Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)

While Fox either didn’t manage to or didn’t want to secure the rights for further Holmes movies, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce deepened their footprints as the characters during a successful series of radio plays in the roles. So it makes a lot of sense that Universal studios, who eventually managed to make a deal with the Doyle estate, then went to that particular well and hired the men for their own cycle of Holmes movies.

These films weren’t given the full studio budget treatment of Fox’s Holmes films, however, but were strictly meant for the B slot of any given cinematic performance, leading to shorter and cheaper films made by the B-movie arm of Universal’s operation. On the plus side, Universal’s B arm did have better directors than the guys Fox put on their Holmes films.

As another, apparently still quite contentious in certain Holmes purist circles to this day, cost-cutting measure, the Universal films put Holmes into the present day, though a version of the present day that is drenched in shadows and fog more often than not. Because it was 1942, Universal also decided to start the films off as war propaganda. So this first outing finds Holmes thwarting a Lord Haw-Haw style Nazi radio propagandist who commands his spy minions to commit some rather spectacular (for the budget) acts of sabotage. Holmes ropes in the service of a thinly-coded prostitute (Evelyn Ankers) who convinces parts of the Underworld to do their patriotic duty with a really rather effective speech to counter the Nazi scum.

While the propagandist elements here can feel to be laid on rather thick (this certainly isn’t a Powell/Pressburger joint), I find myself rather taken with this aspect of the film. But then, if ever there was a reason for the people of Britain to be proudly patriotic, it was how they held out against Nazi Germany when the Americans here singing their praises were still twiddling their thumbs. And frankly, who else would you have Sherlock Holmes fight in 1942?

The film, directed by John Rawlins, is a nice little piece of pulpy entertainment, making moody use of Universal’s standing sets, and a script that’s just on the right side of overstuffed, with some cheap but cheerful action set-pieces, rousing speeches – Anker in particular really gives her all there – and a well-developed sense of the shadow-drenched mood I tend to hope for in Holmes media whenever it leaves the drawing room. The cast is fine, the villains dastardly, and I even didn’t mind the idiot version of Watson too much this time.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Following Fox’s first Holmes movie with the Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce double act rather quickly, this second movie is already the end of the short Fox cycle featuring these two. The studio apparently had problems wrangling the rights for further movies out of the Doyle estate, and perhaps not as much interest in continuing the series anyway.

Probably making negotiations less important for the studio that this film was neither much loved by the studio bosses nor – apparently – audiences, so fighting Adrian Doyle might not have been worth it to them in any case.

The Adventures doesn’t attempt to adapt any particular Holmes tale, but spins a complicated yarn about a plot of Professor Moriarty (who is much more common in adaptations than in the canon, and here played by the typically fun George Zucco) to thwart and humiliate Holmes and get rich in the process.

Not being a studio boss or a 1939 audience, I prefer this second Fox Holmes to the Hound. The plot is more lively, Alfred L. Werker’s direction is workmanlike but at least effective and from time to time even atmospheric, and Rathbone and Bruce really have gotten a grip on the character they are never really going to lose for as long as they will continue to play these characters (as much as I loathe Watson as an idiot, but you know that already). Unlike in the first movie, there’s also at least one memorable part among the younger actors surrounding our heroes – Ida Lupino (early in her career here) imbues her theoretically typical heiress in distress with as much personality and backbone as she can get away with, which does wonders for much of the plot she is involved in.

This – like most of Hollywood Holmes – is very much Holmes in pulp mode, so expect as much action as ratiocination, and delightful moments like the scene in which Moriarty’s butler has forgotten to water the man’s beloved plants and faces the ensuing threats of death and doom with the most movie butlerish face ever encountered. It is all very good fun. Apart from the actual jokes, of course, but that’s par for the course.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

Victorian England. Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and his friend and partner Doctor Watson (Nigel Bruce) are asked to help ensure the safety of Sir Henry Baskerville (Richard Greene), who has come to England to take possession of his inheritance in the Great Grimpen Mire of Dartmoor. Rumours of a supernatural hound haunting his lineage abound, and many secrets are kept on the moors.

This first in its series of Sherlock Holmes movie produced by Fox , in this case directed by Sidney Lanfield, was a major hit in its time. Apart from the natural and perennial popularity of Holmes, this is certainly thanks to the casting of Basil Rathbone in the role, who has the accent, the profile, the energy and the acting chops to pull off an interesting Great Detective; he also has great chemistry with his Watson, real-life friend Nigel Bruce.

I’ve never liked the Bruce Watson much – he’s too stupid to be believable as a doctor, a military veteran that survived anything more dangerous than stepping over a puddle or as a friend to Holmes. In fact, in his worst moments – most of them to come in later films of the duo – this too stupid Watson tends to damage his Holmes, because this version of Holmes apparently needs to travel with the dumbest person alive to feel properly clever and is the kind of guy who drags around the learning disabled to berate them for being “bunglers”.

My tastes in Watsons aside, while The Hound is the most popular, and certainly the best, of the Holmes novels, it is a curious case to start a series with a particularly weak Watson with. For here, Watson is really meant to take the lead role in the investigation for at least half of the narrative, something Bruce’s character never believably manages in between comedy routines and empty bluster. He isn’t helped at all by being surrounded by the sort of extremely unmemorable actors Old Hollywood loved as their young romantic leads. Only Lionel Atwill provides some memorable moments.

The script pretty much makes a hash out of Doyle’s novel, changes everything that might be morally complex even more so than the Production Code would have necessitated, and just barely manages to get in some of the book’s set pieces. Those certainly are made very pretty by the use of some nice looking sets. Sidney Lanfield’s direction is generally unremarkable, and at its most effective whenever he just lets Rathbone or Atwill do their respective thing, which, unfortunately, isn’t all too often.