50 Mystery Classics

[Zone Fighter]

I just got 50 Movie Pack Mystery Classics. It was just a few minutes ago so I haven't watched any but they include 6 Bulldog Drummond cases, 3 Dick Tracey, 2 of The Shadow, 1 Mr. Moto, 2 Mr. Wong, 8 Sherlock Holmes, 1 Nancy Drew and 27 others.. Stars are John Howard, Ray Milland, Morgan Conway, Boris Karloff, Rod Laroque, Peter Lorre, Bela Lugosi, Arthur Wontner, Basil Rathbone, Bonita Granville, William Powell, David Manners, Frank Sinatra, Brian Donlevy, Richard Basehart, Mickey Rooney, Donna Reed, Burgess Meredith, Roland Young, Glenn Ford, Robert Young, George Zucco, John Garfield, Franchot Tone, Charles Boyer, Lew Ayres, Orson Welles, Aileen Pringle, John Payne, Tom Neal, Lizabeth Scott, Noah Berry, Edward G. Robinson, Ann Savage, and James Cagney. Some of them in multiple films. This is a 12 disk set.

[Xenorama ™]

That does sound cool. I look forward to reading how you like them.

[Zone Fighter]

I watched the first two, "Bulldog Drummond's Revenge" and "Bulldog Drummond Escapes". They're very different. The first one has John Howard in the title role, the second Ray Malland. In the first one Drummond is on his way to marry Phyllis Clavering when a mystery intervenes. In the second Drummond doesn't know Miss Clavering until she steals his car, in attempt to escape from a man who is holding her prisoner. By the end of the second Drummond and Clavering are engaged. The first film is played slightly less seriously than the second. Although the second has the better mystery I liked the first one more. The rest of the Bulldog Drummon films have John Howard as Drummond.

Althougth John Howard played the title character in "Bulldog Drummond's Revenge" and is listed as the star on the box and dvd sleeve the film it self gives top billing to John Barrymore as Colonel Neilson of Scotland Yard. The dvd sleeve lists John Baerrymore as the star of the 5th Bulldog Drummond film, though of course he plays the Colonel Neilson again.

"Bulldog Drummond's Revenge" is just under an hour, "Bulldog Drummond Escapes" is just over an hour.

The Bulldog Drummond films are similar to the Thin Man movies, mysteries mixed with comedy and romance. The feature Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, his pal Algy Longworth, Drummond's fiancee Phyllis Claverling, Drummond's manservent Tenny and Colonel Neilson of Scotland Yard. The dvd sleeve refers to Tenny as Drummonds "butler" a common mistake when American's try to describe English servents. He is not a butler (employee placed in charge of running a household) but a gentleman's gentleman, a man empolyeed to travel with his employer to tend his every need. A gentlemen's gentleman makes the travel arrangements including reserving hotel rooms, packs his employeers clothes, makes the tea and prepares the drinks. In Tenny's case he also keeps the pistols cleaned and loaded.

The famous Jeeves is also a gentleman's gentleman not a butler.

[Zone Fighter]

So far my only complaint is that the films are not in chronological order.

The Bulldog Drummond films are on the disks as:
Bulldog Drummond's Revenge (1937)
Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937)
Bulldog Drummond in Africa (1938)
Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police (1939)
Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937)
Bulldog Drummond's Peril (1938)

which is obviously out of order.

Except for Escapes each starts with "Bulldog" and Phyllis trying to get married but someone gets murdered and he gets involved in trying to catch the killer. In most of the films the killer is a bearded man. In one the butler actually did it. I'm not spoiling anything, they're like Colombu would be decades later, the audience knows who the killer is from the start.

There were at least 20 Bulldog Drummond films.

Having read the Sherlock Holmes books I already knew the Sherlock Holmes films were out of order.

[Zone Fighter]

Dick Tracy, Detective (1945)
Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947)
Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946)

Again out of sequence.

First and third started Morgan Conway as Tracy. The second stared Boris Karloff as Gruesome and Ralph Byrd as Tracey. They were fun movies. Characters had names like "Y. Stuffit - Taxidermist", a physicisit named "A. Tomic" with an assistant named "I. M. Learned". I liked Byrd better as Tracy.

Next are two movies featuring The Shadow.

