Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
                                                                                              
Director: John Rawlins
Year: 1942
Rating: 7.0
After Fox produced The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1939, they were unable to strike a deal with the Arthur Conan Doyle estate (Doyle had passed away in 1930, his last Holmes story published in 1928) and eventually lost interest in continuing the series. That would have been a tragedy for fans of this series but for Universal seeing the opportunity and three years later not only making a deal with the Estate but signing contracts with the available Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Both had remained busy with their popular Holmes and Watson radio show.



Universal made a controversial decision both then and now to move the series into contemporary times. Fans of the first two films loved the Victorian atmosphere and settings of those films. In a cute moment here,  Holmes reaches for his Deerstalking cap, but Watson reminds him that it is of the past.  Partially for budgetary reasons, but primarily because America was at war, they changed the time period and certainly this first film is filled to the brim with patriotic fervor. And it isn't really as out of time as one might initially think. Doyle wrote The Last Bow: The Wartime Service of Sherlock Holmes in 1917, in which Holmes comes out of retirement to capture German spies. This is just a war later. As bad as times may be now, think what it must have been for those who survived The Great War, only to be at war again. That would include Rathbone and Bruce who had served in the first war. Now too old to enlist, they did what they could in film.



Right from this first film, Universal intended these to be B films as it only comes in at 65 minutes. But it doesn't waste a minute and is a terrific fast moving tale of fighting Nazis and unearthing a traitor. The idea for the film was derived from a true historical event. That of Lord Haw-Haw, British or American subjects who worked with Germany in delivering propaganda over the radio in an attempt to demoralize the British public. The most famous was actually an American of Irish descent named William Joyce who was a fascist and moved to Germany. A happy ending though in regards to him. After the war he was captured and executed.



In this film there is a Lord Haw-Haw type broadcasting not just Nazi propaganda, but real time attacks on secret British supplies and men. One of the secret members of the Council of British Intelligence calls in Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to track down the spies who are relaying the information to Germany. It is soon obvious that one of the Council is a traitor. Holmes turns to the less than respectable denizens of Limehouse to help him; in particular Kitty to give a rousing anti-fascist speech to the bar customers to motivate them. Kitty is played by one of Universal's best B film actresses, the English Evelyn Ankers best known for horror films but she equals the moment here. In the cast are also Reginald Denny, Henry Daniell, Montagu Love, Mary Gordon who also came over from Fox to again play Mrs. Hudson and Thomas Gomez as a vile fanatic Nazi spy. The little speech that Holmes gives at the end is from The Last Bow.



"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 cleared."