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. 

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.

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 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.

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.

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death

Another
Fine Chess

Sherlock Holmes
Faces Death
USA 1943
Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers.

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, the sixth of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes films comprising the series of movies about the fictional detective -  continued by Universal after the initial two by Fox - was based loosely on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure Of The Musgrave Ritual and, like the previous five in the series, features Basil Rathbone as Holmes, Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson and Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson.

This one takes place in a manor house, Musgrave Hall, which has been turned into a convalescence home for patients suffering from mental afflictions, due to their experiences in World War Two. As such, we find Doctor Watson on the scene before the first crime is even committed, as he is a consulting physician who visits the home on his rounds. However, when one of the family members is wounded by a stab in the neck, he calls in Holmes and, when the two arrive at the place, before Holmes even gets through the door, the two of them discover a dead body (the first of a few corpses) under a pile of leaves. It isn’t long before Holmes, Watson and a returning Denis Hoey as the even more obstinate and bumble headed Inspector Lestrade, are trying to piece together the words of the traditionally recited family ritual... the Musgrave Ritual... and trying to follow the clues using such methods as a human chess board on the checkered floors of the house, to find out what is really behind the string of murders.

And, as usual, it’s a delightful romp with a few interesting things of note as the film wears on.

For example, in an early and mostly superfluous scene which is a bit of dramatic window dressing (or padding if you like), a man in one of two pub scenes accidentally puts his hand through some glass. For a black and white movie of the 1940s, I found it odd but refreshing that we were allowed to see a mass of blood covering his hand... not a phenomenon I would associate too much with pre-1960s, Hollywood movie making. Incidentally, the eagle eyed among you may notice that, in one of the two pub scenes, the young sailor saying “Blimey!” is none other than a very young Peter Lawford.

Dennis Hoey is great as yet another comic foil for Holmes and he actually says two ‘very Lestrade’ like things which would become almost an amalgamated catchphrase for him in the series, if memory serves. In this one he exclaims both “Why, if it ain’t Mr. ‘Olmes!” and also “Why, if it isn’t Dr. Watson!” literally within ten seconds of the first utterance. Which definitely brought a smile to my face. Also, when reconstructing the steps of an unconscious victim, Holmes pronounces... “We must search her mind!” which I thought was a pretty striking turn of phrase.

Another striking turn of phrase, for me at any rate, was Nigel Bruce’s wonderful delivery, dismissing various silly speculations about the various ghostly legends at Musgrave as an expression to rival one of my favourites, Shilly Shally, as... “Hokey Pokey Penny A Lump.” The complete meaning of the phrase is now, it would seem, lost to obscurity but certainly popped up in a song in the 1920s referring to the slogan shouted for the selling of honeycomb ice cream... perhaps meaning cheap. Although, how this becomes a derisory term for the naming of nonsense is beyond me. What isn’t beyond me is that I think this phrase should definitely be brought back into the common parlance and I shall try and sneak it into as many conversations as I can for now. It’s a good ‘un!

The acting in this one is superb, as usual and a special shout out to Halliwell Hobbes as the dipsomaniac butler Brunton. He has a lovely scene where Rathbone’s Holmes is trying to interrogate him and he’s convincingly blotto during the sequence. He does it so well and against Rathbone’s blank expression that I suspect that both the actors had real trouble keeping a straight face through the scene. I’m sure that when the director called “Cut” they must both have been in peels of laughter.

One last thing... when the first victim tells Dr. Watson of how he was stabbed in the neck by a perpetrator unknown, the camera eye flashes back to the scene and we see him attacked for the benefit of the audience. However, when he is later revealed himself as the murderer and his story of how the wound was inflicted proves to be fabricated to throw suspicion from himself, it becomes clear should any of the audience remember by this point, that the camera POV shot from earlier was certainly lying and showing the audience something that never happened. Certainly not the first or last time this trick has been invested in to divert attention but, I have to wonder if this was, indeed, one of the earliest?

