Watson is the usual tip top comic performance that mixes the characters less smarter aspects with alert caution... caution enough to save the life of one character, in fact, when he spots something wrong with a person’s coffee. He throws salt over his left shoulder as he should when some salt is spilled and, since this necessary custom to ward off bad luck has, I suspect, fallen by the wayside in recent years, one wonders what the younger section of modern audiences might make of this moment in the film.

And talking of things which have fallen by the wayside, one thing which I loved is that Watson reminded me of a phrase I’d not heard in a long time... ‘to sleep like a top.’ However, when I looked up the derivation of the word, first known to be introduced in a Shakespeare play, the deduction that a spinning top appears completely still when it’s spinning seems to me to be somewhat stretched as an explanation. I suspect that there was once a more satisfactory explanation for the phrase but, alas, that it’s been lost in the mists of time.

And that’s me done on Pursuit to Algiers... not based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story and stretching the characters to a point where, I believe, Rathbone was now getting very tired of playing the role (the role, of course, for which he will probably always be best remembered). I think this is just another wonderful film in the series and, although the restoration of the print doesn’t seem to be as brilliant as most of the others in this set, it’s still better than it’s been in the past and another worthy addition to the series. Two more left to go.

The Woman In Green

Mesmerising Rhythm

The Woman In Green
Directed by Roy William Neill
USA 1945
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Although there are slight inspirational shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Final Solution and The Adventure Of The Empty House present in this, The Woman In Green is a mostly original screenplay, being the 11th in the series of Sherlock Holmes films to star Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Mary Gordon once more returns to the series as housekeeper Mrs. Hall but, alas, Dennis Hoey was shooting another movie so his wonderful turn as Lestrade is absent. He would only appear once more in the series.

Like the previous Holmes adventure, The House Of Fear (reviewed by me here), this one starts off with a voice over narrative coupled with the background of the story, which turns out to be someone calling on Holmes to tell him what’s been going on and, in this case, it’s Matthew Boulton as Inspector Gregson. Also on hand are returning actors from previous roles in the series, once again taking on characters they’ve not played before, primarily Henry Daniell playing the third and final incarnation of Professor Moriarty in this one and Hillary Brooke as his ‘henchwoman’ and expert hypnotist Lydia Marlow.

And it’s an interesting one, starting off with the murder of four women around London, their corpses mutilated by having their right forefinger sliced off surgically. It turns out this is a plot that Moriarty is using to convince hypnotised, wealthy aristocrats that they have murdered said woman in order to relieve them of large sums of hush money. The narrative also includes a hypno assassin who tries to murder Holmes, although he escapes the sniper’s bullet due to a ruse with a plaster bust and its silhouette through the window shade... and a nice, comical scene where Watson is hypnotised as a demonstration of the powers of the art of mesmerism. Then there’s a very nice scene where Holmes deduces a lot of the intent of a visitor to his offices by observing her from the window of his home in 221B Baker Street.

And talking of his Baker Street address, producer/director Neill has again used verticals to split the screen in places and so the prominent use of the column in Holmes’ flat is once more brought into play (it was kind of tucked away out of shot again in the previous film but once more it’s become a feature here). He also does some nice partitioning by a set of checkered windows later in the film.  

There are some items of note here which I will point out now...

For starters, Holmes receives one of his clients in his dressing gown, which of course the character was known for but I think, if memory serves, this was the first time in this film series that he wears this (please mention in the comments here if I’ve got that wrong). Another first and, as it happens, final thing is the mention of Holmes’ brother Mycroft. This is the only time in this particular film series that his name comes up.

One other item of interest is a bizarre shot where Holmes is letting himself be hypnotised by the titular character (I’ll get to her in just a moment). There’s a curious double reflection of her but not Holmes in a bowl of water she is using for this which really doesn’t ring true. Something seems off kilter about it... of course, this uncanny feeling is obliterated when they start superimposing the faces of both Hillary Brooke and Basil Rathbone in the bowl but, yeah, the first reflection shot in this sequence looks totally bizarre.

The film also had a couple of issues in that the script was altered due to the Breen Office at the time, in a couple of places, one of which is quite sinister. You’ll notice in the scene that introduces the man actually carrying out the murders and doing the finger cutting that he is playing with a doll of a child. In the proposed version of the script, the victims being killed and mutilated were actually very young girls but, yeah, the censors were having none of it.

And one last thing... The Woman In Green herself. Well, certainly in the shoddy, colourised version from later years, Brooke is wearing green to just make her match the title but, of course, in the original black and white version as is being reviewed here, there’s absolutely no mention of her character wearing green throughout the whole movie. In fact, at one point Holmes even mentions she’s wearing purple so, yeah. it seems perhaps even more of a mystery than the crimes being committed in the film itself, as to why this movie comes by that title. Either way though, despite Moriarty falling to his death for the third time in the series, The Woman In Green is another solid entry and a joy to watch, as they all are to be honest. Three more now to revisit.

