The famous detective is pulled away from retirement and his fiancée when the condemned Moriarty escapes from prison and swears vengeance.The famous detective is pulled away from retirement and his fiancée when the condemned Moriarty escapes from prison and swears vengeance.The famous detective is pulled away from retirement and his fiancée when the condemned Moriarty escapes from prison and swears vengeance.
- Director
- Writers
- Stars
Ted Billings
- Carnival Thug
- (uncredited)
Roy D'Arcy
- Manuel Lopez
- (uncredited)
Edward Dillon
- Al
- (uncredited)
John George
- Bird Shop Thug
- (uncredited)
Robert Graves
- Gaston Roux
- (uncredited)
Lew Hicks
- Prison Guard
- (uncredited)
Brandon Hurst
- Secretary to Erskine
- (uncredited)
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Featured reviews
This film, one of many to be generically titled "Sherlock Holmes," now seems to receive notice most frequently for being the earliest talkie film featuring the detective as the protagonist which is today available for viewing. This was a couple of years into the talking era, though, and there's not really any of the static awkwardness that marred many of the earliest sound movies.
Instead, it's a very dark and atmospheric piece of film-making that certainly deserves recognition for this fact. William K. Howard hangs some really spooky or creepy scenes on this pastiche story of the feud between Holmes and Professor Moriarty, including haunting silhouettes headed to the gallows, tense moments waiting in darkened houses, and a great sequence in which we meet a series of gangsters at a fairground by seeing them all score perfectly at the shooting game.
I like Clive Brook as Sherlock Holmes (giving an encore performance in the role; his first was, confusingly, in "The Return of Sherlock Holmes"). He doesn't inject very much emotional subtlety into the role of the detective, but he's a forceful, intense, charismatic presence in the role who demands attention. Judging from the one surviving audio recording of William Gillette, the most influential Holmes of the era, in the role, Brook seems to have absorbed some of his vocal inflections - to no ill effect.
Fun to watch as the lead actor may be, Holmes is in other ways not recognizable as the iconic character we all know. Perhaps it is shame Brook was not the most introspective of Holmeses, as when we meet him at the start of the film he is engaged and seen in flirtatious exchanges with his fiancée. Strangely as this strikes us, it does generate some valid personal struggle, as Holmes must wrestle with the consequences of his promise to give up his life of chasing Moriarty as he gets married. It all leads to a scene between the future Mrs Holmes and Billy the Baker Street Irregular that is actually rather touching.
Holmes is updated to the then-present day, as he was in most films in the first half of the twentieth century, so we get the amusing incongruity of the sleuth using 1930s-era slang, even if it isn't disparagingly. He also seems to be a cutting edge inventor who demonstrates his car-related discoveries with little model cars that work exactly like the big ones.
In fact, I think it's almost best to think of this as a straight-up tense crime film, with a protagonist who happens to be called Sherlock Holmes. The plot too lends itself better to being a good crime movie rather than a detective picture, with no hint of a whodunnit but a nice twist near the end to increase the stakes of the chase.
Reginald Owen gets little to do and does it pretty stiffly as Watson; it remains a mystery to me why he was cast as Holmes in another film the next year, unless the filmmakers wanted to cash in on nae association. Ernest Torrence, though he doesn't really look the part, turns out to be an excellently believable and threatening Professor Moriarty (even if one of his better scenes is marred by some very terrible back projection).
The strength of this movie isn't its evocation of the Holmes ethos, though Clive Brook brings his magnetism to the altered Holmes. Instead it's a well-shot, tense, and sometimes macabre crime drama with a human element and a Sherlock Holmes flavor. When all is said and done, this works pretty nicely.
Instead, it's a very dark and atmospheric piece of film-making that certainly deserves recognition for this fact. William K. Howard hangs some really spooky or creepy scenes on this pastiche story of the feud between Holmes and Professor Moriarty, including haunting silhouettes headed to the gallows, tense moments waiting in darkened houses, and a great sequence in which we meet a series of gangsters at a fairground by seeing them all score perfectly at the shooting game.
I like Clive Brook as Sherlock Holmes (giving an encore performance in the role; his first was, confusingly, in "The Return of Sherlock Holmes"). He doesn't inject very much emotional subtlety into the role of the detective, but he's a forceful, intense, charismatic presence in the role who demands attention. Judging from the one surviving audio recording of William Gillette, the most influential Holmes of the era, in the role, Brook seems to have absorbed some of his vocal inflections - to no ill effect.
Fun to watch as the lead actor may be, Holmes is in other ways not recognizable as the iconic character we all know. Perhaps it is shame Brook was not the most introspective of Holmeses, as when we meet him at the start of the film he is engaged and seen in flirtatious exchanges with his fiancée. Strangely as this strikes us, it does generate some valid personal struggle, as Holmes must wrestle with the consequences of his promise to give up his life of chasing Moriarty as he gets married. It all leads to a scene between the future Mrs Holmes and Billy the Baker Street Irregular that is actually rather touching.
Holmes is updated to the then-present day, as he was in most films in the first half of the twentieth century, so we get the amusing incongruity of the sleuth using 1930s-era slang, even if it isn't disparagingly. He also seems to be a cutting edge inventor who demonstrates his car-related discoveries with little model cars that work exactly like the big ones.
