Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)

ridiculous rating

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

I'm finding it hard to believe how badly the story fell apart when the reveal comes near the end of the picture. For the 'Voice of Terror' to have attained it's goals, the viewer is asked to accept that a German agent killed a British soldier TWENTY FOUR years earlier!! and assumed his identity, working his way into the British Intelligence Inner Council!! Man, I've heard of undercover operations before but this one takes the proverbial cake. It's just not very credible at all.Up till then, the story had a nicely mysterious quality as Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) is brought into the British government's inner circle by it's leader, Sir Evan Barham (Reginald Denny). We don't know it at the time, but Barham is really German Heindrich Von Boch, secretly pulling strings for the Nazis and setting up British targets for assault by the German war machine. When you think about it, Von Bach/Barham made the bonehead blunder of his life by inviting Holmes to the table to unmask the Voice of Terror. In the confrontation in which the German agent is revealed, Von Boch explains that it was his arrogant conceit that made him think he could outwit Holmes with this masquerade. I guess he never read Arthur Conan Doyle.I'd like to say more about the picture but I think it all becomes a moot exercise, almost like one of those stories that ends up being a dream sequence. One thing did strike me though relative to the movie's release date. England was already engaged in World War II at the time, so a remark Sherlock Holmes makes to his partner Watson (Nigel Bruce) was strikingly prescient - "There's an East Wind coming...". The picture ends on a patriotic note heralding a victory against the Nazis that no one could have predicted accurately at the time, not even Sherlock Holmes for all his brilliant deductive reasoning.

20th Century Fox dropped Holmes after just two films. They were soon picked up by Universal. They decided to keep Rathbone and Bruce, a winning combination, but decided to make a huge change. They changed the setting from the original Victorian London, and placed it firmly in present day war torn London. This is a huge change done for the sole reason of using a familiar character to dish out some propaganda. It's a bit of a shame really, as the scenes involving patriotism are so heavy handed they stop the movie dead. One scene has a lengthy speech about being British and how not helping Holmes is the same as helping the Nazis. Holmes is called in to find the Voice of Terror, a member of the Third Reich, making radio announcements about Nazi attacks on British soil. Rathbone keeps his character intact using the usual skills to bring evil to justice. Universal have lost all of the ominous atmosphere of the previous films. It often feels very clinical in its construction. Bruce is barely noticeable and his sole purpose seems to be asking Holmes how he possibly could have known such a thing, allowing Holmes to explain to the audience. The supporting cast are of a high calibre, but their actions do seem more geared towards stopping Holmes out of pride, than about protecting their country. It certainly is short, and there is enough to keep you entertained. However, when the final shot is encouraging you to buy War Bonds, you kind of wish they had left Holmes out of this and just used an original character.

For the war effort Hollywood enlisted the most famous detective in fiction, Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery of the Voice Of Terror. There's a gentleman who is giving out enemy propaganda broadcasts for the Axis powers and unlike the real life Lord Haw Haw, he's doing it by short wave radio inside the United Kingdom.What his broadcasts include though is vital information that could only come from the highest levels. He's predicting ship sinkings before they actually occur. Winston Churchill's inner circle has one very big leak in it.Though Churchill does not appear we see several members of that circle, all fictional people, no one like Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden, Ernest Bevin, Stafford Cripps, et al, but people from the British colony including some who were known for playing villains. The most prominent being Henry Daniell who in fact played Professor Moriarty in future Holmes movies. Don't take that as any kind of hint.Of course Holmes finds out who the Voice Of Terror is, but the mystery is who was the leak. And this is one of the most preposterous conclusions to a Holmes film ever done, maybe the most preposterous. For this scheme to be accurate it would have to have been concocted before there was even a Nazi Party if chronologically accurate. Even World War II audiences fervent for movies defending the Allied cause would have had a problem swallowing this one.The film is based on elements from real Conan Doyle stories. As Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930 of course they were updated to a World War II setting. Seeing Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror now would have today's audience open mouthed with incredulity.

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) ** 1/2 (out of 4) First film in Universal's Holmes series following two previous installments from Fox. This time out the BBC are receiving strange wireless broadcasts from the German's telling of future attacks, which all happen to come out true. Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Watson (Nigel Bruce) are called in to try and track the voice of terror. It takes quite a while to get use to seeing Holmes in the 1940's but overall the film is pretty good, although the Nazi plot had already been done to death by previous films and series. The 65-minute running time flies by in a very quick manor, which isn't normally the case for these types of mysteries. The story itself is somewhat good but again, the German thing had been done to death and this film doesn't really offer up any new slants on the story. The real greatness behind the film certainly belong to Rathbone and Bruce who are simply terrific in their roles. The way the two men play off each other adds a lot of charm to the film and Rathbone is certainly classy enough to fill his role perfectly. Evelyn Ankers gets to shine as an informant and it was nice seeing Henry Daniell and Reginald Denny in their roles. The ending is a tad bit rushed in my opinion and I think they were able to handle the German's a bit too easily but this is still an enjoyable little mystery.