User Reviews

"Clue...you know wots 'clue' is, doncha?" says hardened criminal Jonathan Small to his dim but strong accomplice. Small doesn't want any left behind during his quest for revenge and riches.

"Yeah...somethin' you sticks paper together with."

Years earlier Small had cut a deal with two British Army officers in an Andaman Islands prison. He'd share a treasure map with the two officers that marked the location of a rajah's ransom worth of sparklers and pearls in exchange for a four-way split and freedom for himself and his accomplice. He even marked the map with four crosses, the sign of four, to seal the deal. He was briskly betrayed. The officers took the map, found the jewels...and then one of the officers killed the other to keep everything for himself. And now that officer, rich and aged, dies of fright in his London mansion when he learns there has been an escape from a prison in the Andaman islands...two men, and one is named Small. But before he died and in an act of conscience he instructed his two sons to deliver to a Miss Mary Morstan, the daughter of the man he killed so long ago, the priceless pearl necklace that was in the treasure chest. With Small on the track to find the treasure and wreak his revenge, it's not long before Miss Morstan is pleading for help in the sitting room of The Great Detective himself. It is apparent that the case is intriguing, just as it's apparent that The Great Detective's good friend, Dr. John Watson, is smitten with Miss Morstan.

"I don't want to interrupt the violent flutterings of your heart," says Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Wontner) to Watson (Ian Hunter), "but perhaps you'd be interested to know that never in my career have I encountered a more intricate case." Or, perhaps, a more diabolical one. Jonathan Small is a one-legged brute who can kill with his wooden foot. He's an escaped prisoner, a murderer, shrewd and violent, skilled with a tattoo needle and sometimes called "the Professor." His associate, the convict Small took with him when Small escaped, is a dim- bulbed hulk, tattooed from neck to ankle and now called The Human Picture Gallery, who deals with problems by beating them or dragging a straight razor across the throat. And if you're frightened of nasty death by alkaloid poison smeared on the tip of a blowgun dart, try to avoid Tonga, a small Andaman native who is as adept at puffing out oblivion as he is keeping his boa constrictor warm. Holmes prevails, of course, but not before we've spent time in a dangerous sideshow, witnessed the kidnapping of Mary Morstan, and experienced a violent and deadly fight in a great, dark warehouse on the banks of the Thames. In this fight, fists, poison darts and lethal legs all come into play.

The movie is well paced, well acted and with a clever script. The use of overhead shots at dramatic moments is effective. So is the use of clever humor. The plot even bears some resemblance to the original story as it was written by Watson in 1890, using the name of his literary agent, Conan Doyle. In those days being seen as a popular author could damage a respectable medical doctor's reputation. Doyle understood this and was agreeable to the subterfuge when Watson suggested it. To this day, unfortunately, many people still believe that Doyle was the true author of the Holmes stories.

Arthur Wontner starred as Sherlock Holmes in five movies made between 1931 and 1937. He was in his late fifties at the time but is lean and commanding, with a great Holmes profile. Wontner was a good actor and holds his own in the company Brett, Rathbone and the others. It's also satisfying to see that Ian Hunter plays Watson as a reasonably intelligent man and a good friend, not simply a buffoon or foil for Holmes.

I always go into a Sherlock Holmes film expecting the best, but fearing the worst. With "The Sign of Four", my fears for the worst were unfortunately realized. Poor production values and a largely unintelligible sound quality contributed to my difficulty in following the story. But where I really lost it was when Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Wontner) was able to determine that a note sent to florist Mary Morstan (Isla Bevan) was written by an amputee, because the letters STAND UP on their own legs! With that line, the film immediately made it to my Top Ten Worst list without Passing Go, with the dubious distinction of joining my previously worst ever film - "The Beast of Yucca Flats". At least with The Beast, there's a lot to ridicule. Here, one doesn't know what's to be taken seriously and what's to be taken in good clean fun.

With "The Sign of Four", nothing is "Elementary My Dear Watson", especially in Ian Hunter's portrayal of the acclaimed detective's accomplice. Watson fancies himself a romantic, and quite literally gets the girl at the end of the film. By that time my interest in the movie was gone, although I was jolted at inopportune moments by the appearance of a tattooed man and a black man with a snake around his neck. By the time they got to the speedboat chase, I was glad I had a bottle of brandy beside me.

I'll admit the mystery started reasonably enough before getting bogged down in unbearable boredom. To be fair, I probably should give the film a second viewing, but it will be a long while before it comes to that. Until then, "The Sign of Four" doesn't even hit that numerical equivalent on my radar screen, and they don't allow negatives here. So for now, it's just a +.

Only the title is Holmes-related. The rest is pure bunkum. Interesting to note that Holmes here wears the hat Basil Rathbone wears in his series made much later. Dr. Watson as a love interest so the film ends on a kiss?! Nighttime speedboat race?! Tongan blow gunner played by An African?! No LeStrade?! The print quality is dreadful. Maybe my four start rating is inflationary.

It's an imperfect telling of the tale -- and a truly lousy print -- but entertaining nonetheless.