And that’s me done with Sherlock Holmes Faces Death. Another brilliant and entertaining entry into the series from a franchise of films I’ll continue to watch into my old age. A wonderful sequence of films, for sure.

Sherlock Holmes In Washington

By George!

Sherlock Holmes
In Washington
USA 1943
Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Sherlock Holmes In Washington, the fifth in the ongoing series of films based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character to star Basil Rathbone as Holmes, Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson and Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson is, I think, the first in the series to not actually use specific or named source material from the stories and is completely a Hollywood concoction. However, with that being said, the writers knew what they were doing and the script, coupled with Rathbone’s confident performance as Holmes, certainly stays true to the spirit of the earlier films and is another fun movie.

This one starts off with the familiar ‘on brand’ credits and music before then going into the same card used in Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror (reviewed here) which once again reminds the audience that Holmes has been updated to a contemporary setting. I’m not sure why this was needed because the previous film didn’t do that and, by now, the contemporary nature of the continued series was obviously something which had been accepted by the cinema-going public.

This one has an extended sequence at the start of the film which doesn’t feature either Holmes or Watson for around ten minutes but which is quite gripping in itself. A British agent carrying sensitive documents, which would be a bad thing if they fell into Nazi hands, is kidnapped after his train journey from one of the airports to Washington. It’s a shame that this character later turns up dead as the performance is pretty good. However, when he goes missing, back in good old London Town, Holmes and Watson are asked by the British Government to find out what happened and to get the documents back. Holmes goes to the house of the agent (as he’s worked with him before) and deduces some information about the nature of the documents which puts him a little ahead of the main villain (played here by George Zucco, who earlier played Moriarty in The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, reviewed here) but also survives an attempt on his life.

Holmes and Watson then rush to Washington for a fun filled adventure which involves a kidnapped woman and some really nice scenes of actual detecting and deducing various essential clues which ultimately lead Holmes to be able to save her life and foil the plans of the lead villain and his henchmen (one of these being Henry Daniell, who played one of the good guys in Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror and who would also play Moriarty in one of the later films in this sequence).

As usual the acting is first rate and the chemistry between Rathbone’s razor sharp sleuth and Bruce’s bumbling Watson is always going to bring a smile to the face. I especially like that one of the cultural take homes that Watson gets from his American experience is that he likes the Flash Gordon newspaper strip. Plus, as I said, there really is a lot of actual, proper detection work going on here and, though it’s not based on an original story, it certainly pushes the kind of deductive thinking that Holmes was always known for.

I’m beginning to appreciate director (and now also producer) Roy William Neill’s way of doing things too. It’s very efficient, allowing his shots to unfold and reveal or highlight interesting moments, without cutting, in one shot... as he did with the mirror to room shot in Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon (reviewed here). In this one, for instance, there’s a nice shot of Watson in the main living areas of 221B Baker Street, sitting in his chair in the middle of the frame. Then the camera swings around 90 degrees as Holmes enters but we only see his arm as the camera is now showing us a detail on another table in close up (without zooming, it’s all just done by panning around) and some words are exchanged before Holmes is revealed fully as he walks into the room and the camera swings back around to frame him and Watson in the original view. It’s nice, economical stuff and hits you on an almost subconscious level.

Once again, Holmes has an interesting set of conversations with the lead villain but, since it’s not Moriarty, Zucco’s character is not armed with an intellect that, at any time, threatens to overshadow or gain a foothold against Holmes’ mind and he beats the villain rather easily... tricking him into handing over the documents without him even knowing he had possession of them.

And that’s that. At the end of Sherlock Holmes In Washington, as Holmes and Watson are being driven through the US capital, presumably on the way to the airport which will take them back to London, Holmes’ gives another of his patriotic speeches about what a great country it is and so, also, how great America is. This time around... and Holmes reveals the reference on screen here... his final speech comes not from either Conan Doyle or Shakespeare as in the previous two films... this time it’s from a speech that Sir Winston Churchill made in America. Once again, another Sherlock Holmes film which is as entertaining as anything and which I would wholeheartedly recommend, along with the rest of the series of features, to pretty much anybody.

