Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon

The Second World War is going on. A Swiss inventor has developed a new bombsight and the Germans are after him. Sherlock Holmes gets him out of Switzerland in disguise and brings him to London. For security the inventor divides the device into four parts and gives each to a different scientist. Then he is abducted. Holmes has to find who the scientists are, and facing him is his old enemy Moriarty. Roy William Neill directs. Basil Rathbone plays Holmes, Nigel Bruce plays Watson and Lionel Atwill plays Moriarty. The film is one of the wartime entries in the Rathbone series; in these films Holmes has been moved into the twentieth century and deals directly with the war. Part of the narrative is taken from Conan Doyle's story of the dancing men; the code breaking scene rests directly on that text. Disguise is at the centre and Holmes becomes someone else several times through the film. The confrontation at the end is an unusual example for the genre and is built directly on a plan of torture. Being a wartime production the narrative plainly carries an element of propaganda and closes on a speech. It is short and the plot is direct. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Holmes adaptations and forties genre cinema. Who it is not for: the propaganda register is plain, Watson is a caricature, and the solution quick.