Sherlock Holmes

[Jim]

Odd that we don’t have a thread on Holmes (be it books or cinema / televisualisermachine), given the frequently-drawn and occasionally erudite comparisons between Bond and Sherlock Holmes.

I think it’s likely (if a massive conjecture - appropriate for this character) that folks here might have an interest in Sherlock Holmes as well?

Kicking off with (but by no means limiting this to) the Basil Rathbone 20th Century Fox/Universal series of the late 1930s and 1940s, if only because Mrs Jim kindly presented me with the box set (£3 from a charity shop) and I hadn’t seen many of these for so, so many years. Perhaps it’s nostalgia but I was captivated, even to an extent by the ones that are plainly awful.

I think it is a general scheme by Mrs Jim to keep me out of the way whilst she steals the Crown Jewels, although that might just be these films influencing me something rotten.

The indelible impression is that Basil Rathbone couldn’t give a bad performance even if some of the rest of the enterprise is a bit…well, terrible. In the weaker ones he tends to resort to louder barking of the lines, but such a commanding dog.

For what it is worth - it is worth £3 and I haven’t known of a better £3 spent since [redacted for taste and decency, illegality and moral turpitude] - a quick ranking

1. The Scarlet Claw - wonderful; unexpectedly rather beautifully filmed. Absolutely leagues ahead of the rest and it may just be immediate re-enthusiasm but this might be a Top Ten all time film for me. Very stupid in places but even in the very stupid places, I am overcome with glee.

2. The Hound of the Baskervilles - probably the only decent adaptation of this, although as ever it falls apart at the end a bit. That The Scarlet Claw is basically a remake and so much better has not gone unnoticed.

3. The Woman in Green - unusually sombre and with a really odd secondary villain who is probably/definitely a paedophile. Unsettling. Very dark, that. Henry Daniell would have made a great Bond villain in some respects; he’s so aloof it’s not surprising he falls from a great height.

4. Spider Woman - albeit Watson is particularly cretinous in this one, an interesting adaptation of some elements of the Doyle stories. Creepy, and the ending is great fun albeit the comeuppance is slightly milky. Possibly the most interesting cast; the talent varies, to be polite.

5. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - the plot is rubbish and lots of stuff never gets resolved but the lead performance is galactic and the villain is elegantly written. The chap with the bolos is terrifying. Watson marginally less of an imbecile in the Fox pair. Moriarty falls to his death (again).

6. The Voice of Terror - don’t you know there’s a war on? Shatteringly unsubtle and whatever the hell it is they’ve done with Rathbone’s hair is massively distracting. Some deft use of echt Doyle but it’s so OTT it’s perversely magnificent. Supporting cast very, very dodgy, though. Hilarious.

7. The Secret Weapon - bit ropey but fascinatingly jingoistic. Quite where that Lionel Atwill got his eyes from I really don’t want to know and the “bleeding” of Holmes is staggeringly unpleasant. Moriarty falls to his death (again again). Probably racist.

8. Sherlock Holmes Faces Death - odd mixture of all sorts of Doyle stuff and the villain is an utter nonentity with a feeble motive. Some very odd performances going on here and the red herrings are basically left to swim off without being explained. This is where things are just going to get worse. Brill.

9. The House of Fear - some of the early stages, especially with the melodramatic narration, are most engaging but it all goes haywire and - crucially - a bit dull later on. The mystery is colossally obvious and there’s not much here bar Rathbone being imperious and staggeringly rude; fab.

10. The Pearl of Death - s’alright and save for Rondo! Hatton! it’s basically routine. The villain, despite being talked up throughout, is a non-event. Holmes marginally more stupid than Watson in this one, which provides some interest but could have been about 20 minutes long really.

11. Sherlock Holmes in Washington - so wildly cheap it’s brilliant; appears to have been filmed for about ten quid. Expressly demonstrates no knowledge of British idiom, location or architecture, and accordingly fascinating. Plot’s rubbish and probably homophobic in some way.

