The Spider Woman (1943)

The Spider Woman (1943) is a Roy William Neill Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce 1940s era mid-war Sherlock Holmes serial movie series entry horror (?) film production and extremely rough adaptation serial killer and sleuthing light entertainment crime and detection film with various noirish aspects, and also starring as it does Gale Sondergaard and Dennis Hoey, may be one of the better items on the Holmes 1940s registry.

The Spider Woman (1943) occupies a curiously authoritative position within the Universal Studios Sherlock Holmes cycle, a position it did not reluctantly inherit but rather seized with a vigour that demands attention. So Holmes, so far. Curios and authoritative, we are fans and though this not be noir, it is still noir informed and noir informing, so give it credence.

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943) is a Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce locked room gothic mansion and family estate murder mystery and mild mayhem exceptionally loosely adapted Sherlock Holmes co-opted for the purposes of World War Two serial movie.

In contemplating Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943), one encounters not merely another instalment in the venerable Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce canon but, to borrow from my own reflection, « une sorte de liturgie du mystère » — a liturgy of mystery. I like to say things in French, sometimes. It doesn't just sound good., It adds extra meaning, I know it.

Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943)

Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) is a Sherlock Holmes wartime propaganda espionage crime and mystery thriller and adventure film noir-style which sees the nineteenth century and indeed, very early twentieth century private detective co-opted into the advocacy work of the Allies in the Second World War, as antiques-led mystery and match-book intrigue see Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Henry Daniell and George Zucco hamming up a storm in an effort to embarrass the Nazis into a ham-strung ham-based and confusing defeat.

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942) is a Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes wartime propaganda appropriated Conan Doyle characters Holmes serial movie classic about a wartime plot from Nazis to bugger up the British effort amid Eurowaldian English and East End smog shenanigan and cliché, and with mis en scene which is semi-noir while owing more to the espionage pictures adorably coming to represent conspiratorial reality as America takes a various angled dim view of the efforts of their soon-to-be allies against Hitlerism, still framed as anti-British and not yet anti-American.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) is a racing good time of frolicsome detective work in the new vein of Sherlock Holmes as presented on the big and silver screen, pre-war and pre-nuclear, and an honest film presentation of some post-vaudevillian ideas as they are newly filtered into the service of a good time, adapting and adopting notions of what this new canon might be and might look like, in a rather nonsensical but truly Hollywood gothic-comic matter.

The year 1939 is remembered as quite an apogeeic moment of classical Hollywood cinema. It was the season of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, and many others that are routinely catalogued as monuments of an industrial art form at its height. Within that gallery, one also finds The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, released by 20th Century Fox as a continuation of the enormously successful The Hound of the Baskervilles. The two films form a diptych. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) is a propaganda spy crime mystery Nazi wartime suspense serial movie thriller partially composed in the film noir style and the first of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films to be updated to the mid 20th Century and made a crucial cinematic aspect of the war effort of the 1940s.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) is not just a classic but is likely the classic, classic Sherlock Holmes movie.

It is the debut movie of the most iconic Holmes on screen of them all, being Basil Rathbone. That is to say the greatest of all time, and its place in the classic film noir story.

Historical and faithful, wonderful and trend-setting, and with a noir-themed foggy soundstage, in an era just before World War, expressing the accumulated sophistication of the movie making of the 1930s, with more to commend it than simply its being a pure and fun expression of the Holmes story, as well as being the first of 14 films, which came to type a legend into the annals of cinema, drama, and noir.

Out on Fox's enormous back lots, the landscapes of Devonshire came to life  and notably there was no hint at all with any participating artist, producer nor technician, no suggestion that there would be any more Sherlock Holmes films after this one.

After landing the role, Basil Rathbone said:

"I think that Holmes is one of the greatest characters in fiction. With all the thousands of detective and mystery stories that have been written since, the name of Sherlock Holmes still stands at the head of the roster of famous sleuths. It is synonymous with the very word 'detective'. To play such a character means as much to me as ten Hamlets."