The script spends too much of the running time on two hoodlums who are after the Rajputana pearls or whatever they're called. Good thing they're Indian, not Italian. And too much time on innocent young Mary Morstan in her flower shop. Holmes and Watson don't appear until about twenty minutes into the film. In the story as written, she simply shows up at 221b Baker Street because she's puzzled about the gifts of pearls she's been receiving. But at least, in this movie, the escaped Andaman convict, Jonathan Small, has his lengthy back story shown in a brief prologue, so that's gotten efficiently out of the way.

The rest of the film follows roughly in the footsteps of the printed tale. Holmes and Watson pursue a stolen treasure that's in the hands of the two goons and their curious friend. Holmes makes some fantastic deductions that not even Conan-Doyle would have dreamed up. He infers from a man's penmanship that the writer had only one leg. Credo quia absurdum. But he gets one thing right when he deduces from a footprint that the foot had never worn shoes. I spent two years on a small Pacific island and it was almost immediately apparent whether the marks of bare feet in the sand had been left by natives or tourists.

For those of us accustomed to a Sherlock Holmes that looks and acts like either Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett, Arthur Wontner is a strange specimen. He LOOKS like the Paget drawings! And in profile he strongly resembles Rathbone. But he's also shorter, like Brett. And, like neither of his two famous successors, he moves lazily, casually, stiffly. And his chief weakness is his voice. It's rather mousy and pinched. It sounds as if it's HE who should be behind the counter in that florist's shop, not Mary Morstan.

Watson is Ian Hunter, better known as Richard the Lion Heart in "The Adventures of Robin Hood." As one of the Sholto brothers, Miles Malleson is incredibly youthful and looks something like Alfred Hitchcock. No one else in the cast stands out except Thug Number Two, a tattooed giant of a man who could take Mike Mazurki apart.

I've sort of made fun of it but I shouldn't be too harsh on the movie. It was hard to produce a sound movie with any dexterity in 1932 because of technical limitations. You can see some obvious examples in the movie. But it is, after all, Sherlock Holmes and, unlike the updated versions from Universal Studios in the 40s, this one tries to show us something of the original story.

The Sign Of The Four or at least the screen version of the Arthur Conan Doyle novel has something you'll never see in another Sherlock Holmes film. It's Baker Street heresy in fact to have Dr. Watson get the girl.

But that's what happens here as young Isla Bevan seeks the aid of Holmes and Watson portrayed here by Arthur Wontner and Ian Hunter. She's scared out of her mind because she has some valuable pearls that belong to a treasure taken from the Island of Andaman off the Malay and Bengal coasts. She didn't acquire them honestly, in fact her Indian army father along with another two partners stole them. They acted on a tip from a crazed one legged prisoner played by Graham Soutten who swore vengeance upon them for leaving him in the joint and denying him his share. Soutten's out and taking his revenge.

The part of the crazed prisoner is played by a real life amputee who gets around pretty good. If Soutten had been American, MGM might have cast him as Long John Silver in Treasure Island instead of Wallace Beery.

Soutten has a couple of cronies from the carnival where he is employed and traveling incognito. That part of the film could almost have been called Sherlock Holmes meets Freaks.

Young Ms. Bevan and Hunter start falling for each other, but Hunter in his attempt to one up Wontner puts her in harm's way. It leads to more of an action climax than you will usually find in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce series of Holmes films.

Still the idea of Watson getting the girl is really too much for Baker Street purists to take.

The quality and decency of this early Sherlock Holmes film starring Arthur Wontner as Holmes and Ian Hunter as Dr. Watson manages to rise above its creaky deficiencies, having some very imaginative aspects and a very interesting plot line. Very different than Rathbone and Bruce (Basil and Nigel) would be a decade later, on the surface they seem more serious so when the lighter comical moments occur, it's a droll experience that adds a necessary spark to the antique filming style. Isla Bevan is an innocent bystander stalked for witnessing a crime, going to Holmes and Watson for protection, having noticed she was doing stalked by a very creepy looking man with a fake leg and a sinister secret. Romance occurs for her in the artist of places.

This film really builds in its intensity, starting off rather slow moving but becoming exciting when it gears into action, ending up with a chase on the river that leads to Bevan in jeopardy thanks to the limping villain and his sinister cohorts. This includes a hulking black man whose job it is to guard a secret safe of very largd snakes where the stolen jewelry is stashed. I don't believe that Rathbone and Bruce appeared in this Holmes story, so it wouldn't be until decades after this version that it was done again. It's also set in the appropriate time period so it definitely has a more traditional mood to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's intentions with his series of books. It doesn't matter that it's very creaky and that prints have not survived all too well. Something tells me however that if I were to see a restored version of this, I might rank it a bit higher.

"The Sign Of Four" was originally released back in 1932.

Anyway - As the story goes - Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are determined to protect Mary Morstan, a frightened young woman who is threatened by an escaped murderer. The killer is looking for a stolen fortune, and revenge on the man who stole it. When Mary is kidnapped, it becomes a desperate race against time.