In fact, I think it's almost best to think of this as a straight-up tense crime film, with a protagonist who happens to be called Sherlock Holmes. The plot too lends itself better to being a good crime movie rather than a detective picture, with no hint of a whodunnit but a nice twist near the end to increase the stakes of the chase.
Reginald Owen gets little to do and does it pretty stiffly as Watson; it remains a mystery to me why he was cast as Holmes in another film the next year, unless the filmmakers wanted to cash in on nae association. Ernest Torrence, though he doesn't really look the part, turns out to be an excellently believable and threatening Professor Moriarty (even if one of his better scenes is marred by some very terrible back projection).
The strength of this movie isn't its evocation of the Holmes ethos, though Clive Brook brings his magnetism to the altered Holmes. Instead it's a well-shot, tense, and sometimes macabre crime drama with a human element and a Sherlock Holmes flavor. When all is said and done, this works pretty nicely.
I think the casting for "Sherlock Holmes" (1932) is pretty much spot-on: Clive Brook is a well-rounded Sherlock Holmes, Reginald Owen is an enthusiastic (if underused) Dr. Watson, and Ernest Torrence is a sinister, dastardly Professor Moriarty. William K. Howard's direction is sometimes-dynamic and the film is enjoyable and even funny in spots, although if you take out the names of the principal characters it plays more like a regular crime / gangster film than a detective / deductive film (it all ends with an undergound shootout). But it does tick most of the right boxes along the way. **1/2 out of 4.
One of the earliest Sherlock Holmes films this is interesting if only for the fact that Holmes is about to get married as the film opens and even dons drag part way through. It may be best not to reflect too much on his relationship with Billy, the Canadian boy who Holmes is training in the arts of criminology. Dr Watson is relegated to an occasional appearance and the arch-villain Moriarty is played with a heavy leering menace that doesn't quite fit with the books. But there's not a lot here that does fit with the books although that does not necessarily detract. The impressive opening, with Moriarty cast in shadows as he proceeds to and from the courtroom for sentencing, sets an appropriate atmosphere which holds throughout. Not a great Sherlock Holmes by any stretch of the imagination, but an interesting example.
The earliest talkie Sherlock Holmes at present available, "Conan Doyle's Master Detective Sherlock Holmes" (to give the movie its full title) will probably outrage Conan Doyle purists. (Although actually credited to William Gillette's stage adaptation, the script bears but two or three faint resemblances to that either). The film is really an original creation, using Doyle characters. It stars an unusually adventurous Clive Brook (in his third impersonation of the sleuth), supported by Ernest Torrence as an engrossingly charismatic, menacing Moriarty. So far, so good. But now we are introduced to the lovely Miriam Jordan (in her second of only seven films) who plays Holmes' fiancée! She has quite a sizable role too, especially compared to Dr Watson (Reginald Owen) who figures in only two scenes, his line-feeding duties being undertaken here by Howard Leeds (his first of only three movies) as Little Billy. There is no Lestrade, alas, but Alan Mowbray creditably fills in the Scotland Yard gap as Gore-King. Although the movie also accommodates no less than three extraneous comic scenes with Cockney publican, Herbert Mundin (whose role has obviously been built up by playwright Bayard Veiller, credited with additional dialogue), and thus occasionally seems too talky (even at 68 minutes), it does have some splendid Moriarty atmosphere (the trial) and action (the escape), most ably contrived by director William K. Howard.
Adapted from a stage play, rather than from one of Conan Doyle's books, this is a slightly odd portrayal of the great detective. Holmes finds himself about to be married to a society girl, a daughter of a wealthy banker. But marriage has to wait when the arch criminal Moriarty escapes the hangman's noose to unleash Chicago-style violence on the pubs of London. An "Americanised" story that will be unfamiliar to Holmes devotees (and, indeed, to students of London criminology) is, nevertheless, redeemed by some tight direction and excellent performances by Clive Brook as Holmes and Ernest Torrance, a villainous Moriarty. There's quite a memorable opening of Moriarty, in silhouette, being taken to and from the court for sentencing.
An interesting example of an early effort by the industry to put Holmes on the cinema map. And there can't be many films in which Holmes appears in drag!
An interesting example of an early effort by the industry to put Holmes on the cinema map. And there can't be many films in which Holmes appears in drag!
Did you know
- TriviaClive Brook bore a striking resemblance to stage actor William Gillette, who was famous for playing Sherlock Holmes on the stage. He did more than 1000 performances of the famous sleuth.
- GoofsThe lamp in Erskine's office is supposed to have been switched on since before Erskine vanished, and so the bulb should have been quite hot, but Holmes unscrews it with his bare hand, showing no pain or discomfort.
- Quotes
Professor James Moriarty: Gentlemen, I regret to say the rope which will hang me has not yet been made! You yourself, Mr Erskine, will hang before I hang. Colonel Gore-King, you are sure to die before I die. And as for Sherlock Holmes, I shall be alive to see his disgrace and death!
- ConnectionsEdited into Dillinger (1945)
Details
- Runtime1 hour 8 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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