BEFORE: Day 3 with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, 11 more to go.
THE PLOT: When a Nazi saboteur jeeringly predicts terrorist attacks to the nation via their radio "Voice of Terror", the Intelligence Inner Council summons Sherlock Holmes to help in the crisis. On the first night of the investigation, Holmes and Watson are visited by a dying man on their doorstep.
AFTER: This film is very loosely based on Conan Doyle's short story "His Last Bow", where Holmes and Watson faced off against German spies during World War I. But since this film was released in 1942, the setting for the story was moved forward to World War II, in order to be more current with the times. The only problem here is, the first two films in this 14-film series were set in the past, during the Victorian era, which ended in 1901. So that means they moved Holmes and Watson about 40 years into the future (the then-present), with no explanation. And they don't look 40 years older - so this then becomes a sort of reboot. Yep, just three films into the series, and they rebooted the characters - you'd think he was Spider-Man or James Bond or something.
Or, perhaps the films were not meant to be viewed in order of their release - "The Last Bow" is chronologically the last Sherlock Holmes story, so maybe "The Voice of Terror" is the last film, and the next 11 movies all take place before it, it's difficult to say.
(Perhaps my main problem with reboots right now is the fact that I've just learned that both Marvel AND DC comics are gearing up to reboot their lines again - for DC, this comes less than two years after the last universe reboot ("Rebirth") and for Marvel, it's only been about 2 years since "Secret Wars", and about 6 months since they decided to re-number all of their long-running comic books ("legacy numbering") to appeal to older fans like myself. But it's not bad enough that this is very confusing to many readers - with issue #18 of the new series of "Black Panther", for example, being followed by issue #166 of "legacy numbering", and then for sure in about 6 months the series will be cancelled AGAIN, with a new #1 issue following a month or so later. It's already starting to happen. Seriously, the Avengers series that launched in 2016 ran for 11 issues before it switched to legacy numbering, so Avengers #11 was followed by Avengers #672, and after just 18 issues with the new numbering system, the book will be cancelled as of Avengers #690, to be followed by Avengers #1. So every time they try to "correct" their numbering problems, they can't seem stick with it. This temporary re-numbering of everything allowed them to publish Daredevil #600, Amazing Spider-Man #800, and so on, but they couldn't stick with it long enought to publish Avengers #700? Is the lure of the bump in sales from a new #1 issue that enticing, that they have to move on to the 8th volume of the comic book, even though sales are fine? God help any kid looking for a back-issue to continue the story he's trying to read - he might have Avengers #11 and be looking for Avengers #12, and there are SIX of them out there on the market, only none of them are the right one, because right after that issue #11 came issue #672. How is he supposed to know that?)
Anyway, the "Voice of Terror" - I'm not sure I fully understood the "scary" nature of the Nazi terrorist reports on the radio. Everyone seems to think it's very chilling that the Germans can reach the U.K. with their radio signals, and comment on their acts of terrorism on London soil AS THEY'RE HAPPENING. Really? They didn't have news back in 1942? Or was everyone just used to getting their news via next-day reports, or via newsreels in the movie theaters, which took weeks to produce? It's hard to understand this since we now live in a world where everything is reported instantly, while it's happening - but let's assume for a moment that people in 1942 were blown away by a news report happening in real time.
It still doesn't make sense - any terrorist action needed to be planned, and that meant that someone, somewhere, had a pretty good idea about what might happen, or what would happen, ideally, if things went according to plan. So one guy in the U.K. had instructions to de-rail a train at noon, let's say, and then a German man would broadcast a radio report about it at around the same time. So what's the big, impressive part? It just takes a little planning and coordination, something that the best terrorists would already be good at. One might imagine, under this system, that the voice on the radio would occasionally be WRONG about what's taking place, like if the agent in the U.K. wasn't able to de-rail the train at the right time, but who cares? The propaganda doesn't necessarily have to be true, and most people listening to the radio broadcast would have no way to determine that there WASN'T a train derailment at noon, so again, getting on the radio and talking about things that are currently happening just isn't that impressive.
It might be more impressive with a little lead time, like if the Voice of Terror said that there would be a train derailment in this particular location next Thursday, and then it happened. But I suppose that would give Sherlock Holmes time enough to stop it, so that's out. And reporting about it AFTER isn't really that impressive, so, really, the only thing to do is to broadcast it on the radio as it's happening. Something we all take for granted in this instant-gratification, social-media based world now, but I guess in 1942 it seemed like some kind of sorcery?
Sherlock Holmes uses an oscilloscope to determine that the Voice of Terror is not broadcasting live, but is playing phonograph records that were recorded in London. There's gotta be a NITPICK POINT in there somewhere - like, why not just listen for the "pops" and "crackles" that we all used to experience when listening to records? Or wait for the record to skip? I seriously doubt that anyone today could listen to radio, or satellite radio, and have any way to tell whether a DJ is broadcasting live, or if his show were pre-recorded. I don't think that's a thing. But let's assume that Holmes can tell the difference between a live broadcast and a record - how the hell does he know where the record was made? And again, this proves that the terrorist acts are planned in advance, to allow time for the recordings to reach Germany before broadcast, but so what? Aren't all terrorist acts planned in advance? This gains no ground toward solving the case.
What's worse is that there's no information given at the end about how Holmes was able to find and identify the Nazi spy, the mole hiding in plain sight. He can put forth this theory, but with no evidence to support it, it's just idle speculation. Thank God the spy admitted he was right - but a good mystery solution is like a math puzzle, if you don't show your work about how you arrived at the answer, you shouldn't get credit for it. Holmes doesn't show his work here. He almost does, but the clue is totally bogus, I'm not buying it.
I get that fighting the Nazis was important in 1942, and they wanted to get Sherlock Holmes involved in that fight to be contemporary, but I can't help but feel that it cheapened the character a little to take him out of his Victorian-era setting. But that's what the TWO current TV series featuring Sherlock Holmes do also, move him into the present-day. So what do I know, in the end? I just don't think the opening credit of this film, declaring "Sherlock Holmes is ageless, invincible and unchanging" is enough to explain how he moved ahead 40 years in time without getting older.
Also starring Evelyn Ankers (last seen in "The Ghost of Frankenstein"), Reginald Denny (last seen in "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"), Thomas Gomez, Henry Daniell (last seen in "The Body Snatcher"), Montagu Love, Olaf Hytten (last seen in "House of Frankenstein"), Mary Gordon (also carrying over from "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"), Leyland Hodgson (ditto), Robert Barron (last seen in "Lost in a Harem").
RATING: 3 out of 10 dive bar patrons
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