Rating: 
Summary: "Secret Wepons for sail!"
Review: I'm glad I still have my laserdisc player! This title looks great on the Landmark Laserdisc, but the DVD is awful! Why didn't they master it from the laserdisc?
Rating: 
Summary: Buy the 1980's laserdisc, this DVD is bad!
Review: I'm glad I still have my laserdisc player! This title looks great on the Landmark Laserdisc, but the DVD is awful! Why didn't they master it from the laserdisc?
Rating: 
Summary: The Needle to the Last, eh Holmes?
Review: It's one of the paradoxes of Basil Rathbone's wartime anti-Nazi Sherlock Holmes films (Voice of Terror, SH in Washington, and this one) that while the plots and settings are mostly terrible, he is so good in them. Despite a bizarre wind-swept hairstyle meant to make him look younger, he blazes through every scene with so much bite and attack that you hardly register how flimsy the plots are. Here he also has great acting rapport with Lionel Atwill, who makes a wonderfully repulsive Professor Moriarty -- a heavy lidded cockroach with nice hints of sadism and depravity (it may not have been acting, kids). At the climax, changed into a lab coat in order to drain Rathbone's blood "drop by drop," he's as over-the-top sinister as Seinfeld's arch-nemesis Newman. The movie itself is ancient kiddie matinee fare, but it benefits from director Roy William Neill's attention to staging and atmosphere. It also looks fairly sharp in this UCLA restoration -- don't even think of buying any other edition, all of them faded, choppy public-domain prints.
Rating:
Summary: Conan Doyle must be rotating like a windmill in his grave
Review: Oooh no no no! These guys can't be serious. Holmes in "modern" suites and riding cars -- in a world war II setting! I'm well aware of the fact, that Basil Rathbones character by many is regarded as the "classic" Sherlock Holmes, but I just think these 40s interpretations of Conan Doyles stories are a total insult to the author's work. OK, there may be a certain "film noire" feeling about the atmosphere, that could come close to aestethics, and Basil Rathbone is probably the one who most accurately LOOKS like the detective in Sidney Pagets drawings. But overall it's just embarrasing watching Holmes talk rapidly in American Bogart style, transported to an environment and time frame that has nothing to do with the original stories or with Victorian England at all. However, these 40s version are splendic examples of the "classic" Hollywood's total lack of respect and self-distance and shows that the Sherlock Holmes stories only can be filmed by English companies and directors to garantee a justifying result; "authentic" and "historical accuracy" must have been totally unknown concepts in America during these years. It's just [sad]!And even though I'm a true fan of early film-making, the acting here is a joke and totally overrated by all too many "experts". If you want real authentic film renderings of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I instead recommend Granadas excellent versions with the genius Jeremy Brett in the title role. Once you've seen these, they'll be the only ones you need.
Rating:
Summary: "We meet again, Professor Moriarty..."
Review: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON is one of the Basil Rathbone "Sherlock Holmes" films that I watched many, many times while a youngster and adored completely. Thanks to this DVD featuring a newly restored print, I'm watching the film in much better condition today that has probably been seen in decades. And I'm overjoyed that the film is as delightful to the adult-me as it was to the mini-me.
"Thousands are finding strength in Guinness!" proclaims the side of a double-decker bus in a stock footage establishing shot. This is the second film which pits Sherlock Holmes directly against the Germans during World War II. Holmes had previously fought for the Allies in THE VOICE OF TERROR, and would do so again in SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON. After these three films, Universal would keep Holmes and Watson in their contemporary setting, but would limit them to more conventional crime-fighting. For my money, this is the best of the three. The plot is a variation on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Dancing Men", and the code-breaking storyline is quite apt for a WWII-era escapade.
The storyline concerns a new invention which we're told could single-handedly turn the tide of the war -- a new bomb sight, the creation of Doctor Tobel, a brilliant Swiss scientist, who has decided to hand over his device to the British Government. And just as the Allies were fighting the Axis Powers, Holmes finds himself struggling against his greatest enemy, Professor Moriarty. Moriarty is, of course, working for Germany, for no immediately obvious reason other than the fact that they're the film's dual bad guys.
