How a 1942 spy thriller reimagined Sherlock Holmes for the Second World War
In short: In 1942, Sherlock Holmes traded Victorian fog for the high-stakes espionage of the Second World War. This film, the fourth in the Basil Rathbone series, pits the legendary detective against Professor Moriarty in a race to secure a revolutionary bombsight, utilizing ingenious disguises and a complex, unbreakable secret code.
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942) represents a radical departure from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Victorian setting. While officially credited as an adaptation of the 1903 short story The Adventure of the Dancing Men, the film retains only the concept of a dancing men cipher. Instead, the narrative functions as a wartime spy thriller, featuring Holmes and Dr. John Watson as they attempt to protect a Swiss scientist, Dr. Franz Tobel, and his invention—a sophisticated bombsight—from Nazi agents and their collaborator, the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.
The plot centers on a high-stakes puzzle: to keep his invention secure, Tobel divides the bombsight into four parts, distributing them among four Swiss scientists. When Moriarty kidnaps Tobel and murders three of the scientists, Holmes must decipher a cunningly modified substitution cipher to locate the final scientist, Professor Frederick Hoffner. Holmes employs scientific methods, such as using fluorescent salts and ultraviolet light to reveal hidden notepad impressions, to crack the code. The film showcases Holmes’s mastery of disguise, as he adopts the personas of a German bookseller, a lascar sailor named Ram Singh, and eventually Professor Hoffner himself to infiltrate Moriarty’s stronghold.
The film is notable for its place in the 14-film Rathbone and Nigel Bruce series, marking the first appearance of Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade. It also highlights the recurring, often fatal, rivalry between Holmes and Moriarty. Interestingly, this is the second time in the series that Moriarty meets his end; he falls 60 feet to his death after Holmes leaves a secret trap door open. Despite the film's departure from the source material, it maintains a connection to the original canon through dialogue referencing past cases. Today, the film remains accessible as part of the public domain, offering a unique glimpse into how mid-century cinema adapted classic literary figures to reflect contemporary geopolitical anxieties.
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