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.

Let's start October with some old-timey spookiness.

Featuring Vincent Price and Ida Lupino.

In short: The Ghost Camera (1933)

Returning from a vacation in the more boring parts of the country – though there is a very picturesque ruin around - John Gray (Henry Kendall) finds a camera the audience saw falling into his car among his luggage. Because developing the film in it seems a possible way to find out who it belongs to (and because he’s frankly rather curious but would never admit to it), Gray does so. The first photo he develops seems to show a fight to the death between two men, but before he can examine things more closely, someone organizes the fiendish distraction of a ringing at the door, and it is stolen.

His curiosity now truly peaked, Gray investigates and strolls into a case concerning the mandatory beautiful woman (Ida Lupino), her missing brother, and a stolen diamond.

This little British low budget mystery romance directed by Bernard Vorhaus is surprisingly engaging. There’s not just Ida Lupino before she was a star or the only female director in Hollywood who made up for the “only” by being quite brilliant behind the camera here bursting with energy in front of it, Henry Kendall playing a proto-nerd hero I can only read as a young M.R. James character fighting crime, a plot that moves through the film’s 65 minutes with verve and control, and the time capsule effect low budget films often achieve much better than productions that are allowed to aim higher.

Vorhaus also demonstrates in his first feature film all the visual talents that would stand him in good stead in the future (at least in those of his films I have seen): there’s some fine use of chiaroscuro effects, a real sense for expressive editing that never reaches the tackiness of The Montage (there, I said it), and an understanding of the creation of mood with simple means. Particular highpoints are a proto noir style flashback to the film’s central murder and an interrogation sequence at an inquest that sees the accused bodily shrinking ever further into a corner, while the camera moves closer and closer to the accusing coroner’s face with every shot.

The Ghost Camera is light and a bit fluffy, but also engaging and much better made than it needed to be, which is quite an achievement for an eighty year old low budget film.