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SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR
(Universal / US / 1942)

This was the 3rd time I've watched this on the DVD box set, so I figured I'd see if I could wring any more thoughts out about it...



I wonder if as many people would complain about the Universal HOLMES films being updated if Fox hadn't done their 2 films in 1939 set in the proper period.  Until then, every previous Holmes film-- and I've seen an awful lot of them lately!-- had been "contemporary"-- as has every film featuring THE SAINT or JAMES BOND.  I wish somebody would make films with those characters as period pieces!

I agree with previous comments that this film is amazingly well-shot, and the restoration on the MPI box set is stunning. I did see a very odd sound synchronization problem in the middle earlier, but didn't notice it this time around.

Universal's "stock company" in the HOLMES films really started here.  It blows my mind how many actors I know that were in this, who came back to play other parts in later films-- some of them, multiple times.  This includes Evelyn Ankers, Henry Daniell, Olaf Hytten, Leyland Hodgson, Hillary Brooke, Harry Cording, Gavin Muir.  Add on Reginald Denny, Thomas Gomez, Montagu Love and Edgar Barrier, and you've got an "all-star cast" here!

A few interesting plot points now.  When Holmes recruits Kitty and she stirs up her friends to help scour London for info, they become like a grown-up version of The Baker Street Irregulars from the earliest stories.  A villain being disguised as someone Watson knew many years earlier was also later done in TERROR BY NIGHT.  Holmes going on a long tirade at the end explaining how the villain's plot goes back many, many years, seems inspired by THE SIGN OF FOUR and THE VALLEY OF FEAR. And someone being a "mole" in England for decades was a plot later used by Brian Clemens in one of the best episodes of THE NEW AVENGERS, "House Of Cards".

There's a quick visual gag, when Holmes reaches for his deerstalker hat, and Watson stops him saying, "Now, now, Holmes-- you promised!" Perhaps the fedora was a birthday present?

Somehow, I can't picture Howard Marion Crawford's Watson from the 1954 tv series being as nervous as Nigel Bruce was here about going into a seedy dive. The scene where the ex-con demands to know who ratted him out was rather amusing.

Oddly enough, it seems all the dates of the disasters in the film seen on the calendars took place in 1939-- so the entire story could be seen as a flashback to 3 years before the film was made, when the war seemed bleaker than it did in 1942.

Having listened to the audio commentaries on "HOUND" and "ADVENTURES", I found myself wishing there'd been one for "VOICE OF TERROR".  Oh well, no big deal. One thing I've come to feel since getting the MPI box set is, there isn't a bad film among them.  But they get even better after this one!

[SuperScrounge]

And someone being a "mole" in England for decades was a plot later used by Brian Clemens in one of the best episodes of THE NEW AVENGERS, "House Of Cards".

Not to mention Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Moonraker, and, uh, oh, yeah, REAL LIFE featuring Kim Philby. 

[profh0011]

And someone being a "mole" in England for decades was a plot later used by Brian Clemens in one of the best episodes of THE NEW AVENGERS, "House Of Cards".

Not to mention Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Moonraker, and, uh, oh, yeah, REAL LIFE featuring Kim Philby. 

ABSOLUTELY.

The reason I thought of "House Of Cards"... several people at the IMDB mentioned the Nazis having planned this scheme 22 years in advance, but I think they missed the point.  It wasn't the scheme, but merely the idea of substituting one person with an imposter, figuring that, eventually, they might have an opportunityy to use him.

"Perov" (Peter Jeffrey) trained Russians to be "English", then set them up 10 or 20 years before, without ever "activating" them. When he was disgraced (he felt), he appeared to commit suicide.  Then, suddenly, a whole group of his "moles" became activated, each one with a target for assassination-- even though by then, most of them targets were no longer important, and some of the assassins NO LONGER wanted to work for Russia!

At the end, the whole damned scheme turned out to be used by him, not for its original purpose, but merely as a diversion, and a way to make Steed so nervous, he'd figure out it all started with this scientist Steed had helped to defect... and when Steed went to check on the guy, Perov followed him, so he could KILL the scientist, and thereby reclaim his honor.  It was really twisted.


But yeah, "Sir Hugo Drax", the self-made millionaire industrialist who became so popular among the general public because of his fledging space program (he said), but who was in fact an escaped NAZI WAR CRIMINAL building a missile with an atomic warhead with which he could LEVEL London... that's long been one of my favorite James Bond stories, and it's a damned shame it was never properly adapted to film... although they did a very nice job of it in the newspaper comic-strip.

