Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror *** (1942, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, Reginald Denny, Thomas Gomez, Henry Daniell) – Classic Movie Review 989

The 1942 mystery thriller film Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror is the first of Universal Pictures’ contemporary Holmes series of 12 B-movies. It strangely mixes Arthur Conan Doyle’s story His Last Bow with 1940s wartime paranoia.

Director John Rawlins’s 1942 mystery thriller film Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror is the first of Universal Pictures studio’s contemporary, non-Victorian Sherlock Holmes series of 12 B-movies.

It strangely mixes aspects of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story His Last Bow with understandable 1940s paranoia about Nazi infiltrating Fifth Columnists and the real-life activities of Lord Haw Haw (aka William Joyce, 1906-46), an Irish-American fascist politician and notorious broadcaster of Nazi propaganda to the UK during World War Two on the English-language propaganda radio programme Germany Calling.

In the screenplay by Lynn Riggs, Robert D Andrews and John Bright, Nazi saboteurs are transmitting demoralising untruths to the British nation via their wireless broadcasts by The Voice of Terror. So Sir Evan Barham (Reginald Denny) of the UK Intelligence Inner Council summons Sherlock Holmes to come to the rescue.

On the first night of their investigation Holmes and Dr Watson are visited by a man who falls dying from a knife wound on their doorstep. His last words lead Holmes into the London slums, where he encounters Kitty (Evelyn Ankers), the man’s sweetheart.

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are of course the perfect Holmes and Watson, the support performers give the strongest of performances and the yarn is a lot of fun. We should give a special shout to Elwood Bredell’s striking noirish cinematography.

The only downside is you have to accept the anachronistic wartime setting for Sherlock Holmes, which can prove an irritant, though it does have an interest of its own. The first two Holmes grade-A movies, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), made by 20th Century Fox, were the only Rathbone and Bruce ones in Victorian era period costume.

The last lines in the movie come from His Last Bow, set on the eve of the First World War. Holmes says: ‘Good old Watson. The one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same. Such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less. And a greener, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm is clearer.’

Never explain, never apologise. The opening title card  clumsily describes Holmes and Watson as ageless to cover the idea that they have been transported from the Victorian era of the Fox films to the 1940s.

When the characters are are leaving 221B Baker Street, Holmes picks up his deerstalker. Watson protests, and Holmes reluctantly puts on a fedora instead.

Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers and Basil Rathbone in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942),

The 20th Century-Fox plan for a third Sherlock Holmes stalled when the Conan Doyle estate insisted that all future scripts must remain faithful to the original stories. Universal signed a contract with the Conan Doyle estate in early 1942, paying $300,000 for the screen rights to his characters. Ironically their films weren’t faithful to the original stories, though this one is credited as an adaptation of His Last Bow, perhaps for contractual reasons to please the estate. What, one wonders, did they think of the Forties setting and battling the Nazis?

Filming began on 5 May 1942 as Sherlock Holmes Saves London, directed by John Rawlins, the sole Universal Holmes films not directed by Roy William Neill.

It was released on 18 September 1942.

Running time: 65 minutes.

The next movie in the series is Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942).

The cast are Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson, Evelyn Ankers as Kitty, Reginald Denny as Sir Evan Barham / Heinrich von Bork / The Voice of Terror, Thomas Gomez as R F Meade, Henry Daniell as Anthony Lloyd, Montagu Love as General Jerome Lawford, Hillary Brooke as Jill Grandis, Mary Gordon as Mrs. Hudson,Arthur Blake as Crosbie. Leyland Hodgson as Captain Roland Shore, Olaf Hytten as Admiral Sir John Prentiss, Harry Stubbs as Taxi Driver, Harry Cording as Camberwell, Rudolph Anders as Schieler, Donald Stuart as Grady, Leslie Denison as London Bobby, Robert Barron as Gavin, Alec Harford as London Bobby, John Rogers as Duggan, and Ted Billings as Basement Dive Bartender.

The films of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942), Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943), Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943), The Spider Woman (1943), The Scarlet Claw (1944), The Pearl of Death (1944), The House of Fear (1945), The Woman in Green (1945), Pursuit to Algiers (1945), Terror by Night (1946), and Dressed to Kill (1946).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 989 derekwinnert.com