[Zone Fighter]

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! Hahahahahaha!!"
(The Shadow radio series tag line)

A brief history of The Shadow: The Shadow started out as merly the host of "Detective Story" radio series, which publishers Street & Smith tried to use to promote their "Detective Story" magazine. Their plan didn't work. People remebered the name of the host not the name of the show and asked for "The Shadow" magazine. There was no such magazine. So Street & Smith hired a former magician turned author to write stories for a new magazine. Eventually "The Shadow" was given his own radio series in which Lamont Cranston had the power to "cloud men's minds so they cannot see him". And The Shadow was given an assistant "the lovely Margot Lane, the only person who knows to whom the voice of the mysterious Shadow belongs". The first radio Lamont Cranston was Orson Welles. The first radio Margo Lane was Agnes Moorhead.

The Shadow Strikes & The Shadow International Crime, which star Rod Laroque as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, are based on the early Shadow magazine stories which do not include Margot Lane. And the Shadow is merly a man dressed in black in these films.

The Shadow Strikes (1937) actually features very little of the Shadow. He appears briefly at the beginning and then again near the end. In this film Lamont Cranston is the son of an attorney who was too succesful at bringing down mobsters. The mob had him murdered. Lamont use the Shadow identity to try to find his father's killer. The Shadow's true indentity is known to Lamont Cranston's driver Henry. Most of the film focuses on Cranston impersonating another man. In fact he's never refered to as Lamont Cranston until the end of the film.

A man is murdered just as he was about to change his will. Lamont Cranston is determined to find out who killed him. A member of his family who would lose out if the will was changed? Gamblers owed money by one of the potential heirs?

The Shadow could have left out entirely and it would have made little difference to the story. Cranston could have held the thugs at gunpoint without the black cloak.


[The Shadow:] International Crime (1938) has Lamont Cranston working as a newspaper columnist and radio commentator under the alias of The Shadow. That Cranston is the Shadow is not a secret. Cranston is saddled with the newpaper owners niece, Pheobe Lane, a reporter wannabe as an assistant. There's a picture of the Shadow on the wall of the room Cranston broadcasts from. Police Commisonar Weston, a regular character in the radio series is in this movie, however this movie Weston and Cranston are not friends. Cranston's car and driver have been replaced by a taxi cab and driver, Moe.

A reference is made to a murder Cranston solved which was not the crime in the previous movie, so there must be more movies in this series.

The movie itself does not have "The Shadow" in the title and Cranston never wears the Shadow costume. Would have been better if they had left out all refrences to the Shadow.

"The weed of crime bares bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows! Hahahahahaha!!" (another Shadow radio series ending quote)

[Zone Fighter]

Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939)

International police agent Moto, Kentaro (Peter Lorre) is on the trail of foreign agents plotting turn England and France into enemies (again) as a plot to start a war.

Also features John Carraidine as a British Secret Service agent.

Although Mr. Moto is supposed to be a jiu-jutsu expert this is not a martial arts film. He's also supposed to be a master of disguise but his disguise in this film consits of taking a false name and prentending to speak very little English when in fact his English is excellent. According to his file he's also skilled in magic, though he does not perform any tricks in this film. This was one probably one of series of films.

[Xenorama ™]

I'm pretty sure there were several Mr. Moto movies, but I've not seen any of them.

[Zone Fighter]

The Internet Movie Database lists 9 Mr. Moto films.

[Zone Fighter]

The Mysterious Mr. Wong (1934) stars Bela Lugosi as Foo Wong, a power mad Manchurian who's searching for the tweleve Coins of Confucious, because possession of them will make him ruler of the Chinese province of Keewat. Newspaper reporter Jason Barton (Wallace Ford) investigates a series of a murderers in China Town, for which Mr. Wong is responsible. Although most of the characters were supposed to be chinese they were not played by orientals.

Mr. Wong, Detective (1938) stars Boris Karloff as detective Mr. James Lee Wong. It is the first in a series. I wouldn't have recognized Boris Karloff it were not for his voice. There are at least 5 other titles in the series. In this one Mr. Wong is hired to protect a business man. When his client is killed Mr. Wong naturally has to find the murderer.

[Zone Fighter]

The Sherlock Holmes movies are on the disks in the following order:
Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four (1932)
The Triumph Of Sherlock Holmes (1935)
Sherlock Holmes: Murder At The Baskervilles (1937)
Sherlock Holmes: The Woman In Green (1945)
Sherlock Holmes: A Study In Scarlet (1933)
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)
Sherlock Holmes: Terror By Night (1946)
Sherlock Holmes: Dressed To Kill (1946)

I'm watching them in the order they were made.

Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four (1932)

Arthur Wontner as Sherlock Holmes
Ian Hunter as Dr. John H. Watson

Losely based on Arthur Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel. Holmes client is a frieghtend woman Mary Morstan, who's received mysterious messages, in the mail, including one threatening her life. This movie began a bad trend of turning Sherlock Holmes into a contemporary character instead of leaving him in his own century. There were also major changes in the characters personalities, making them far less interesting then the characters Doyle described,and the movie rather dull. They even had the gull to change the ending. Ian Hunter is a better Watson then Nigel Bruce but Basil Rathbone is a better Sherlock Holmes than Arthur Wontner.

[Xenorama ™]

I didn't mind so much them updating Sherlock for the movies. It wasn't such a stretch. If they did it NOW, for this century, well, that wouldn't be so good.
If I remember correctly, the stories took place at the end of the 19th century, in the 1880s and 1890s.

[Zone Fighter]

Changing the time destroys the atmosphere.

Holmes is supposed to travel around London in a Hansom cab (horse powered) not a 1930s automobile. And he is not supposed to have electric lights. The boats in this story are supposed to be steam powered launches, Holmes has to feed wood into the boiler, not small boats with outboard motors.

[Xenorama ™]

London's atmosphere in 1930 was probably pretty similar to the atmoshere in 1890. But I see your point. Was Doyle still alive when some of these movies were made?
The Jeremy Brett adaptions are quite nice, and very true to the short stories. Whereas Hammer's version of HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES was not so true, but set in the original time. Unless Holmes and Watson are completely out of character, I usually enjoy the movies, no matter when they are set.
Heck, I even like Young Sherlock Holmes, and that plays plenty fast and loose with the timeline.
Although I agree, the original stories should be set in the original time.
Some of the original movie ideas, set in WWII are kind of cool, I think.

[Zone Fighter]

I'm not sure when Doyle died. He did have Holmes and Watson take on German spies, but they were agents of the Kaiser not the Führer, and the war had not started yet. The story is "His Last Bow" and is meant to be Holmes' last case.

I doubt that Doyle would have been bothered by any changes the movies made. He came to despise Sherlock Holmes and once told a playwrite who asked if he could have Holmes get married "you may marry or murder him". Doyle thought the Sherlock Holmes stories were his weakest works and did not deserve the attention they got. He prefered his Professor Challenger stories. He tried to kill Holmes off in "The Final Problem" only to have Holmes intrude himself into "The Hound of the Baskervilles" which he intended to be a straight forward ghost story. Eventually he gave into the demands of his readers (including his own mother) and explained how Holmes was not killed after all in "The Adventure of the Empty House". But he resented Holmes after that.

Agatha Christie came to have similar feelings about Hercule Poirot and killed him off in "Curtain'", published after her own death. "Sleeping Murder" also published after Christie's death leaves Miss Jane Marple alive and well. So she must not have minded her.


One last thing, Sherlock Holmes never said in any of Doyle's novels or short stories "It's elementary my dear Watson".

[Zone Fighter]

Sherlock Holmes: A Study In Scarlet (1933)

Reginald Owen as Sherlock Holmes
Warburton Gamble as Dr. John H. Watson

Despite the title this film has nothing to do with Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel in which the killer writes on a wall in human blood and when caught takes up the rest of the book explaining the murders in a story set in the USA and involving Mormons. Instead the film has Holmes investating the deaths of members of a group called "The Scarlet Ring". The members of this group signed a pact leaving their property to the other members upon their deaths. Not surprisingly members start dropping dead. Holmes is put on the case by a widow left without an inheritence because of this group. Each deceased has in his possesion a line from the same poem which inspired Agatha Christie to write . "Ten Little ^*Indians" (US title) aka "And Then There Were None" (alternate title). The poem in this film reads "little black boys". There are some things in this film which I think were borrowed from some of Arthur Conan Doyle's sort stories but offhand I can't say which ones. I liked this film better than "Sign of Four" I just wish they had given it an original title. I still prefer Basil Rathone over the other movie Holmes.


*=the original British title of Agatha Christie's book includes a word that begins with N and is not socially acceptable in the USA so it was changed to Indians. The title was changed a second time to "And Then There Were None". It was common for American publishers to change the titles.