The House Of Fear

Pipped At The Post

The House Of Fear
Directed by Roy William Neill
USA 1945
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Inspired rather loosely by Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure Of The Five Orange Pips, The House Of Fear is the tenth of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes featuring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as his loyal friend Doctor Watson. It also bizarrely, given the circumstances of the story, features Dennis Hoey returning as Inspector Lestrade but, since there’s only one scene near the start of the picture which features Holmes’ 221B Baker Street address, this is the second (I think, by my count) of the films to not include a brief appearance by Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson.

It starts off, somewhat unusually, on a longish sequence with a voice over narrative setting the scene about a group of men living in a large house in Scotland who are each, night after night, getting delivered an envelope containing a steadily supply of diminishing orange pips as a forewarning of their horrible death in the next few hours. Each body is found mutilated beyond recognition, due to some grisly fate but identifiable due to a personal item or feature of the body (which immediately put me on my guard not to trust any one of these corpses... I won’t spoil the ending for you here though),

It then turns out this narrative set up is actually being spoken by an insurance agent at 221B Baker Street, as he has been telling Holmes and Watson the tale and calls them in to investigate. They arrive just as a third murder has been committed and they set about investigating, both in the house and the local village in this fun filled movie which, again, showcases all that’s best with these particular Holmes movies.

Being as it’s Universal, everything is lit by longtime director of the series Roy William Neill in that crisp but sinister looking, shadowy style which helped make their monster movies such a hit. Indeed, Neill directed the first of the monster mash ups, Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (reviewed here) for Universal a few years earlier (if you look closely near the end, you may be able to spot the wolf man’s cane). He even uses a nice Dutch angle at one point, as Holmes and Lestrade descend a staircase into a smugglers cave near the end of the movie.

There is a definite budget conscious re-use of sets and model shots etc on this one. For instance, the house in long shot is the old ruined church establishing shot from Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror (reviewed here), which makes no sense and doesn't tie in with the interior of the house (which I think is from at least one of the others). And the village and the pub sets will also absolutely feel like old friends to watchers of these Holmes films by this point too.

There are some clunky but fun parts here too, of course. I mean, why would Holmes call on Scotland Yard to come and give him aid when he’s in Scotland, when the local constabulary would surely do just as well? And why, in this case, would it be the always ineffective Inspector Lestrade who they send to help him. Not that I mind of course, Dennis Hoey was very much part of the team by this point and watching him bounce off the two principal leads is great fun. He also a nicely silly line in this when, in his confusion, he utters, “Suffering cats! What’s going on here.” Although, this is nowhere near as silly an exclamation as when Dr. Watson, true to form after he and Holmes are nearly flattened by a particularly nasty boulder pushed off a cliff at them, cries out, “Great Scott Holmes! That was meant for us!”

Other than this though, apart from a woman sporting the double bun style of hair which was popularised again by Carrie Fisher in the first Star Wars movie in 1977... and the novelty of the ending which I won’t reveal to you here (although you may well begin to suspect the final solution long before it’s revealed), The House Of Fear is another brilliant piece of classic mystery movie entertainment which I could revisit year after year if I didn’t have so many other movies to watch. So a short review for a short but sweet movie in this wonderful series of Holmes movies. Four more now to revisit. 

The Pearl Of Death

Rondo Macabre

The Pearl Of Death
USA 1944 Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

The Pearl Of Death is the ninth of the series of Sherlock Holmes films put out by 20th Century Fox and then Universal. This one toplines Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson again but, unlike the last film in the series, The Scarlet Claw (reviewed by me here), we have the return of both Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson and Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade. It’s based on Arthur Conan Doyles story The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons.

The plot of this one involves Giles Conover (played brilliantly by Miles Mander), a master criminal who is after an enormous pearl with a bloody history. Holmes, in the guise of a clergyman... after Conover’s accomplice Naomi Drake (played by Universal monster scream queen Evelyn Ankers) steals the pearl from a secure location on a cruise ship... uses his disguise to have her relinquish the pearl, hidden in a camera, so it can get through customs and, due to Holmes ingenuity, she doesn’t realise her mistake until they’ve parted ways and Holmes, Watson and Lestrade deliver the pearl to the ‘Royal Regent Museum’ (no such museum in London, I can assure you), waiting for the precious pearl. And this is where it gets interesting because Holmes doesn’t trust the electronic eye security in the museum... so, in a twist to the way these tales are usually set up, Holmes disables the system momentarily to prove a point but, in that moment, Conover steals the pearl and hides it before the police can catch up with him. So Holmes has inadvertently allowed the pearl to be stolen... which doesn’t do his reputation much good.

After Conover is released on the grounds that there’s no evidence, people are found with their backs broken at various locations, midst a pile of smashed china (smashed to hide the one thing which is being smashed during the murders, to muddy up the scene of the crime). Holmes... after surviving a couple of attempts on his life, including a wonderful death trap of a ‘jack-in-a-box’ knife in a book which is thrown up into the ceiling because Holmes is suspicious of it... deduces that, when Conover was running from the police, he hid the pearl inside one of six wet busts of Napoleon. It’s up to Holmes, Watson and Lestrade to try and find the pearl before Conover’s sinister, back breaking heavy The Hoxton Creeper, of whom I shall say more in a little while, can finish their murderous spree and make off with the stone. I have to say though, it’s unintentionally hilarious when, after surviving the dagger in a box gag, Watson proclaims the obvious with his, “Great Scott. That was meant for you!”

