Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) - film review

During WWII, Sherlock Holmes succeeds in smuggling Dr Franz Tobel and his invention, the Bombsight, out of Switzerland, avoiding the Nazis who are eager to get their hands on Tobel’s creation.  Safely installed in London, Tobel agrees to allow the British to use the weapon he has developed, providing he is allowed to take charge of its manufacture.   A few days later, Tobel mysteriously disappears, but only after having left a coded message for Holmes to decipher.  The message contains the names and addresses of the four inventors to whom Tobel has entrusted the manufacture of the four components of his Bombsight.  Holmes soon discovers that his old enemy Professor Moriarty is also interested in acquiring the weapon, so that he can sell it to the Nazis...

"This blessed plot" is how Sherlock Holmes concludes his second patriotic outing for Universal Pictures, and if there is one thing this film is not short of it’s plot.  There’s enough of it to fill a dozen thirty minute episodes, miraculously crammed into one eighty minute feature.  Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon is a fast-moving noir-styled spy thriller which, despite its tortuous and contrived plot, is one of the most enjoyable films in the series.  It even adopts a plot idea from one of Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes stories: The Adventure of the Dancing Men.

The film features the second showdown between Basil Rathbone’s Holmes and his villainous arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty, this time played by Lionel Atwill, who had previously appeared with Rathbone in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939).  Naturally, the film doesn’t waste time explaining how Moriarty survived an apparently fatal fall from the top of the Tower of London in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), just as the subsequent film The Woman in Green (1944) would fail to account for how Moriarty survived his obvious demise in this film.  Apparently, if a villain is as evil and clever as Moriarty, he can survive anything, even a recurring bashing on The Goon Show. 

Another semi-regular character in the series makes his first appearance in this film: the slow-witted Inspector Lestrade, played by Dennis Hoey.  Presumably the idea of introducing another dim ally for Sherlock Holmes (adding to the ranks of the slightly thick Watson and simple Mrs Hudson) was intended to make Holmes appear even more clever and sophisticated than he really was.  As every politician knows, if you want to look smart, surround yourself with idiots.  Certainly, the introduction of Lestrade of the Yard (it even rhymes) does lighten the tone of the later films in the series, somewhat needlessly.

© James Travers 2009

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