I love the interaction between Holmes and Watson. Yes, it's a huge exaggeration of the characters as originally written, but I can't fault its entertainment value. Right from the very beginning, they're bouncing fun lines off each other (almost entirely at Watson's expense). Holmes patiently explaining the plot to Watson, or neglecting to explain his disguise until Watson's makes a fool of himself to Scotland Yard, or the pair of them independently complaining about the other's untidiness. Utterly ticklish material and performed superbly by the actors.
And, of course, there's the great intangible that this film possesses in spades -- atmosphere. It's rare to see a Sherlock Holmes adaptation without a good menacing sense of atmosphere (it almost seems inherent in the format), but when you put that together with that certain mood of a good thriller which films of the 1940s seemed to produce effortlessly and you really have something.
Yes, there's something very iconic about seeing London's most famous address, "221B Baker Street", standing amid bomb wreckage, smashed buildings and piles of heavy sandbags. The humorous sequences I mentioned earlier are perfectly balanced with some strong noir-like set pieces: the smuggling of Dr. Tobel out of Zurich under the nose of the Gestapo, Holmes' disguised jaunt through Soho, the tracking of Moriarty to his lair. The dialog is delightfully smooth as well. You can see Basil Rathbone and Lionel Atwill (Prof. Moriarty) drinking in their lines like wine of the finest vintage, practically purring their "my dear Holmes" and "my dear Professor" to each other.
There are no DVD extras to speak of, although the digitally restored picture and sound go a long way towards making up for that. I did watch a few of the scenes with the closed captioning on and was shocked by how poor the transcription was. A lot of phrases seemed to be dropped from the captioning completely, which is unfortunately not unusual, but seemed particularly bad in this case. Numerous mistakes ("conceded" instead of "conceited", "We don't need your confounded submarine" rather than "We'll meet your...", etc) were very obvious, in many cases completely altering the meaning of sentences. It wrecks one of the films cleverest lines: "[It] was so simple that it fooled us. I was looking for something ingenious; this is ingenuous" is rendered as "[It] was so simple that it fooled us. I was looking for something ingenious; this is ingenious." Yes, I realize it's only one transposed letter, but it's sort of an important one.
I'm very glad this film still holds up for me, as it's always a huge disappointment when you revisit something you enjoyed as a child only to discover that you had absolutely no taste or discretion when you were eight. I'll be slowly working my way through the rest of the Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce films now that they're all released on DVD, taking in both movies that I've seen before and ones that I'm ignorant of. I can only hope that the ones I'm not experiencing for the first time are as fun for the adult as they were for the child.
Rating:
Summary: Rathbone, gloriously brilliant as Sherlock Holmes
Review: The second film in Universal's series of Sherlock Holmes adventures starring Basil Rathbone as the Great Detective and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon" was one of several titles in the series to fall into the public domain, hence its availability over the years in numerous bargain bin editions of poor quality. Thanks to UCLA's restoration program, this title is now available in all its original black and white glory. Like Universal's first entry in the series, this one drags Holmes out of his original Victorian era habitat to match wits with the Nazis. But those disappointed with the modernization gimmick should be happy to learn that Holmes' arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty is on hand, as well, this time in the person of the magnificent Lionel Atwill who brought his creepy elegance to some of the best films Universal made in the 40s. The plot has little to do with "The Dancing Men," the Arthur Conan Doyle story referred to in the credits, and this film is neither as visually striking or as well-written as "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror," or most of the 10 films to come, but it has Rathbone, incadescently brilliant as the greatest master detective of them all, and that's enough to make it a winner. Brian W. Fairbanks
Rating:
Summary: Worst DVD transfer I've ever seen since GoodTimes
Review: This refers to the DVD version only. This is absolutely the worst quality transfer to DVD that I've ever seen. I don't think that even GoodTimes could have done a worse job.
Rating: 
Summary: a GREAT movie
Review: Title says it all, this is a great classic!!
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