And it’s another wonderfully entertaining slice of a movie, of course. The cast is perfect and Rathbone plays Holmes with a certain amount of anger since he’s the one who, after recovering the pearl at the start, allowed it to be stolen again. His temper is very thin in this one, especially in dealing with Lestrade’s usual fat-headed deductions. There’s some lovely, comical support from Watson in this one too, including a nice scene where he’s sticking a newspaper article in his scrapbook and loses said article. “What would Holmes do?”, he says, and reconstructs his movements with the paste and tea cup until he relocates the cutting, stuck to the underside of his sleeve (where the audience can see it all along).

Also, producer/director Roy William Neill seems to be thinking more about his shot compositions here. There’s a column suddenly grown now in 221B Baker Street, used to separate the actors within via the vertical split on screen and, similarly, he has a bizarre arch put into the middle of a room at the museum so he can use it the same way. These visual devices aren’t wasted, however... he uses them to full advantage visually.

And then of course, there’s The Creeper, played by the iconic actor Rondo Hatton. Hatton was exposed to poison gas during his service in the First World War and, as a result of that (it’s believed), went on to develop a rare disease called acromegaly, which does something to the bones of the face and warped his into the sinister visage he’s known for. He was a tall guy and this, when combined with his unusual features, made him perfect casting for heavies in Hollywoodland. This film, made when he was fifty, kinda catapulted him to success but... too late. Just as Gail Sondergaard, the villainess from the Sherlock Holmes film The Spider Woman (reviewed here) had made another film playing a ‘spider woman’ to trade in on the name (if not the character), so Rondo Hatton made a further two films as a different back breaking menace called ‘The Creeper’ the year after this. Alas, before they were both posthumously released in early 1946, Hatton had died of a heart attack due to his acromegaly.

He would, of course, leave a lasting legacy and he has been referenced in many things over the years such as a villain made to look like him in the movie version of The Rocketeer and even Judge Dredd disguised himself as his likeness in one of the early issues of 2000AD, if memory serves. And, of course, there are the annual Rondo Awards, made to celebrate the best in classic horror research, creativity and film preservation... which were named after the actor and which actually are miniature likenesses of him. So, he died young but was definitely, in his own small way, an influential presence on the pop culture scene. And if you want to know more ‘shady facts’ about acromegaly, take a look at the giant spider movie Tarantula sometime (review coming soon).

And that’s me done with The Pearl Of Death. Another great entry in what is surely one of the best film series of all time. It’s also a film where Holmes is forced to kill someone at the end of the picture (I won’t say who) which is a regrettable outcome. I must make a point to try and track down those Creeper movies at some point though. If they have survived the years, that is.*

*Since time of writing, Eureka Masters Of Cinema have released one of them last year as part of a box set.

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.

Happy New Year 2024

 

New Years Day 2024

Well, it’s that time of year when we are all supposed to be looking to the future to see what new opportunities await us in the current year. As I write these words though, it’s actually a couple of days before New Years Eve and my mindset is in that terrible time between Christmas And New Years Eve when we are all surviving on Turkey and are filled with too much Tunis Cake and excess (if you are lucky enough to be able to get your hands on a Tunis Cake these days... why the heck don’t McVities make those things anymore?).

The time of year when people like me are dreading going back to the office and increasingly questioning the reasons why we do this... or perhaps, why we all allow a truly terrible government that can’t pull itself together and realise the work environment has changed in many people’s minds (for the better, during the pandemic, when we were all saving time and money and were a lot fitter for all those walks) and that we’re fed up with the powers that be trying to con us in this and so many other ways. I've actually been more miserable the last few days than I have in a very long time which, honestly, should not be happening when I'm on holiday. But anyway...

It’s also the time of year when I tell you some of the things I hope to be reviewing on the blog for the next 52 weeks (assuming I am still in good enough shape to type) and, that’s tricky actually because, it sometimes takes me a good few years after I’ve declared that... to get the films watched, the books read and so on... before I can get it up on the site. But, let’s not be cynical and I’ll try my best to predict once again. In terms of books there will be, hopefully, all of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula books, some more of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers Of London books and maybe I’ll get to revisit some Michael Moorcock too. In terms of movies, aside from the obvious tent pole cinema releases coming (although... they kinda look dire this year so, maybe not so obvious), there are all kinds of movies and boxed sets coming up which I hope to get up on the blog. So, at the very least, I hope to finish off the Basil Rathbone series of Sherlock Holmes reviews, get a bunch of Hammer Dracula movies up and, alongside a bunch of Shaw Brothers classics, I also have to finish off the All The Haunts Be Ours folk horror set, finish watching The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle set and watch the Bruce Lee at Golden Harvest set. Not to mention a healthy dose of genre movies from around the world including Mexican, Italian and Bollywood horror movies.