12. Dressed to Kill - weirdly dull and one can quite clearly see it was all out of steam at this point. Some deft moments, although the regular inability of any of the female leads to muster a convincing English accent - even when they are English - is quite charming.

13. Terror by Night - at least it’s short. The train appears to change at least five times and at one point passes through Alpine landscape whilst notionally somewhere outside Rugby. The most unlikely of villain set-ups, although anyone called Skelton Knaggs should have had a better career. Also contains the most appalling and baffling attempt at an “English” accent yet. Obviously awful, but watchable and about 10 minutes long.

14. Pursuit to Algiers - crap and they know it. Jawdroppingly amateur on every level. Watchable if only for the abundant and rampaging slackness going on. Sensationally woeful, but compellingly so.

Them’s me views.

[Dustin]

Great idea to fill this unnatural void in CBn’s fabric, @Jim, long overdue!

Off the top of my head I can’t contribute a lot to the assessment of the Rathbone series as I haven’t watched them all and it’s far too long since I’ve seen those I caught by chance on the telly.

Seems as if this loose string of adaptations of varying tone and quality by Fox/Universal ran into many of the same difficulties and excesses the Bond series would. Starting with relatively faithful adaptations of stronger source material, then rehashing the elements again and yet again before descending into ever cheaper by-the-numbers tosh. And the fact Rathbone and Bruce remained in their roles only underlines how fundamentally the entire production value depends on, mostly, Rathbone’s star quality. Have to pick up the series sometime soon.

Funnily, I came to Sherlock Holmes myself through Bond. The summer break of 1978 saw me raiding book stores on a weekly basis, trawling the revolving cases for Fleming titles I didn’t already have. As so often, in vain - but I picked up a copy of Holmes stories collected out of sequence (some Casebook/Last Bow and Adventures stories if memory serves). And I discovered a quite fascinating canon that had seen numerous adaptations, spoofs and ‘continuations’.

While I would not become as much of a Sherlockian as the Bond fan I am, I nonetheless kept an eye on the different adaptations and had a blast with the Brett series, the Hammer HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and the first few Sherlock episodes. Though over the years I grew to prefer the characters of Elementary over those of their BBC counterparts. With pastiches I also rather tend to the traditional bizarre-but-not-supernatural school. Holmes battling Cthulhu monsters or zombies may be entertaining - but it’s fundamentally not Holmes (though Gaiman’s Study in Emerald is pretty clever and the Warlock Holmes spoofs at least seem funny).

Anyway, will be reporting back once I’ve given the Rathbone series a try.

[David_M]

I grew up on Saturday afternoon airings of Rathbone’s Holmes films, Weismuller Tarzans and Buster Crabbe Flash Gordons, so this stuff is near and dear. Thanks for starting the thread.

I recently saw “Scarlet Claw” again and I agree it’s pretty terrific, especially coming so late in the game when the Universal series had mostly slid itself firmly into the ditch.

Last Fall, I enjoyed Robert J. Harris’ “A Study in Crimson,” a Holmes novel that takes the…well, novel approach of setting the action in WW2-era England, making it very much “Universal/Rathbone Holmes” as opposed to straight-up Doyle Holmes. You can definitely hear Rathbone’s voice throughout. Interestingly, Watson is much less the nincompoop here so he comes off more as an amalgam of Doyle and Bruce’s versions, but I suppose that’s to be expected if Watson’s going to be intelligent enough to “write” the adventure. I could never decide who to mentally “cast” in the role as I was reading. Also interesting is the fact that this Holmes is given a backstory that includes service in British intelligence in WW1, meaning there’s no pretense he’s a supernaturally long-lived holdover from the Victorian era (it was never quite clear in the films) but rather a Holmes born much later (one supposes the same day as Basil). In that sense, it reminded me a bit of Deaver’s “Carte Blanche.” It’s a fun read if you should come across it.