Once Again Through The
Sherlock Holmes Miasma-Round Up The Usual Private Eyes- Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle’s-Based “Voice Of Terror” (1942)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Seth Garth
Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror,
starring foppish Basil Rathbone, fellow fop Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, 1942
Finally, I have gotten
rid of the lame idea of having to do “dueling” reviews with young pup Will
Bradley in this seemingly endless series of Sherlock Holmes flics. This is the
series where Sherlock, played by aging dandy Basil Rathbone, and his male
companion, make of that what you will, funky Doc Watson, played by foppish
Nigel Bruce have been resurrected from late Victorian times to World War II
times when it really was touch and go whether there would be some sun setting
on the British Empire courtesy of Hitler’s Third Reich.
In this either twelve or
fourteen series I can’t get a straight answer about how many they did they do
their bit, do more than yeomen’s work, maybe OBE work to stem the freaking Nazi
tide, a movement that had more than a few supporters in high places in old
London town. Hell, the joint was crawling with them. In the previous ten or so
reviews I have under the guiding hand of our esteemed site manager, Greg Green,
aka the guy who hands out the assignments and hence esteemed, had to “battle”
young Bradley for the true meaning of the Holmes myth. Greg’s idea, foolish
idea if he dares to print this, was to have an old-timer vs. fresh look at the
films to see what flushed out. I will not bore the reader with the details of
that dispute, essentially a question of challenging the myth about the
supposedly platonic Holmes-Watson relationship with hard evidence or their then
closeted love for each other and their joint knee-deep involvement in every criminal
operation from illegal drugs to armed robberies and more in greater London
using the private eye gag as a cover. Against Will’s unbelievable naivete,
really head in the sand, both on the true sexual relationship between the two
men and the way they really supported themselves in the lap of luxury and
idleness in their Bake Street digs.
But enough of that, and
good riddance, since Greg has now seen that the younger generation does not
give a fuck about the old has-been Holmes and Watson and get their idea of this
match-up from later Robert Downey, Junior-type interpretations of the Holmes
myth. So with the film under review Voice
of Terror I will just do what my old friend Sam Lowell, a fellow reviewer
who is now, rightly so, under siege in his own older-younger writer wars called
giving the ‘skinny.”
Apparently not trusting
the vaunted foreign and domestic intelligence operations, MI5 and MI6 (the
latter the one that one Bond, James Bond, took out of disgrace after Kim Philby
ran the organization a merry chase during the early post-World War II Cold War
period Winny Churchill kept warning about) the British intelligence inner
council, you know the lords and such who ran things into the ground called in
Holmes and by extension Watson to stop the flow of Nazi saboteurs and
propaganda flooding Merry Olde England in post Munich, post Neville Chamberlain
times. They really were running amok creating mortal terror among the ordinary
citizenry especially with their radio broadcasts, their voice of terror
broadcasts, about bad things happening in the country before they happened.
Have everybody on edge. Looked like curtains for old John Bull (and his colonial
tyranny).
Off to work, off to figure
out who was running the operation, the hearty team is stopped in its tracks
when one of its operatives is killed trying to find out who is working for the
filthy Nazis and where. All of this leads to two things first grabbing that
operative’s wife Kitty, played by screaming Evelyn Ankers (who is not the
dreaded voice of terror in this one like she was in a series of forgettable
horror films, okay) and pumping her for information about the last words of her
late husband. This is nothing but a ruse, an inner circle joke between Holmes
and Watson since the last word was “Christopher,” meaning the dark and
mysterious Christopher Wharves which they were quite familiar with from their
trolling for “dilly boys” who worked the area and whose services both men were
very familiar with. (If you are not familiar with the term “dilly boys” look it
up but remember that reference to their sexual preferences and you will not be
far off.) Be that as it may this was also the hideout of the key German
operatives who had their own off-beat sexual proclivities to take care of. In
any case through either Holmes or Watson’s stupidity they and Kitty were
“captured” casing the area. Eventually they escaped as to be expected and found
out that a German espionage operation was planned for southern England.
Off they go and from
this point on you have to do some serious suspension of disbelief. As it turned
out as almost anybody could tell who has read at least one detective novel in
their lives this had to be an inside job. And it was. One of the esteemed
members of the inner council was a traitor (remember I told you the sceptered
island was swarming with Nazi sympathizers in high places) and that was that.
Well not quite because Kitty in her attempts to thwart the Nazi scum took a
fall, got killed holding off the leader of the Nazi thugs. A good soldier. Here
is where that “suspension of disbelieve” comes in. Of course a member of the
inner council could not be a British traitor, this before the Philby Cambridge
spies exposes, no way, so the gag is that that person was an impostor, a German
of similar appearance and status, sent as an infiltrator to England after
killing the real guy. What gave him away. Well the real guy had a scar from an
early age. The imposter’s was only about twenty years old and so it was another
case of “elementary, dear (note the “dear”) Watson.” WTF. And you wonder why I
have spent some considerable time bursting this balloon, taking these overblown
amateurs to school who guys like Larry Larkin, Sam Spade, and Phil Marlowe,
would have had for lunch and still have time for a nap.