So yeah, lots to come and some of the stuff mentioned above is already written and awaiting publication here. So, I’d better get on with it all and just take this opportunity to wish everyone, possibly against all odds, a very Happy New Year. Thanks for reading the blog and... oh yeah... there are now only eight days left if you want to join in with this year’s Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz, right here

The Spider Woman

Spiders In Pyjamas

The Spider Woman
USA 1943 Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Well this one’s a lot of fun, to be sure. Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Mary Gordon reprise their roles as Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and Mrs. Hudson for The Spider Woman, the next in the series of Sherlock Holmes films which started at 20th Century Fox and then quickly got relaunched and contemporised by Universal from the third film onwards. This one is not based on any singular tale from author Arthur Conan Doyles long list of Sherlock Holmes stories. Instead, the screenwriters have mashed up no less than five of them to concoct a mighty fun entry into the ever popular series (with this being number seven, we’re at the halfway mark). The stories pillaged for this particular celluloid confection are The Adventure Of The Final Problem, The Adventure Of The Empty House, The Adventure Of The Speckled Band, The Sign Of Four and The Adventure Of The Devil’s Foot.

And it’s quite a wonderful romp, like much of these Holmes films... perhaps one of the best of the series. It features Gail Sondergaard as Adrea Spedding, the titular Spider Woman... a female Moriarty who is set up and written as a clever villain who can match wits properly with Holmes. A kind of Irene Adler alternative in a way, it might be said.

Also along for the ride again is Dennis Hoey doing his wonderfully dim but righteous version of Inspector Lestrade. It’s only his third film in the role but already he’s gone from second fiddle to Holmes to second fiddle to Watson. At one point, where he’s whistling to try and blend in with a crowd, Watson comments “He said inconspicuous Lestrade, not half witted!” which is just one in a number of great comical lines scattered throughout the story. The chemistry between Hoey and both Rathbone and Bruce is absolute magic and it even gets quite moving when, in the wake of Sherlock Holmes’ death near the start of the film, when Watson and Lestrade are both clearly grieving, Watson gives the policeman his favourite of Holmes’ pipes as a souvenir to remember him.

What’s that? Sherlock Holmes dies early on in the picture?

Well, it’s not in a battle with Moriarty on the Reichenbach Falls but it does take place near a waterfall as, under the pretext of a fishing holiday with Watson, he fakes a cerebral haemorrhage and seemingly falls into some rocky waterfalls, apparently to his death. This is in order to try and investigate, behind the scenes, a string of murders known as The Pyjama Suicides, masterminded by Spedding and using, it turns out, deadly spiders which I suspect are somewhat fictional but which have such painful bites that the victim leaps to his death from the pain.

So not long into the film we have Holmes returning to 221B Baker Street under the disguise of a postman and revealing himself to Watson and Lestrade. Now, bearing in mind the Holmes films of this series have almost always featured Rathbone in at least one disguise, the previous film Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (reviewed here) had eschewed that trend. However, although the disguise is easier to spot because the audience is expecting (surely?) Holmes to return after dying so early in the film, Rathbone makes up for it by donning two disguises here, one of the aforementioned, highly opinionated (enough to receive a sock on the jaw from Watson) member of the English postal service and another, in brown face, of a Maharajah, in order to find out the truth behind the suicide murder scam.

This one has it’s fair share of action too, including a number of deathtraps including a toxic gas via a chemical process when a child accompanying the Spider Woman throws a harmless looking sweet wrapper into the fireplace of 221B Baker Street... and a wonderful end game sequence where Holmes is tied behind a moving target of Adolf Hitler at a fair ground with his chest exposed behind the conveyor belt standee, while an unknowing Watson nearly shoots him through the heart a number of times. The scene with the sweet wrapper is a wonderful sequence as the two adversaries, Holmes and Spedding, acknowledge their recognition of the other’s status in a cat and mouse back and forth as each destroys and offers up evidence of their role in the game, which is clearly afoot, so to speak.

One other nice thing is that, clearly seen on the wall in Holmes room at Baker Street, is the pencil figure with the bullet holes from Holmes bound target practice experiment from the previous film, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death. A nice piece of continuity there (and I guess it certainly saved time redressing the bullet hole ridden wall on the part of the set builders).

And that’s me done on this seventh and very lively example of Rathbone and Bruce’s Sherlock Holmes adventures. The Spider Woman shows everyone at the top of their game and it must have hit big with audiences because it wasn’t too long before Gale Sondergaard returned to the screens in a picture called The Spider Woman Strikes Back. Admittedly, it wasn’t a sequel or spin off and she wasn’t playing the same character but, the marketing people must have thought that cashing in on the title familiarity was a good bet. One day I’ll have to seek that one out and have a look at it.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles

Dogging The Law

The Hound Of
The Baskervilles
USA 1939 Directed by Sidney Lanfield
20th Century Fox Blu Ray Zone B

Well the time is upon me. I finally get caught up on a rewatch of the classic (and best) series of Sherlock Holmes films on a lovely set of Blu Ray transfers from, judging from this first one in the series, some pretty good prints. Rather than get the expensive, five disc US version I plumped for the Italian/German 7 disc release (since nobody has seen fit to make these available on Blu Ray in the country where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the original stories, lived... as yet, for some unfathomable reason). Both sets have all 14 films with the only real difference, from what I can make out since this Italian edition can be easily set for English language, with or without English subtitles in its menus, seems to be that the Italian set is £30 cheaper than the US set and that’s not including any import fees.

