‘Sherlock Holmes? You mean the dick?’
Professor Moriarty is sentenced to die by hanging and curses the men who put him in the dock, including Sherlock Holmes. Not surprisingly, he escapes the noose and begins to make good on his threats, as well as introducing an American style crime wave to the streets of London. Holmes puts his retirement on hold to try and run him down.
Early U.S. talkie that is guaranteed to get Sherlockian purists a little hot under the collar! For a start, there’s little evidence of the science of detection, and Holmes is far readier with a pistol than a deduction. Also, he’s now an inventor; coming up with a ray that will stop motor cars while working in a lab full of ‘Frankenstein’ gadgets! But, worst of all, he has a girlfriend in Alice Faulkner (Miriam Jordan) who describes him as an ’impetuous lover’! Could things get any worse? Well, yes, they could because he’s going to marry her, retire from detective work and become a gentleman farmer! Not exactly close to the Sherlock Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle…
There is good news, however. The film opens with a striking sequence based around Moriarty’s trial, where the interplay of light and shadow displays the influence of the German Expressionist Cinema of the 1920s. lt’s superbly done, and heralds a film made with a dynamic flair normally more associated with Film Noir of the following decade. The fustiness and cobwebs of the British films of the time that starred Arthur Wontner are nowhere to be seen, eclipsed by faster pacing, well executed action sequences, and sheer energy. Unfortunately, lead actor Clive Brook doesn’t really fit with the looser approach; his Holmes being very serious and stolid. Indeed, it’s pretty hard to work out what Jordan sees in the humourless old bore, but perhaps Brook was mindful of his previous appearance in ‘The Return of Sherlock Holmes’ (1929) where his outlandish performance apparently drew laughs from the audience.
‘If my answer has already crossed yours, then why are we bothering to have this conversation?’
Elsewhere, Watson (Reginald Owen) gets little screen time, short-changed by a script which, prefers to place Billy the Pageboy (Howard Leeds) in harm’s way, and relegates the good Doctor to carrying messages. Curiously enough, Owen actually played Holmes in the British film ‘A Study In Scarlet’ (1933) the following year, a film in which he also had a hand in the script. But it seemed he’d learnt little from his experience here; the Watson in his film is just as peripheral to the action.
Others involved in this production also enjoyed a later association with Holmes. Alan Mowbray, who represents the forces of law and order as Scotland Yard Inspector Gore-Pike, gave a memorable turn as Major Duncan-Bleek in Universal Studio’s classic Holmes picture ‘Terror By Night’ (1946). Also there is another, more significant, connection to the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce series with the presence of scriptwriter Bertram Milhauser. He worked on many of those films, becoming quite adept at picking out elements of the Doyle short stories and weaving them into feature scripts. There are a couple of scenes here that he reworked into that series; a piece of business in a locked room which gets reprised in ‘The House of Fear’ (1945) and criminals meeting at a funfair shooting gallery, a set up that forms the well-remembered climax of ‘The Spider Woman‘ (1944).
Watching this film today, you could be forgiven for observing that it doesn’t really have a lot to do with Sherlock Holmes. However, as a piece of filmmaking, it has stood the test of time far better than the other films about the Great Detective made in the early and mid-1930s. Just don’t tell the serious fans!
Mark David Welsh 