Danger Sidekick

The Sherlock Holmes Collection, Volume Two   by Allan M. Heller

Many mystery fans are of the firm opinion that actor Jeremy Brett was the only performer to equal Basil Rathbone’s masterful portrayal of the legendary Sherlock Holmes. I am not one of them. There is a thin line between a curt, down-to-business demeanor and rudeness and irritability, a line that becomes blurred frequently in Brett’s portrayal of the great English detective. Rathbone’s Holmes is brusque and impatient, frequently interrupting people, and finishing their sentences for them. But he is always mindful of his manners, apologizing sincerely when he commits the occasional faux pas. Brett, while a fine actor, was too temperamental for Sherlock Holmes. Six decades after Rathbone’s epic performances, there is yet to be an actor who will topple him from his throne. Rathbone, and Nigel Bruce -a perfect Dr. Watson-made a total of 12 Sherlock Holmes movies, four or which are included in the DVD set The Sherlock Holmes Collection, Volume Two.

The Pearl of Death (1944)

Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, the amiable, well-intentioned Dr. John Watson, investigate a series of brutal slayings in which the victims’ backs are snapped in precisely the same fashion every time. Holmes suspects a killer known as the Creeper, a mute behemoth possessed of incredible strength. At the center of the killings is a missing pearl, worth 50,000 pounds, which has been stolen from a museum early in the story. Ironically, Holmes himself unintentionally aids the thief when he deliberately disables the museum’s security system to prove a point!

The Scarlet Claw (1944)

The doctor and the detective are called away from a Canadian conference on the occult, to a remote village called La Morte Rouge (Red Death). A lethal, supernatural creature is suspected in the deaths of several sheep, whose throats have been torn out. When the mysterious monster moves on to human victims, Holmes and Watson step into the fray. Holmes is convinced from the start that the perpetrator is human. Probably the best of the four in this series, The Scarlet Claw has twists that are surprising even to fans expecting the unexpected.

The Spider Woman (1944)

Holmes never had much use for women, seeing them as a distraction to his work and as a gender not to be taken too seriously. Fans of classic literature will recall Irene Adler -AKA “the woman”- the one member of the fairer sex who earned Holmes’s respect by actually outsmarting him. Adrea Spedding (Gale Sonderham), whom Holmes dubs the “Spider Woman,” delicately crawls into place as the second woman whom the detective is forced to respect. Her unique method of killing makes the murders look like suicides, and despite being thoroughly fiendish, she is nonetheless attractive, charming and well-mannered. Her motive, quite simply, is money, and viewers can’t help but admire the meticulous ministrations of her diabolical plots.

The House of Fear

A stuffy society of old comrades meets in a countryside mansion to sip brandy, smoke cigars, and basically, act like the bunch of snobs that they are. When one of the members perishes in a fiery car crash shortly after receiving an envelope containing six orange seeds, no one makes any connection. After a second member receives a similar envelope containing five seeds, the survivors enlist the aid of the great Sherlock Holmes. Watching the movies in succession, or over the course of a few days, will reveal that actor Harry Cording appears in both The House of Fear and The Pearl of Death, albeit in two different roles, and looks exactly the same except that in the former, he sports a gold earring.

Performances

To reiterate, Rathbone is sublime as Holmes, a role into which he immerses totally and seemingly effortlessly. His manner and movements are quick, crisp, yet deliberate and very thoughtful. His habit of dropping artificial clues or creating dangerous situations to trip up criminals or bolster a theory sometimes backfire, as in the example of the stolen pearl. He is fond of Watson, probably his only true friend, but never waxes emotional or sentimental, and is not above playing sometimes cruel tricks on his assistant, such as faking his own death or showing up at the pair’s Baker Street flat in disguise. He throws around the expression “old boy” a bit much, to which Watson generally responds in kind.

Trying to emulate some of his friend’s finer traits, Watson comes as off fairly reliable, but frequently bumbling, and injects a comedic diversion that would be utterly lacking if Holmes’s purely analytical manner held dominion. Bruce’s Watson is a wonderful straight man, demonstrated perfectly in a scene in The House of Fear where he is digging up a murder victim, all the while having a conversation with an owl in a nearby tree. “Who?” says the owl. “Who do you think?” replies Watson, thinking that he is conversing with Holmes. Another funny moment occurs in The Spider Woman, when Watson tries to tear the beard off of a visitor whom he thinks is Holmes in disguise.

Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey), a burly, booming policeman, is a memorable screen presence in most of the classic Sherlock Holmes films. His quiet appreciation of Holmes’ invaluable assistance does not prevent him from taking all of the credit when a crime is solved. Lestrade’s image is very important to him, and he boisterously tells Holmes on several occasions, “Looks like you’re not needed here this time,” only to later confess privately, and with some embarrassment, that he was wrong. To call his appearances comic reliefs would not be entirely accurate, as these films are not so dark and disturbing as to necessitate intervals of humor, but Hoey’s antics as Lestrade are always refreshing and amusing.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories take place in the latter half of the 19th century, with one or two later pieces occurring at the onset of World War I. Because of this, purists watching the Holmes collection might be put off by the tales’ more modern setting, which coincides with the time that they were filmed. In The Spider Woman, after he has returned from a prolonged hiatus, Holmes remarks that he has not been absent this long since the Jack the Ripper killings. This is disturbing for two reasons. If the cases take place in the 1940′s, how would a middle-aged Holmes have been alive in 1888, when the Ripper murders occurred, and if he were alive, why couldn’t he solve them?

Most of the films in this collection run about an hour, slightly more, and what they lack in special effects and spectacular cinematography they more than compensate for in plot, acting and dialogue. The many trails of Sherlock Holmes are liberally sprinkled with red herrings, sometimes so many that viewers are forced to disregard them all. But even the astute viewer will likely not figure out the mystery before Holmes, and even the most jaded will find something enriching about these timeless cinematic masterpieces.

© December 18, 2006 by Allan M. Heller

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About the Author

I am a free lance writer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the author of three books, the latest of which is Monuments and Memorials of Washington, D.C., published in May, 2006 by Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.
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