Customer Reviews

England's Secret Weapon

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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.

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.

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.

"England's Secret Weapon" by Amanda Field is a book that belongs on the shelf of every self-respecting Sherlockian! Ms. Field closely analyzes all 14 of the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes films. She engagingly dissects the plots, props and characters of all those films. Then she places them in the larger context of the film industry and in the still larger context of the atmosphere of WWII in Britain and the US.

There have been many books written on the subject of Sherlock Holmes films, but none are so engaging and as informative as this one. Although she only examines the Rathbonian Holmes, her book is a pure delight as she paints her portrait with a fine brush on a broad canvas. Details mesh seamlessly into the broad historical context. One digests this book as if one has had a fine and memorable meal

I am a member of the Baker Street Irregulars and have been a Sherlockian for over 50 years. I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommend this book to all serious fans of Sherlock Holmes. An investment in the purchase of this book will pay the reader handsome dividends indeed. The game is very much afoot!

Alexian A. Gregory, BSI