The 1979 movie is a F****** insult to the book.


I've read all the Fleming books, and about half of Leslie Charteris' SAINT books, and I dearly wish someday somebody would adapt them as written, as period pieces.

[SuperScrounge]

Sadly, I don't think they've ever rerun The New Avengers where I live & when it first ran it was on a station that was hard to pick up.

I did have the first two novelizations & I think House of Cards was one of them. (I sold the books years ago.)

"Perov" (Peter Jeffrey) trained Russians to be "English", then set them up 10 or 20 years before, without ever "activating" them. When he was disgraced (he felt), he appeared to commit suicide.  Then, suddenly, a whole group of his "moles" became activated, each one with a target for assassination-- even though by then, most of them targets were no longer important, and some of the assassins NO LONGER wanted to work for Russia!

That reminds me of a British miniseries I saw years ago, sadly I can't remember the name. There are two Soviet moles in England, one who has become a rich and powerful businessman & the other is a union leader with a family. The union leader gets the activation code and he contacts the businessman and then they argue over whether they want to go with the plan or not. I found it a fun and interesting story at the time.

But yeah, "Sir Hugo Drax", the self-made millionaire industrialist who became so popular among the general public because of his fledging space program (he said), but who was in fact an escaped NAZI WAR CRIMINAL building a missile with an atomic warhead with which he could LEVEL London... that's long been one of my favorite James Bond stories, and it's a damned shame it was never properly adapted to film...

Well when the book was written the Kim Philby situation hadn't happened yet and the British attitude was that there was no way a British gentleman would betray Britain. An idea that was in the book, despite all the red flags that Drax wasn't what he claimed to be the other shoe never dropped for either Bond or M. Post-Philby that was a dated attitude. Also by 1979, a Nazi as the villain would also have been dated.

Years ago I picked up a book Wasp by Eric Frank Russell and the introduction mentioned that the sci-fi novel grew out of an idea that had been worked on by the British "dirty tricks" group during WWII that Russell and Fleming were a part of. Russell turned the "disguised as the enemy" idea and wrote Wasp (human disguised as alien) whereas Fleming used it in You Only Live Twice (Bond disguised as Chinese), but Fleming seems to have used the premise a few more times. Moonraker (Nazi disguised as Englishman), but, I think, a short story in For Your Eyes Only (A View To A Kill?) where the killer is using a disguised hideaway built in case the enemy had taken over the country giving hidden defenders a place to hide and strike at the enemy.

[Captain Audio]

I can remember a WW2 era film where a caucasion US soldier who spoke perfect Japanese is given plastic surgery to pass for a common Japanese soldier. He was to be so anomnymous that he could observe everything about him without being noticed.
IIRC his cover was that he was from some out of the way province who's people were considered ignorant peasants by other Japanese. He basically played his roll as a dumb brute good only as cannon fodder.
They seem to have researched the Japanese soldiers day to day life fairly well.

Another film from that era involved the Black Dragon society. These were Japanese agents surgically altered to pass as caucasions. They infiltrated American industries and rose to high positions in wartime industry.
Don't remember much about this film but I think Bela Lugosi was the ring leader.

The Soviets actually built America towns where agents lived like normal American citizens for years before being assigned to postings in the USA.

A Film called Telefon, was based on the idea of deep cover Soviet Agents being conditioned to go into a trance when hearing a certain coded message over the telephone. Each had an assigned task which was a suicide mission.  Some Russian wacko got ahold of the codes and went off the reservation using these throwaway killers for his own agenda.

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A lot of Fleming's plots might have trouble working if someone tried to update them to a different era.  That's a big reason I dearly wish somone would do them as written as period pieces.

Just the other day, I was trying to imagine, would ANYONE possibly be able to do a "modern" version of "Live And Let Die", when the novel was already "controversial" when it came out?  (The funny thing, it's so far the only Fleming novel I read TWICE!)

In the 70s, the Bond producers stopped really caring about Fleming's stories.  By comparison, in the 80s, they put a lot of effort in at least paying tribute to them by including little details here and there.  "FOR YOUR EYES ONLY" contains refrences to at least 6 different Fleming stories.  I recently noticed that "SPIDER WOMAN" did the same with various Doyle stories.