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.

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

 

Ida Good Clue

The Adventures
Of Sherlock Holmes
USA 1939 Directed by Sidney Lanfield
20th Century Fox Blu Ray Zone B

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was the second and final of the 20th Century Fox produced Sherlock Holmes pictures starring Basil Rathbone in the titular role and Nigel Bruce as his faithful Dr. Watson (but certainly not their last film playing these two), following on from The Hound Of The Baskervilles (reviewed here). This would be the same year that Rathbone and Bruce would commence a long running radio show playing the characters also.

This movie’s plot is credited to being based on a 19th Century stage play of Sherlock Holmes and not one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles original stories, although it would appear that there was very little of the stage play that made it into the final screenplay either.

Joining Rathbone and Bruce for this one were series regular Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, Professor Moriarty (Holmes famous Nemesis) as played by George Zucco and Ida Lupino as the woman whose life and, those of her family, are threatened by Moriarty in a murderous scheme used to distract Holmes while the master criminal, in a quite clever two part heist, attempts to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower Of London. Ida Lupino was a really interesting actress but also, bucking convention a little for the time, a very well respected director too (her uncle was the famous English music hall actor Lupino Lane). Moriarty, of course, only ever appears in one of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures (although he is certainly mentioned a few times), in a story where he and Holmes fall to their death (Holmes was resurrected by the writer a number of years later as he was just too popular a character to remain dead). In terms of the fourteen Rathbone and Bruce pictures, Moriarty would appear three times, each time played by different actors... and in each one, apparently, he would fall to his death.

The story in this one is pretty much as I summed it up above and there’s not much to elaborate on. However, this is a really interesting movie and the main characters are certainly developing... or should I say evolving. Holmes has already gotten a little more eccentric, plucking his violin to a bunch of houseflies trapped in a glass to try and find the exact note that would affect their behaviour. And, sadly, although Nigel Bruce’s performance as Watson is absolutely brilliant and the reason I always loved these movies, his character has already become somewhat more buffoonish in this one. He doesn’t really make any contribution to solving either of the two parallel Moriarty problems at hand and, indeed, even helps Moriarty gain access to the Crown Jewels as part of the villain’s plan falls into place.

The film also establishes the kind of mutual admiration that the two arch rivals Holmes and Moriarty have for each other. They both find the other one smart and stimulating company and this is certainly how the relationship has been best portrayed on screen over the years. I’m not saying it started here but it would certainly have been popularised by the way it was portrayed in these films.

Other things of interest in the movie are a genuine scene where Holmes, clad in his deerstalker hat and cape for what would be the last time in this series of films, actually conducts a thorough crime scene investigation for five to ten minutes. This one also shows off the versatility of Rathbone in the part when, once again, he wears a disguise and adopts a different personae for one scene, where he plays an entertainer singing ‘Beside the seaside, beside the sea’ at a party. His looks, gait and manner make him absolutely undetectable as Holmes until he reveals himself to Ida Lupino shortly after. It never fails to amaze me just how good the Rathbone disguises are in these movies. If you don’t know the reveals are coming, I’m pretty sure you will be easily fooled on the first watch.

One other interesting thing is the use of music in this film. There’s an evil melody associated with a character Moriarty uses to perform his murders. First we hear it in the underscore as non-diegetic music before we hear it played on the flute by the murderer as diegetic music, where the source of the sound is apparent on screen. The film then continues to use this music in both modes throughout the picture.... which is pretty interesting already for a 1939 film, I think. The score on this one was credited to a number of composers so perhaps a lot of recycling was done for it but... somebody must have written something specifically to go with the source music at some point, I would think.