And what a film this is. The Hound Of The Baskervilles is the first of the original run featuring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who were so popular as Holmes and Dr. Watson that they also played them for a number of years on the radio too. This was the first of two Sherlock Holmes films made and released by 20th Century Fox in 1939, the same year that Basil Rathbone and some of the cast of this one shot Son Of Frankenstein for Universal, which I believe was filmed just before this one (and which you can find reviewed by me here). I won’t go over the plot here again because so many people know it (or if they don’t, they don’t want it spoiled) but it takes a few liberties with Conan Doyles original novel (I think I’m right in remembering this was the longest Holmes story he wrote, novel length, as a kind of flashback story in between killing him off in the stories and then, later, snatching him back from death for more money spinning tales).  

Joining the winning team of Rathbone and Bruce (easily my personal favourite Holmes and Watson) was Richard Greene (future TV Robin Hood, star of Sword Of Sherwood Forest, reviewed here and who got top billing above Rathbone), Lionel Atwill, John Carradine, Wendy Barrie (who was in a fair few films in The Saint and The Falcon series) and, of course, Mary Gordon as Holmes’ housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, who would stay with the series along with the two male stars when it made the transition, after the first two films. The transition being that, after the two Fox films, which were both set in Victorian times like Conan Doyle’s original stories were, there was a gap of three years before Universal hired the three actors for a continuation of the series, this time contemporising them so that Holmes' adventures were updated for a 1940s wartime setting.

This one is pretty great and it’s wonderful looking back on these fantastic performers and character actors playing in a well oiled mechanism of a film. The direction and camerawork both look great for the roughly 4:3 aspect ratio of the time and, as evidenced by these quite good Blu Ray transfers (so far), all filmed in a very crisp black and white. There’s also a nice sequence near the start, where Atwill’s character is reading from a manuscript to fill in Holmes on the legend of the film’s titular Hound. The flashback is presented as a live action sequences of events but, it’s depicted as a little vignette superimposed into the centre of the manuscript, with the edges of the pages and the text, some overlapping, at the edge of the action. So, yeah, a nice touch.

Rathbone is absolutely amazing as Holmes, not quite emotionless and certainly he injects the required air of authority into the character for sure. And then there’s Watson, as played by Nigel Bruce. This guy is fantastic but I notice he’s not quite as bumbly and stupid as I remembered him to be in these. Maybe that comes later with the transition to the Universal scripts but here, he certainly does take the initiative and seems much smarter than he perhaps ended up as, later in the run. Although he certainly doesn’t penetrate Holmes disguise as the old peddler, hawking his wares around the vicinity of the Grimpen Mire. But you know what? That’s okay because, one of the things I remember very clearly and, it’s certainly the case here, is that unless you are seriously looking for it, the audience isn’t going to easily penetrate Rathbone’s disguises in these films. I remember being fooled quite a lot as a kid when I first watched these (at 5.40pm in the evening, week days on BBC2 in the early to mid 1970s, if memory serves) and looking at them now, if I didn’t half remember them, I would certainly be fooled again. Rathbone is hard to spot as he makes his voice gravelly and stoops behind a fake beard and moustache. It’s great make up and works much better than a lot of the stuff you see actors trying in modern movies, it has to be said.

The sets are fantastic too... especially the outdoor sets which try very hard... and succeed... at looking very much like the Moors on which half the action takes place. You can still tell it’s a big studio set but, certainly, it’s much more lavish and believable than, say, the sets used to stand in as exterior locations that Universal were using for their horror movies at the time. These really work and there are certainly no tell tale creases in the sky as people go about their business.

And, yeah, just a treat of a movie. I won’t say much else about it because you should discover these for yourself, if you don’t already know them but, certainly, The Hound Of The Baskervilles is the first in a classic run of much loved and popular films which should be on every film enthusiast’s radar. Definitely one to check out if you’ve not seen it.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles

Boneward Hound

The Hound Of
The Baskervilles
UK 1959 Directed by Terence Fisher
Hammer/Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

An overly comic book like ‘horror font’ is writ largely against James Bernard’s typical Hammer Horror sounding score, announcing the start of the famous studio’s production of what is probably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound Of The Baskervilles.

The film stars three stalwarts of Hammer films for this version of the classic... Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes, André Morell as Dr. Watson and Christopher Lee as Henry Baskerville, the young heir to the Baskerville fortune who is now living under the shadow of the family curse of the hound, after the recent death of the previous owner of Baskerville Manor. Cushing would, of course, play Holmes a few more times after this production in unrelated films and a TV show (as would Christopher Lee at least once) and Lee and Cushing are a great Hammer double act after they’d faced off as adversaries (of a sort) in the studio's first Frankenstein and Dracula movies (they would do it again four months later in the Hammer production of The Mummy). Morrell, however (one of the great TV incarnations of Professor Quatermass) did not apparently get on well with Lee and tended to avoid him on set.