[Zone Fighter]

The Triumph Of Sherlock Holmes (1935)

Arthur Wontner as Sherlock Holmes
Ian Fleming as Dr. John H. Watson
Lyn Harding as Professor Moriarty

The Ian Fleming who played Watson was NOT the Ian Fleming who created James Bond.

This film is a mixture of Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "The Final Problem" and his fourth Sherlock Holmes novel "Valley of Fear".

Sherlock Holmes has announced his retirment. He plans to move to the country and take up bee keeping (as in the short stores). Before he leaves he has an encounter with Professor Moriarty (scene from "The Final Problem"). Watson and his wife take over the house at Bakerstreet as Mrs. Hudson goes with Holmes to prepare his meals and keep his house. An Amercian criminal hires Moriarty to kill another American who has fled to England. While Watson is visiting Holmes in retirement inspector Lestrade arrives asking for Holmes help in invistating a shooting death 20 miles from Holmes new home. Holmes having just received a note warning of danger to the occupants of the castle from one of Moriarty's less than faithful men, goes with Lestrade against Watson's objections.

Moriarty does not appear in the novel though Holmes does talk about him.

They covered more of the American portion of the story then I expected. Like "Sign of Four" they changed the ending. Until that I was enjoying the film. They killed Moriarty only to have him appear alive and well 2 years later in "Murder At The Baskervilles".

The opening credits for this movie refer to "the late Arthur Conan Doyle" so he was dead by 1935.

[Zone Fighter]

Sherlock Holmes: Murder At The Baskervilles (1937)

Arthur Wontner as Sherlock Holmes
Ian Fleming as Dr. John H. Watson
Lyn Harding as Profesor Moriarty

Losely based on Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "Silver Blaze". The Baskervilles and Moriarty are not involved in Doyle's story. They did not need to be included in this movie, they added nothing to it.

Twenty years after Holmes solved the case of the Hound of the Baskervilles he is invited to take a holiday at Baskerville Hall. He accepts and becomes involved in solving a murder and the disappearance of a race horse, Silver Blase.

Strangely, Holmes is living in London and Moriarty who was supposed to have been killed in "The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes", which was the sole reason for the title, is alive and well.

Holmes: I call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the next.
Lestrade: The dog was perfectly quite in the night.
Holmes: That is the curious incident.

They changed the ending, again, this time by adding a sequence in which Moriarty's man takes Watson prisoner. Holmes comes to Watson's rescue of course and the film ends with Moriaty in custody.

This concludes the 1930s Sherlock Holmes films on this DVD set. The next four are from the 40s and star Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Two feature Professor Moriarty

That's a lot of Moriarty considering he actually appeared in only one of Doyle's short stores "The Final Problem".

[Xenorama ™]

I'm also amazed at how popular Moriarty is as well, since he was only in that one story! It'd be like the Joker only being in one story.

[Zone Fighter]

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
Nigel Bruce as Dr. John H. Watson
Lionel Atwill as Profesor Moriarty

When I read that this film put Holmes in the second world war I thought I'd hate it, but it turned out that I enjoyed it. A Swiss scientist invents a new bomb site which the English government and the Nazis both want. Holmes gets the scientist safely to England but then he's abducted by Professor Moriarty. The professor refuses to talk even after being tortured by Nazi spies. So the race is on between Holmes and Moriarty as to which can decipher the scientist's secret code giving the locations of the four pieces of the bomb site first.

Holmes wore three different disguises in this film.

The coded messages using drawings of stick figures is taken from Doyle's short story "The Adeventure of the Dancing Men", which had nothing to do with Nazis. Watson recognized the code as something he and Holmes had seen before.

This film would make a good basis for a computer adventure game. There are in fact several games involving Holmes and Watson. I have one but it needs a newer computer to play it. I have not been able to get my hands on the older games which require less powerful computers. Copies are rare outside of England.

These Sherlock Holmes films are each over an hour, longer than the previous films in this collection.

[Zone Fighter]

Sherlock Holmes: The Woman In Green (1945)

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
Nigel Bruce as Dr. John H. Watson
Henry Danielll as Profesor Moriarty

Four women are murdered. The killer cut off their right forefinger. After all the CID officers are chewed out for not finding any clues, by the Police Commsionner, one of them, Inspector Gregson, asks Sherlock Holmes for help. Holmes determines that Professor Moriarty is involved and sets out to capture him.

Once again the professor is supposedly killed at the end, but maybe he stays dead this time as he does not appear in the next two films in this collection.

I think its rather silly to name a black and white film after what color a character wears.