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes is abolutely brilliant but, was surprisingly unsuccessful at the time of its initial release and it’s generally believed this was due to the way 20th Century Fox marketed it. So their planned film series of Sherlock Holmes films came to an end with this one. But, the films were obviously well liked by somebody and presumably the radio show was popular enough. So, after a three year period, Basil Rathbone along with Nigel Bruce and Mary Gordon jumped ship, so to speak, finding themselves picked up by Universal for a continuation of the films in thier original roles, for a further 12 movies. There was something a little different about these next ones though which was... oh, wait, I’ll get to that in my next Holmes review.

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.

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.

Wordsworth Classics Guest Blog

Will The Real Protagonist Please Stand Up?

My look at the two main archetypes of heroes in literature and film can be found here as a guest blog at Wordsworth Editions.

Sherlock: The Empty Hearse

Hearse. Ay!

Sherlock: The Empty Hearse
Airdate: January 1st 2014. UK. BBC1

Warning: The spoilers are afoot!

Okay... this was all very good.

Written by Mark Gatiss, he got the third mini series of Sherlock off to a truly excellent start and I really hope this is a return to form for a series which was brilliant for most of the first season and the first episode of the second season, only to be dragged down by, relatively, duff episodes comprising the remainder of the second season.

After his death in The Reichanbach Fall (reviewed here) the team at the BBC foolishly showed that Holmes had survived... an unnecessary thing to do, I believe. After what has been two years of wild fan speculation as to the manner in which he faked his own death, this episode neatly sidestepped the question for a while by teasing us with versions of the wild theory, spouted by anorak figures not unlike those who write critical blogs, in an attempt to dumb down the importance of the solution to the fan base of the show, before springing the answer on you at a basic cliff hanger point. Actually, the timing and structure of that was quite unneccessary by this point because nobody believes that any harm is ever going to come to Sherlock or Watson in the series. At this juncture, I think it almost missed the point in a way... fans of the show weren’t really that worried about the explanation for Holmes death fakery, they just wanted to see how clever the writers were going to be at making it all reasonably credible.

Well I have to say, everyone did a good job on doing that, and more, in this first episode of Season 3. There was a welcome return to an abundance of the visual metaphor and typography, which permeated some of the earlier episodes, to show Sherlock’s thought processes and the humour and anger in the episode was all pretty good. The warmth of Rupert Graves’ Lestrade was absolutely a pleasure to watch and Cumberbatch and Freeman were, as usual, solidly spectacular. Watson’s fiance, played by Amanda Abbington is a very welcome addition to the cast and an extra special shout out for Louise Brealey, who regularly plays Molly Hooper in the series. This is probably the most we’ve seen of her in an episode and she’s pretty brilliant in it... which probably means she’s expendable and due an unwelcome and premature death at some point... but I sincerely hope not. She’s ace.

The story itself was a little less interesting than I’d hoped in that nothing was really actually solved. A plot is averted but there is obviously another criminal mastermind (or it’s Moriarty perhaps) waiting in the wings to come back in the final episode of this series. Hope they don’t leave it on yet another cliff hanger, to be sure. We’ll see. Perhaps Holmes is not the only one who can fake his own death in a clever manner.

I think my one real problem with it was that, at times, it did seem a little like it was being padded out. The fast pace which is part and parcel, it seems, of the adrenalin fuelled house style of the series seems to highlight that sort of thing all the more and perhaps the running time might have been better being a little chopped rather than include some of the sequences which seemed more “stand in the light of our brilliant characters and gaze at them lots” rather than actual sequences in the telling of a tale but, on the other hand, one person’s artistic decisions are not there to be agreed upon by the audience... only talked about. So it’s not really a harsh judgement I am making and I was, for the most part, absolutely riveted.

The music too, was its usual brilliant self and included the famous sub-theme we are expecting to hear in all the right places. Looking forward to buying Silva Screen’s compact disc of this sometime soon as they’ve already announced a release (although not an actual release date, which is annoying). Should be a good stand alone listen though, I expect.

And that’s that, I think. A real return to form but I’m not trusting it just yet. After all, I was very disappointed at how the way the second series went after that initial humdinger of a first episode so I’m really not going to expect too much. I will, however, be avidly awaiting the arrival of the next episode as soon as it comes on.