The film starts with a ludicrous and almost unwatchably bad retelling of the Baskerville legend before finally bringing us up to present day... well, present day Victorian period... for the rest of the story, which is much better and far more entertaining than the first ten minutes or so of the movie. Now, it’s been a very long time since I read The Hound Of The Baskervilles (at least two decades) and, even with all the many movie adaptations of this particular story in the Holmes canon (this is the first to be shot in colour), I really couldn’t remember that much about the original tale. Even so, although it tends to hint the main plot points pretty well, as far as I can dimly recall a smattering of the events of the original, it seems to add its own deviations and explorations, presumably to pad the running time to feature length.

For instance, there’s a wonderful moment early on in the film where Baskerville survives an assassination attempt, thanks to Holmes, after someone has put a tarantula in one of his boots. I honestly don’t recall this scene being in the original... but it’s an entertaining moment, nonetheless.

The film rambles along agreeably at its own pace with top notch performances by all and sundry including a very naturalistic and relaxed performance by Lee, which sees him more subdued to the plot rather than his presence dominating the scenes he’s in... which is interesting. There are also fine turns by Marla Landi as the, possible, love interest for Lee’s character and Miles Malleson... well, just doing what he usually does and having his doddery old, likeably confused, Miles Malleson moments.

Regrettably, although Cushing does a fine Holmes and plays him in a most energetic, almost manic manner, he doesn’t don a fiendishly clever disguise with which to fool both the other characters and the audience as, say, Basil Rathbone might have done in his Holmes adventures. I’m convinced Cushing could have pulled off one of those master disguises in this though, if given half a chance. Also, it’s nice to see André Morell not, like many of his predecessors in the role, portraying Watson as some kind of a buffoon but as someone who Holmes has chosen to have as his companion in crime solving because he actually brings something to the party. Much as I love old Nigel Bruce’s decidedly foolish, comic relief version of Watson opposite Rathbone (and I still champion Bruce as the best), it’s nice to see the character being treated with a little more respect here.

The direction is nice and there are some nice frame designs, with Fisher favouring some unusual angles from high above the action in several scenes. Also, he makes great use of emphasising the depth of the shots through the use of different planes enhanced by foreground objects. For example, the one riveting moment in the ‘legend prelude’ is where a lady is hiding behind an arch in some ruins. The actor looking for her is in the main parts of the left of shot with the arch and her up close in the foreground right of the frame. Similarly, when the director pushes the depth again in a forest scene, the branches and leaves of a tree in the foreground of a shot mingle in with all the trees in the background to make a foreground centre space which you didn’t realise was farther away than the leaves on the tree on the right until a character walks behind them.

One very odd choice in two parts of the movie on the same set, out on the moors by a ruin, is to have the light coming from behind some structures shining a bright, almost fluorescent green like suddenly Mario Bava had somehow turned up on the set that day to perform the same task. It looks fantastic, of course, but there seems to be no natural way that lightning scheme could have come into play in the natural setting and it looks a bit ‘at odds’ with the rest of the shots in the movie.

I don’t have much more to say by way of this review other than to add that some of Bernard’s score to Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula, reviewed here) is also apparently tracked into the movie too. If you’re a fan of any of the actors in this one, especially those in their capacity as Hammer veterans (although they weren’t quite that yet at this stage of their career), then this version of The Hound Of The Baskervilles is definitely one to add to your watch list. Three years later, Fisher would re-team with Lee for his own portrayal of Holmes in the West German/French/Italian krimi movie Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace (aka Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes) which I will be reviewing soon for this blog very soon.

The Complete Adventures Of Judith Lee

Chocolate Bon Bombs

The Complete Adventures Of Judith Lee
by Richard Marsh Blackcoat Press ISBN: 97816122270715

Warning: Some light spoilers reside within.

Richard Marsh is probably familiar to most people as the author behind the hugely popular supernatural thriller The Beetle, which was published around the same time as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and which outsold it for a while (it’s also a pretty good book if you care to give it a try but, alas, the silent movie version of the novel has been lost to time). That was the only thing I’d read of him until I found myself, as is my habit a couple of times a year, browsing the latest additions to the catalogue at the Blackcoat Press website. I’ve talked about Blackcoat Press before as I make it a point, every Christmas time, to read one of their annual editions of Tales Of The Shadowmen collections (read my reviews here and here) but this time I saw listed, The Complete Adventures of Judith Lee and, as I looked at the brief summary, I realised I would have to read this at some point.

Miss Judith Lee’s adventures were written by Marsh primarily around the second decade of the 20th Century and take the form of short stories, all but two of which are written first person. The first batch which make up the first half of this volume were all published in The Strand Magazine at the time and, of course, this makes her a contemporary of a certain literary detective whose exploits were recorded by Arthur Conan Doyle (or Dr. Watson, if you prefer). Like Sherlock Holmes, Miss Lee solves crimes, the solutions of which seem far outside the realms of mortal man to fathom... although in Miss Lee’s case, her super powers are not so much her extraordinary brain (which it kind of isn’t, truth be told) but something far more novel, which I’ll get to in a minute.

