SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Konterr Brilliant and touching

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Tweekums After spiriting a Swiss scientist Dr Franz Tobel to Britain under the noses of the Gestapo it looks as if the RAF are going to get his revolutionary new bomb sight. Of course nothing is that simple; Tobel insists in being in charge of its manufacture and divides the sight into four parts each to be made by separate scientists whose identity only he knows. Just in case anything happens to him he gives a coded note to his fiancée which is to be given to Sherlock Holmes if anything happens to him. Not long afterwards Tobel disappears and so does the note… luckily Holmes can read the message from the imprint of the code so the race is on to decode it. Who will solve it first Holmes or his arch-nemesis Moriarty?This Sherlock Holmes adventure, made during the War, unsurprisingly has the Nazis as the bad guys even if the dastardly Moriarty is the main villain Holmes must face. The central mystery is intriguing; most notably the code that must be cracked. There are some impressive false starts as it keeps looking as though things will go wrong for Tobel before he is actually kidnapped and when he is the tension rises nicely until Holmes and Moriarty are face to face and it looks as though Holmes is doomed… at least to anybody who hadn't seen a single Sherlock Holmes story! Basil Rathbone does an impressive job as Holmes and Lionel Atwill is suitably menacing as Moriarty, there is also solid enough support from Nigel Bruce and William Post Jr as Watson and Tobel. Overall I rather enjoyed this and certainly recommend it to fans of Sherlock Holmes or anyone looking for an inoffensive mystery.

binapiraeus Just like the previous 'Sherlock Holmes' film produced by Universal, "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon" serves exclusively the same goal: to promote the Allied propaganda against Nazi Germany. A righteous cause, of course, but worked out and presented in a VERY poor and dubious way: Holmes becomes an assistant of the British Secret Service, an expert of decoding secret messages - in order to save a mass destruction device a Swiss scientist has developed from falling into the Germans' hands and to get 'safely' to its destination, the British Airforce, for which it will mean 'a revolution for aerial bombardment'... Which means of course great damage to the enemy - but also the loss of tens of thousands innocent lives, not only in Germany, but also in other towns and cities all over Europe.And what is left of the original 'Holmes'? Not much, except for his arch-enemy Moriarty, who in this case of course is collaborating with the enemy - and even the great veteran actor Lionel Atwill looks pale in the role of the evil mastermind. Watson is depicted as a complete sap this time, and all the other characters are simply insignificant; neither is there any suspense or room for criminological deductions.Now, almost every hero of Hollywood's crime movie series was 'recruited' during the War to do his part for the Allies; but, for example, 'Charlie Chan', even while he was working for the Secret Service, always remained 'Charlie Chan'... While Sherlock Holmes as a 'war hero' at home is simply beyond recognition.

AaronCapenBanner Roy William Neil took over directing the remainder of the series that stars Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes & Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson. This film, loosely based on 'The Dancing Men', finds Holmes undercover in a Swiss village smuggling out an inventor of a new bomb-sight both the Allied & Axis powers want. They are successful, but back in London the inventor is kidnapped, but had broken up his bomb-sight into four parts, and is being interrogated by the enemy, which this time is Professor Moriarty(played by Lionel Atwill) while Holmes races to find his location. Rather stodgy film with Atwill uninspired though Rathbone still fine. Film starts well but loses steam altogether.

