Taking the master detective out of Victorian London into World War Two, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon has little in common with anything penned by Conan Doyle, but it is a hokey, entertaining spy thriller.
Holmes (Basil Rathbone) is up against his old nemesis Professor Moriarty (Lionel Attwill who had played Dr Mortimer in the earlier Rathbone version of The Hound of the Baskervilles), with both on the trail of a missing scientist and his invention, a revolutionary bomb sight that could change the course of the war.
The screenplay take it's cue from the Conan Doyle short story The Adventure of the Dancing Men, but there is little left of the original, beyond the plot device of an alphabet substitution code. The character of Holmes is a world away from the dispassionate Victorian gentleman, only taking cases that tickled his intellectual fancy. Here is a paid up patriotic Brit, doing his bit against the Nazis. As such there are no baffling, impossible murder mysteries to solve, just standard spy stuff like disguises and code breaking. Nevertheless, Rathbone brings the sort of energy and focus needed for the part, and Nigel Bruce as Watson is dimwitted but so charming and affable it is impossible not to like him.
In keeping with the secret agent feel of the film, Lionel Atwill plays Moriarty like a James Bond villain, and even has a secret lair with trapdoors and an entrance hidden by a moving bookcase.
The propaganda is kept to a minimum for most of the film, with the war being the McGuffin to drive a standard espionage plot. It only takes over in the closing minutes, with Holmes gazing wistfully into the distance reciting the "Fortress built by nature" speech from Richard II.
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