The original Strand magazine stories were collected in a single volume not long after their publication entitled Judith Lee - Some Pages From Her Life, which makes up roughly the first half of this volume. Then, for completeness, a single tale never before reprinted is included at the centre of this tome. This is rounded off with a reprint of a second collection of short stories, The Adventures Of Judith Lee, which were published after the writer’s death and, possibly, with some finishing touches by his wife (the forward isn’t completely clear in this matter and, bearing in mind that the majority of the tales are told first person from the female point of view, I have to wonder just how much input Marsh’s wife had on the original tales and how much ‘finishing’ she had to do... if that is even ‘another story’ then I certainly don’t have the means to research the answer to that question myself). So this edition really is the complete adventures of the titular heroine. 

Now, she’s not exactly low in intelligence but her character does, it has to be said, change and progress somewhat over the course of the stories. Her special skill though, aside from at some point learning Jiu-Jitsu, which she puts to good use in at least two of the stories, is lip reading. She is a teacher of the deaf and dumb and a consultant in teaching her students all manner of talents... which means she can read anyone's lips from across a crowded room or a train carriage and ‘hear’ exactly what is being said, even if spoken as a whisper. She is in no way a private detective but since she is, it would be an understatement to say, inquisitive as to what she accidentally sees people saying, she tends to get involved in all kinds of schemes involving murder, theft, blackmail and, on more than one occasion, ends up herself accused of one crime or another before she sets things right.

Of course, the one limiting factor in the stories is that almost all her cases involve accidentally stumbling on something said and, somehow, being able to recall for the audience huge long conversations as she reads people’s lips. Which, frankly, implies she also has a photographic memory but I don’t think much is ever made of this obvious fact.

The first half of the book is enjoyable but also quite annoying as the earlier version of the character does seem to be totally naive when it comes to the world around her. She will often overhear a clue, the meaning of which is quite obvious from the outset to most readers but, alas, her mental acuity is not such that she often understands just what loaded weapons are being placed in her hands when she lipreads something unintended for her. I guess if the plot was obvious to her the stories would be a good deal shorter but sometimes waiting for the penny to drop can be a bit galling.

Later on though, she becomes a bit more interesting and gets quite witty and ironic in the way she conducts her affairs. The stories often get a bit more exciting too, with stolen goods and heists being replaced by assassination attempts including deadly snakes and, one of my favourite twists, bombs planted in chocolates so that the act of biting into one will cause it to blow one’s head off. There’s also the occasional brawl, people cut into little bits in order to be slowly disposed of in creative ways, an incident with the German military over the murder of an aircraft inventor and even a death which, to her surprise, Miss Lee finds that she herself had been an inadvertent catalyst for, in terms of the behaviour which exacerbated the incident.

It has to be said I enjoyed the second collection contained in this book more than the first but there are also tell tale signs in the book that Marsh couldn’t help projecting a ‘male gaze’ at the character. For instance, she seems to hate the idea that a man would marry her and sometimes seems so smitten with the fairer sex in one of two instances that I think it’s fairly implicit for the time, perhaps, that the character may harbour lesbian tendencies (although it’s never once discussed outright). The one thing which did make me laugh, though, was the criticism of her fellow women to carry something so impractical as a travel bag to keep their valuables in on long journeys. I read that paragraph and thought to myself... only a man could have written that. 

All said and done, though, I have to say that, despite the early... let’s call it ‘innocence’... of the character, I thoroughly enjoyed The Complete Adventures Of Judith Lee and am amazed that the lady hasn’t once made the transition into films or television over the decades. I think the stories as they are might be a little too simplistic to attempt to dramatise in another format but the character and a combination of embellished versions might well be a goldmine for a clever screen writer, I would have thought. I’d love to read more of her adventures in book form too but I can’t see anyone picking up this character out of the relative obscurity of her literary environment and penning any sequels today. Although, with Blackcoat Press and some of the other characters they’ve published over the years, I might get lucky with that proposition at some point.

Another Wordsworth Editions Guest Blog

Great Expositions

My look at the role and definition of the constant companions of literary heroes for Wordsworth Editions can be found here... http://wordsworth-editions.com/blog/great-expositions

Thanks very much for reading and thanks, as always, to Wordsworth for having me.

A Study In Terror

Ripping Yarn

A Study In Terror
UK 1965 Directed by James Hill
Compton Blu Ray Zone B

 I’ve been wanting to see A Study In Terror for quite a few years now and I was lucky enough to receive it for my birthday, earlier in the year... so that was handy. It’s a film I’ve mainly wanted to see because it’s one of those kind of movies which pitches a literary character against a real life, historical foe. In this case, this is one of two films I know of (and I’ve only seen this one, so far) that pitch Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, against the infamous Jack The Ripper. And, of course, whether you believe, like Patricia Cornwell, that this is irrefutably Walter Sickert or not... since that’s only a recent ‘proof’, you can bet the culprit in the majority of fictions based on the real life character don’t turn up the same answer and, of course, A Study In Terror is no exception in that matter.

