Aggiungi una trama nella tua linguaAfter a gentlewoman is found dead with her throat torn out, the villagers blame a supernatural monster. But Sherlock Holmes, who gets drawn into the case from nearby Quebec, suspects a human... Leggi tuttoAfter a gentlewoman is found dead with her throat torn out, the villagers blame a supernatural monster. But Sherlock Holmes, who gets drawn into the case from nearby Quebec, suspects a human murderer.After a gentlewoman is found dead with her throat torn out, the villagers blame a supernatural monster. But Sherlock Holmes, who gets drawn into the case from nearby Quebec, suspects a human murderer.
- Bill Taylor
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- Lady Lillian Gentry Penrose
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- Villager in Pub with Dr. Watson
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- Member of Royal Canadian Occult Society
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- Villager in Pub
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- Villager in Pub
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- Hotel Bellhop
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- QuizListed in Journet's inn-register is Tom McKnight of New York. He was an adviser on Universal's Holmes series, and was married to Edith Meiser, a writer familiar to devotees of the radio productions "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes".
- BlooperHolmes signs the hotel register on February 10, no year given. In mid-February, there would likely be frost (if not snow) on the ground in that part of Canada, and the bog Watson falls into would no doubt be frozen. The vapor of the characters' breath would also be visible.
- Citazioni
[last lines]
Sherlock Holmes: Canada, the linchpin of the English speaking world, whose relations of friendly intimacy with the United States on the one hand and their unswerving fidelity to the British Commonwealth and the Motherland on the other. Canada, the link that joins together these great branches of the human family.
Dr. John H. Watson: Churchill say that?
Sherlock Holmes: Yes, Watson, Churchill.
- ConnessioniEdited into Who Dunit Theater: The Scarlet Claw (2016)
- Colonne sonoreBritish Grenadiers
Traditional
(uncredited)
sung by the postman
Granted, most of the Holmes films made up to that point had been updated to their respective eras (in fact, only Fox's two Holmes features with Rathbone and Bruce had taken place in their appropriate time period), but in those cases, the modernization was all on the surface. Automobiles, telephones, and the fashions of the day were all on display...but that was, for all intents and purposes, scenery. The stories, though changed (sometimes drastically) from their original forms, had a timeless quality about them. The first three Universal films, however, were very timely, with plots focused explicitly on the events of the Second World War. This took Holmes out of his element...not only in the literal sense of removing him from Victorian/Edwardian London (as previous films had done), but in transforming the character of Holmes from a consulting detective into a spy-hunter. Indeed, at times, there is more James Bond than Sherlock Holmes in this character. This trend peaked (or bottomed out) with Sherlock Holmes in Washington...the final straw for critics and audiences alike. The film was a critical and box office flop and Universal saw fit to alter the series' direction from that point on.
Though still taking place in the 1940s, the subsequent films did their best to place Holmes back in his proper role, solving intricate mysteries with deductive reasoning...rather than the pure chance and intuition that often guided him in his forays into international espionage. This may (or may not) be accredited to the director Roy William Neill (who directed all but the first entry in the series), who, with the fourth film, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, became the associate producer...a title he would retain throughout the series' run. From that point on, the films became more Gothic in tone, in many ways more closely resembling the Universal horror films of the era than the first three Universal Holmes pictures. This decision yielded immediate positive results. Sherlock Holmes Faces Death was easily the best of the first four entries, and subsequent films topped one another until peaking with The Scarlet Claw.
Oddly enough, the film is set in a French province of Canada...for no discernible reason. The setting is completely superfluous to the plot, which could easily have played out anywhere (ideally Great Britain). This is made all the more puzzling by the fact that the predominant accent present in the film is British, rather than French Canadian...even American actors threw on Brit accents, despite the fact that American accents would have been more sensible in Canada. But no matter. This slight idiosyncrasy aside, The Scarlet Claw is the ultimate Rathbone/Bruce Universal outing. Not adapted from any of the original Doyle tales, (though borrowing heavily from The Hound of the Baskervilles), The Scarlet Claw is dripping with atmosphere. Fog-wreathed marshes are the setting as Holmes tracks a ghostly apparition that has graduated from sheep mutilation to murdering humans. The local villagers believe the culprit to be supernatural, but level-headed Holmes rejects the idea out of hand, and sets himself to the task of finding the murderer.
Rathbone, as Holmes, is at the top of his form here...cold and detached, clinical in his reasoning. And Bruce's Watson, even in this dumbed down incarnation, is a pleasure to watch. Crisp direction, beautiful cinematography (particularly for a B-film), plenty of twists and turns along the way, and no small amount of deductive reasoning from Holmes, make this the strongest entry in the Universal series. The later films were often good, but none ever matched the achievement of The Scarlet Claw...which is simultaneously Gothic, suspenseful, and very, very Holmesian. It is not without its logical flaws, but the flaws are justified by the picture's enormous entertainment value. And of all the films in the series, this one is, by far, the most entertaining.
- james_oblivion
- 15 feb 2006
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- Tempo di esecuzione1 ora 14 minuti
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