The fake American (or English) towns in Russia sounds awful familiar.  I don't think they actually showed them in THE NEW AVENGERS, but I'd swear they were mentioned in the expanded novelisation of "House Of Cards".  (Or maybe it was mentioned in the 2-parter, "K Is For Kill" ?)

There is a DANGER MAN (SECRET AGENT) episode where Drake goes to a town designed to train spies to inflitrate an enemy country.  It was suggested the place was one of several things that later inspired THE PRISONER series.

Bits of "Moonraker" have turned up in several Bond movies.  The foreign enemy posing as an English industrialist made its way into DIE ANOTHER DAY.  The card game where Bond out-cheats the cheater, who then says, "Spend the money-- QUICKLY!" turned up in OCTOPUSSY.  But the idea of Bond changing the trajectory of a nuclear missile to bring it down on top of an enemy submarine-- the climax of the novel-- became the climax of the film THE SPY WHO LOVED ME-- with 2 submarines destroyed instead of 1.  (I don't think there was anything original in that movie at all.  That's why I started jokingly calling it, "James Bond's Greatest Hits".)

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And speaking of "Moonraker"... ever since I read the newspaper comic-strip adaptation, I've gotten it stuck in my mind that if they'd adapted it as a film in the 1950s, there were 2 actors around at the time who would have been perfect for it.

Gala Brand - Honor Blackman


Sir Hugo Drax - Howard Marion Crawford

[SuperScrounge]

The fake American (or English) towns in Russia sounds awful familiar.

The was a 1980s movie featuring some Americans coming across one of these these and using their expertise to help the people become more American, called The Experts. Siskel and Ebert hated it.

There was also an episode of Team Knight Rider where the team comes across one of these towns.

[profh0011]

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON
(Universal / US / 1942)

The 2nd modern-day Holmes film at Universal was the first directed by Roy William Neill, who went on to do 11 in a row!  Dennis Hoey also makes his debut as Inspector Lestrade in here.  Both he & Nigel Bruce's Watson are played more serious here than in later installments, though early-on, there seems to be some good-natured friendly kidding between them.  Basil Rathbone, as always, is mesmerizing to watch!

Some have complained about "contrived" plot points, and it must be said the biggest part of the story involves a supposedly-brilliant inventor foolishly refusing to allow the British Government or even Scotland Yard knowledge or access to his methods of manufacturing his new secret bombsite mechanism... which makes him far too easy a target for Professor Moriarty, who's now working for Nazi spies!

One of my favorite parts of the film is the scene where Holmes & Watson decipher the code, as for once, you really get the feeling that Watson is on the ball and pretty sharp.  I don't mind a bit of character humor, but I wish Nigel Bruce had been allowed to play Watson like this more often.

Soon after, the pair turn up at what proves to be the scene of the first of 3 consecutive murders, and Lestrade also proves to have his wits about him.

The last scene I really enjoyed, was when Holmes allowed himself to be taken prisoner by Moriarty, and deliberately taunts him, then gives him a suggestion for a "more inventive" way of committing murder-- slowly draining the blood from the victim.  This is actually a ploy to allow Lestrade, Watson & the police to track down Moriarty's hideout, so that the kidnapped inventor Dr. Tobel can be rescued.  Lionel Atwill, who seemed too crude up to this point, really shines during this climax.  I understand Fox wanted him to play Moriarty in "ADVENTURES" in 1939, but somehow he was unavailable, leading them to get George Zucco, who proved FAR better, instead.

Inspirations for stories fascinate me. It's clear the code in this story came straight from "The Dancing Men", but I also see details from "The Sign Of Four" (the man with the wooden leg, and the temporary false trail followed by the cops).  However, Moriarty having a "stronghold", which features both a large sliding metal door and a deep shaft to dump bodies down, strike me as being borrowed from the final Arthur Wontner film, SILVER BLAZE / MURDER AT THE BASKERVILLES (1937, but released in America in 1941!).  It's amazing it took me this long to connect that, but it figures, since the climax of Fox's "ADVENTURES" seems a blatent variation on the climax of Wontner's THE TRIUMPH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1935).

But influence runs both ways.  The opening scene, where an old man comes into a shop to sell rare old books, AND, the scene where it's discovered the code can be read when reversed (as in a mirror), turned up almost verbatim in the 1977 Euro film THE FABULOUS JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH.  Neither scene is in Verne's novel, which suggests whoever wrote that film was a fan of this one!  If anyone can point out an earlier source for these scenes, I'd be happy to learn about it.