The budget was cut drastically when Holmes and Watson moved from Fox to Universal Studios, but this isn't as poorly done as I'd expected. Not that this resembles the original Sherlock Holmes in many ways. Rathbone makes a couple of improbably deductions at the beginning but that puts an end to his penetrating insights. After that, the story turns into a rather ordinary anti-German B feature. Instead of Sherlock Holmes it could be Boston Blackie or Charlie Chan. It doesn't look or sound like Conan-Doyle's character until the very end, when Rathbone recites the last passage from the last story, a patriotic analogy of war as weather.
Yet, it really wasn't bad, for a couple of reasons. One is that the story itself involves a very real and important threat to England at the time of shooting, an invasion across the channel by German troops. (Actually the Germans were nowhere near ready but no one knew that.) As a potential martial event, the invasion of Great Britain stands somewhat higher in importance than Doctor Tobel's fictional bomb sight in a later episode.
Then, too, Holmes is a bit different. Make Up gave Rathbone a few wisps of hair curling forward over his temple but he didn't yet look like a lithograph of Lord Byron. And Rathbone seems to bring more gusto to the role, although it may just be my imagination. He was pretty fagged out by the end of the series. Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson is far less than the mumbling and disgruntled companion he was to become.
And somebody ought to mention the cinematography of Woody Bredell. Maybe it's too dark in some scenes but it's always dramatic. Too bad the budget confined all the scenes to indoor stages. In none of his movies does Holmes get to spend much time outdoors. Even when he's on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean ("Pursuit to Algiers") he's stuck on an indoor stage.
The cast are a bunch of stalwarts. They hit their marks, speak their lines, and do what they're supposed to. The real heavy, the mastermind behind the Voice of Terror, eluded me. I had picked Henry Daniell. (He was to play Moriarty in a later film.) Okay, so the writers foxed me, but I was wrong for good reasons. When has Henry Daniell ever been innocent of anything? He was Lord Wolfingham in "The Sea Hawk". He was always a bad guy. Even in his best, most ambiguous role, the Scots doctor in Val Lewton's "The Body Snatchers", he was driven by his ego to grave robbing. And that face -- that bony but flabby jaw, those thin lips, that icy voice. Maybe he wasn't the villain here but he SHOULD have been.
There's something else too that occurred to me while watching this. I saw it as a child, on re-release or television, and I recall vividly the scene in which Holmes is listening to a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony while he fiddles with a chart and watches an oscilloscope. It's of no importance but it was the first time in my life I realized there was more to Beethoven's Fifth than just the familiar opening of the first movement -- da-da-da-DAHHH. The experience almost made my hair stand on end. There might be more to all classical music. So I went on to study composition and theory, changed my name for professional reasons to John Williams, made millions, partnered a parade of pretty girls, and have had a satisfying career as a composer. All thanks to this movie.
Yet, it really wasn't bad, for a couple of reasons. One is that the story itself involves a very real and important threat to England at the time of shooting, an invasion across the channel by German troops. (Actually the Germans were nowhere near ready but no one knew that.) As a potential martial event, the invasion of Great Britain stands somewhat higher in importance than Doctor Tobel's fictional bomb sight in a later episode.
Then, too, Holmes is a bit different. Make Up gave Rathbone a few wisps of hair curling forward over his temple but he didn't yet look like a lithograph of Lord Byron. And Rathbone seems to bring more gusto to the role, although it may just be my imagination. He was pretty fagged out by the end of the series. Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson is far less than the mumbling and disgruntled companion he was to become.
And somebody ought to mention the cinematography of Woody Bredell. Maybe it's too dark in some scenes but it's always dramatic. Too bad the budget confined all the scenes to indoor stages. In none of his movies does Holmes get to spend much time outdoors. Even when he's on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean ("Pursuit to Algiers") he's stuck on an indoor stage.
The cast are a bunch of stalwarts. They hit their marks, speak their lines, and do what they're supposed to. The real heavy, the mastermind behind the Voice of Terror, eluded me. I had picked Henry Daniell. (He was to play Moriarty in a later film.) Okay, so the writers foxed me, but I was wrong for good reasons. When has Henry Daniell ever been innocent of anything? He was Lord Wolfingham in "The Sea Hawk". He was always a bad guy. Even in his best, most ambiguous role, the Scots doctor in Val Lewton's "The Body Snatchers", he was driven by his ego to grave robbing. And that face -- that bony but flabby jaw, those thin lips, that icy voice. Maybe he wasn't the villain here but he SHOULD have been.
There's something else too that occurred to me while watching this. I saw it as a child, on re-release or television, and I recall vividly the scene in which Holmes is listening to a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony while he fiddles with a chart and watches an oscilloscope. It's of no importance but it was the first time in my life I realized there was more to Beethoven's Fifth than just the familiar opening of the first movement -- da-da-da-DAHHH. The experience almost made my hair stand on end. There might be more to all classical music. So I went on to study composition and theory, changed my name for professional reasons to John Williams, made millions, partnered a parade of pretty girls, and have had a satisfying career as a composer. All thanks to this movie.