England's Secret Weapon examines the way Hollywood used Sherlock Holmes in a series of fourteen films that spanned the years of World War II in Europe, from The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1939 to Dressed to Kill in 1946. Basil Rathbone's portrayal of Holmes has influenced every actor who has subsequently played this popular character on film, TV, stage and radio, yet the film series has, until now, been neglected in terms of detailed critical analysis. The book looks at the films themselves in combination with their historical context. Though the first two films were set in the detective's 'true' Victorian period, Holmes was then 'updated' and recruited to fight the Nazis. He came to represent the acceptable face of England for the Americans - the one man who could be relied upon to ensure an Allied victory. Enthusiasm for a Nazi-fighting Holmes soon waned, and the series moved first into ghost-and-ghouls chillers, and finally into visceral horror films in which Professor Moriarty, Holmes' old enemy, had been replaced by a new breed of villain - a deadly female. England's Secret Weapon examines the way the studio steered a careful course between modernising the detective and making sure he was still recognisable as the 'old Holmes' - in clothes, locations and behaviour.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One Man's Opinion,
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This review is from: England's Secret Weapon (Paperback)
This is not another rehash of the plots and characters but an in-depth analysis of the genres of the Rathbone/Bruce films. The two Twentieth Century-Fox productions
are given their due but the Universal movies are the book's main concern. Breaking the films into three main categories, war-involvement, gothic and female arch-villain, the author takes a detailed look at each. While occasionally being too pedantic the text overall gives a new view of the series.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Analysis,
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This review is from: England's Secret Weapon (Paperback)
One of the most interesting books on film I have read. It doesn't just list the Rathbone/Holmes films during WWII but does analysis on them from many different angles. It doesn't just comment on the films in retrospect but also on how they were made at the time & how everything progressed & why. It's kind of a miracle a lot of films got made at all considering what everyone had to go through. A really fascinating read.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A splendid achievement!,
By Roger Johnson (Chelmsford, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: England's Secret Weapon (Paperback)
In 1992 my 48-page chapbook, "`Ready When You Are, Mr Rathbone': A Review of the Universal Holmes Films", was published by the Northern Musgraves. Brief as it is, for years it was the only substantial study of the twelve Sherlock Holmes pictures that Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce made for Universal. Now Middlesex University Press has published something very much more substantial, "England's Secret Weapon: The Wartime Films of Sherlock Holmes" by Amanda J Field. By examining them in the context of the time in which they were made, Ms Field is able to show us that Universal's Baker Street Dozen were considerably more than the poor relations of the two cinematic aristocrats that Fox had made in 1939. She works as a volunteer with the Lancelyn Green Bequest at Portsmouth, which gave her access to an extraordinary amount of primary material -- scripts, contracts, correspondence with the Conan Doyle brothers -- but she has also dug far deeper than any previous Holmes scholar among various archives in Los Angeles. Thanks to Ms Field, we can appreciate how cunningly Rathbone and Bruce are linked to their origin in Victorian England, which American audiences in 1942 saw as a bastion of democracy. She charts the less than straightforward development of the series, from blatant propaganda through gothic murder mystery to the introduction of the femme fatale. Despite the book's title, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" are dealt with in some detail, though "The House of Fear", "Pursuit to Algiers" and "Terror by Night" receive little attention. I do have some minor quibbles. The Swiss musician at the beginning of "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon" is playing a hammered dulcimer, or hackbrett, not a xylophone. Irene Adler's disguise was as `a slim youth', not an ostler. The 1959 Hammer film "The Hound of the Baskervilles" does not feature a séance. And I fancy that William Gillette would have been disappointed to be told that he played Sherlock Holmes with an American accent. But, as I said, these are minor matters. "England's Secret Weapon" is a splendid achievement, one of those books that force you to look anew at a subject that had, perhaps, become too familiar.
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