Watching the Detectives: Basil Rathbone is Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
Holmes is called in by the government to solve the mystery of German radio broadcasts that detail acts of terrorism in England almost as they happen.
It’s pretty clear right from the onset that there’s something very different about the third film to feature Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and his trusty companion, Doctor Watson. Not only has the super sleuth travelled from Fox to Universal, he’s also jumped forward about fifty years to World War II era England.
The Rathbone/Bruce double act is as entertaining as ever. They’d continued to play the parts on radio in the years between the Fox and Universal films and by this point they had them down pat. Of course there were some cosmetic changes; Bruce has given up on the Grecian 2000 in favour of his natural grey and Rathbone had gone for the, no doubt extremely trendy, windswept look, as well as dispensing with his trademark deerstalker hat. But in all else this is business as usual, with Holmes one step ahead of the viewer and Watson a couple behind.
While the stars may be as good as ever the production lacks the class of the Fox films. It’s not just the look of the film but the jingoistic war rhetoric that pervades it, with even criminals uniting against the Nazi menace. I’ve got nothing against patriotic war movies but it does serve to date the film, whereas the two Fox pictures are timeless classics. In fact it dates it far more than the contemporary setting, as Hollywood’s version of London’s Limehouse and its denizens looks like something you’d see in a Jack the Ripper film. Or a Fox Sherlock Holmes film come to that.