Another reason I’ve always wanted to see this is because, after seeing him playing the title role in Terry Gilliam’s remake, The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen, I was always keen to see how John Neville did taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes, 23 years before he played the Baron. Well, the answer to that is... pretty interestingly as it happens. Most actors who play Holmes tend to do it in a flamboyant way which makes every pearl of wisdom dropping from Holmes mouth seem like it should be framed in space for at least ten seconds after it hits the air and, frankly, that’s as valid a way of doing it as any other. Even my two favourite Holmes impersonators, Basil Rathbone and Benedict Cumberbatch, have a tendency to do this. John Neville, though, plays it very naturalistically, speaking Holmes’ incredible deductions quite flatly, as one person to another and... it kind of gives his character a huge dose of credibility although, obviously, it’s less theatrical. Both ways of doing it are equally fine, of course, but I found this approach really refreshing, it has to be said.

He’s aided and equally abetted by a very strong cast here, too. We have Donald Houston playing Dr. Watson but, alas, I didn’t think he really had a chance to shine much in this. He plays the slightly bumbling, ‘in awe of his partner’ version of Watson (totally inaccurate to the stories) as if he’s based it on the much more lovable performance of my all time favourite Watson performer, Nigel Bruce... but, alas, he doesn’t quite have the charm or the slightly older look to pull it off sufficiently. We also have Albert Finney playing Inspector Lestrade but, really, he doesn’t get much of a chance to do anything in this one either, to be fair. Less so than Dr. Watson even. Interestingly enough, though, Finney would go onto to play Lestrade again in the other film to pitch Holmes against Jack The Ripper, Murder By Decree, some 14 years later.

They are all surrounded by an amazing line up of cast including Anthony Quayle, Barbara Windsor, Adrienne Corri, Georgia Brown, a much younger Judy Dench than I am used to seeing and, in a strange bit of casting, the great Robert Morley as Sherlock’s brother Mycroft. I also managed to fixate on a German actor who had a really, ‘I’ve seen this guy before’ type of character actor presence in the movie and, by about halfway through it, I finally realised it was Peter Carsten who played Hegel in the quite excellent spy thriller The Quiller Memorandum, which came out in cinemas the same year that this did (and is reviewed by me here). He also turned up a few years later in Dark Of The Sun and, although a little known actor, always strikes me as someone who brings a certain kind of presence to a movie.

Now this film isn’t exactly a thrill fest, it has to be said. The cast make it very enjoyable but the pacing is quite slow and, somehow, quite single-minded in its approach. By this I mean it's unusual in that it tends not to cross cut between various scenes like most films do in a rapid manner (even in terms of film of the same era of cinema). When you stay with a set of characters in this, you tend to stay with them for a while over a few sequences before going back to another character. Holmes doesn’t even appear for a while and this way of following through on one set of characters at a time seemed to be to be an interesting but, at least in the case of this movie, less entertaining method of revealing the intricacies of the plot. Also, although I appreciate the beauty and the singing voice of Georgia Brown, the sequences where she sings to entertain the crowds in a pub setting are overlong and bring the movie to almost a stand still each time it happens.

That being said, there are a few good things on offer too, apart from the novelty of the quite strong cast.

The use of vivid colours recalls the contemporaneous use of bright colours of Hammer film studios and the redder than red of the blood spilled in this movie is nicely highlighted throughout... especially in a scene where a ripper victim is being stabbed while her head is ducked under water and the camera is looking up at her from beneath the surface as the redness of her vital fluids slowly flows around the screen in the water. There’s some pretty cool lighting in a few of the sequences too, reminiscent of some of the better Italian giallo movies of the decade after and some nice use of framing the actors within the shots at times.

Another quite interesting thing is John Scott’s score which had a vinyl release at the time but which, alas, hasn’t had a CD release to date. It’s quite strident and full of character with a definite use of a strong theme for Holmes, evocative of Victorian London to some extent... but it’s the music used in some sequences where most directors would not use any at all which is really attention grabbing. In some of the talking heads style scenes, where the film is all about deduction and conversation, there’s often a fairly low volume and very impressionist, almost surreal kind of tonal noodling going on (for want of a better description... I’m not very good at writing technically about music, I’m afraid). It almost reminded me, at times, of something Eric Satie might have written in his less melodic, musical furniture style pieces. It’s hard to put a finger on and I’m not sure if those sequences really needed any musical lift or not but... well it got my attention so I must have quite liked it, I think.

A Study In terror is not the best Sherlock Holmes film nor, indeed, the best Jack The Ripper film you are likely to see but, there’s something about this which gives it a certain nostalgic charm when looked at today. The film finishes with a lead in to The Adventure of the  Blue Carbuncle and I had to wonder what Neville might have done with the part if he’d gone on to do a few more Holmes films. I know that he went on to play the character on Broadway in the 1970s and it would have been nice to have seen him do that, I think. I wonder if he played it much differently to the way he played it here... well I guess he would have to since stage acting and film acting are two very different things. I suppose I’ll never know. I will, however, watch this film again some day because it has a certain mid-1960s British flavour that I like to see captured on film and, certainly I would say that if you are a die hard Sherlock Holmes fan, then you might want to give this one a look.