lugonian SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON (Universal, 1942), directed by Roy William Neil, the second in the newly formatted series by the studio, makes this the fourth in the series to star Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in their now legendary screen roles. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle's story, "The Dancing Men," the film is far from being one about an all male chorus being murdered one by one in some music hall, but a series of drawn figures on a piece of paper believed to be some sort of clue for Sherlock Holmes to figure out in his latest caper. Aside from Neil's initial assignment as its series director, SECRET WEAPON also introduces Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade and the return of Holmes' arch rival, Professor Moriarty, in the figure of Lionel Atwill (minus his mustache), a role previously enacted to perfection and nearly stolen by George Zucco in the gas lit London 1890s setting edition of THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (20th-Fox, 1939).For Sherlock Holmes latest adventure some fifty years later, SECRET WEAPON opens in Switzerland where Holmes (Basil Rathbone), the master of disguises and deductive reasoning, is seen as an white haired old man entering a pub coming to the table to interest Braum (Robert O. Davis) and Jacob Mueller (Paul Fix), on some old books he wants to sell, while, in actuality, is posing as a Nazi spy pretending to expose information on a Doctor Franz Tobel (William Post Jr.), a scientist who's secretly engineered a new bomb sight. Because his life is in constant danger, Holmes, secretly hired to protect Tobel, arranges for decoys to be followed by members of the Gestapo while he and the doctor drive down the road to an airplane bound for London awaiting them. Now a house guest and under close watch by both Holmes and his associate, Doctor Watson (Nigel Bruce) at his 221-B Baker Street apartment, Tobel manages to sneak away during the midnight hours to visit with his fiancée, Charlotte Eberly (Kaaren Verne), at her residence. Unknownst to him, Tobel's being followed by a mysterious figure. Suspecting something's going happen to him before his demonstration is to be met with Sir Reginald Bailey (Holmes Herbert), Tobel entrusts a sealed enveloped containing an alphabet substitution code of dancing men to Charlotte to give to Holmes, which she does, following his sudden disappearance. After Holmes opens the envelope, he finds Tobel's code gone and replaced with a message reading, "We meet again, Mr. Holmes!" which means only one thing, that Tobel was abducted, or possibly killed, by England's most sinister mastermind, Professor Moriarty (Lionel Atwill). Holmes, Watson and Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) race against time preventing the "secret weapon" from reaching the Nazis, or worse, Moriarty, as he attempts to figure out Tobel's "dancing men" message code.Others appearing in the cast include Philip Van Zandt (Kurt); Henry Victor (Frederick Hoffner); Michael Marke (George); Harry Cording (Jack Brady, one of Moriarty's men); and of course, Mary Gordon as Mrs. Hudson, Holmes' landlady.An slight improvement over its previous installment, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR, with the writers resuming its London blitz World War II setting once again as its basic theme source, once again borrowing portions from Conan Doyle's original story. Unlike THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES where Moriarty was the central secondary character, SECRET WEAPON gives Moriarty a chance to shine (and rise from the dead) 38 minutes into the story, thus, holding his own, and Holmes as well, once together again, face-to-face, eye to eye, for some very tense moments. Under Moriarty's orders to his associates, Holmes falls victim to some death facing death experiences. Two that come to mind: Holmes bound and gagged inside a sea chest to be thrown from a carrier ship to the bottom of the ocean; Holmes strapped helplessly on an operating table to have his blood drained slowly from his body. Rathbone and Atwill, having worked together in earlier film projects as SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (Universal, 1939), and THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (20th-Fox, 1939), that latter that introduced Rathbone to Sherlock Holmes, make a fine pair, but nothing compared to Rathbone's screen partnership with Nigel Bruce. They're definitely one of a kind.Along with other movie detectives from that period, Charlie Chan being amongst them, this latest addition of "Sherlock Holmes" is standardly good 68 minutes material. The Rathbone-Bruce Universal editions would achieve greater popularity in later years when sold to television as part of its "Sherlock Holmes Theater" package. By the 1980s, SECRET WEAPON, along with few others in the series, have fallen to public domain (minus the Universal opening and closing logo), and placed on video cassette in the 1980s through various distributors. SECRET WEAPON was also broadcast on numerous public broadcast stations and cable channels (sometimes in colorized format), and sometime later on Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: March 8, 2004) and RetroPlex. Currently available on DVD in clearer prints, this and other Holmes and Watson mysteries continue to have an impact with each new generation awaiting what's in store from this and their next assignment of SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON (1943) (**1/2)