I'm finding it hard to believe how badly the story fell apart when the reveal comes near the end of the picture. For the 'Voice of Terror' to have attained it's goals, the viewer is asked to accept that a German agent killed a British soldier TWENTY FOUR years earlier!! and assumed his identity, working his way into the British Intelligence Inner Council!! Man, I've heard of undercover operations before but this one takes the proverbial cake. It's just not very credible at all.Up till then, the story had a nicely mysterious quality as Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) is brought into the British government's inner circle by it's leader, Sir Evan Barham (Reginald Denny). We don't know it at the time, but Barham is really German Heindrich Von Boch, secretly pulling strings for the Nazis and setting up British targets for assault by the German war machine. When you think about it, Von Bach/Barham made the bonehead blunder of his life by inviting Holmes to the table to unmask the Voice of Terror. In the confrontation in which the German agent is revealed, Von Boch explains that it was his arrogant conceit that made him think he could outwit Holmes with this masquerade. I guess he never read Arthur Conan Doyle.I'd like to say more about the picture but I think it all becomes a moot exercise, almost like one of those stories that ends up being a dream sequence. One thing did strike me though relative to the movie's release date. England was already engaged in World War II at the time, so a remark Sherlock Holmes makes to his partner Watson (Nigel Bruce) was strikingly prescient - "There's an East Wind coming...". The picture ends on a patriotic note heralding a victory against the Nazis that no one could have predicted accurately at the time, not even Sherlock Holmes for all his brilliant deductive reasoning.

When the sinister Voice of Terror taunts England over the radio with news of acts of sabotage against the Allies, the Inner Council of British Intelligence has no choice but to turn to England's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone). Holmes, with help from his criminal underworld connections, investigates and uncovers the true identity of the Voice of Terror.After two fine films at Fox and a three-year gap, the Sherlock Holmes series movies to Universal. The change of studios also brings with it the updating of Holmes to the 1940s, where he understandably spends the early entries in the series battling Nazis. This change upsets many purists, who already have problems with the Rathbone series for its portrayal of Watson as comic relief and its deviations from the books. If you're one of those, I doubt anything I can say will alter your opinion. I don't happen to be bothered by the changes. I actually enjoy the movies more because of them.As in his two films at Fox, Rathbone here is the perfect Holmes. One of my favorite scenes from any of his Holmes films occurs in this one when Holmes and Watson go to a seedy pub frequented by criminals. One of the criminals, a particularly frightening thug Sherlock put away years before, approaches the duo and we're led to believe any second now he will try to exact some violent revenge on Holmes. I won't spoil how the scene ends but pay attention to the way Rathbone plays this entire scene. It's wonderful stuff. I would be remiss in doing any kind of review for Voice of Terror without mentioning Rathbone's hairstyle. For some reason they decided to give him a rather silly-looking haircut where the hair on the sides is combed forward. It's hard not to chuckle when you first see it. Thankfully he wears a hat for a lot of the picture.For his part, Nigel Bruce is a great sidekick. He has less to do here than some of the other movies but, as always, he's pleasant and fun to watch. The supporting cast is great, with the likes of Henry Daniell, Reginald Denny, and Thomas Gomez giving solid turns. Special mention goes to Evelyn Ankers, who gives one of her most different performances here. She plays the wife of a criminal killed for helping Holmes who then agrees to help the detective herself. Not for the sake of law & order but for the love of country. Her best scene is when she gives a rousing speech to her fellow criminals and lowlifes, enlisting them to help Holmes and England.This is a solid start to the Universal Holmes series. Not the best but very entertaining nonetheless. Reading some of the older reviews here is a bit stomach-churning. Jeez, you'd think these people WANTED the Nazis to win! They seem so bitter and angry over the film being pro-England during World War II. What's this world coming to when people hate patriotism and nationalism so much they gripe about it more than the Nazis? The fact that most of these reviewers identify themselves as being from England or America makes the whole thing doubly sad.

This entertaining little melodrama does a decent job of moving Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson from the Victorian comforts of Baker Street into the WWII London of blitzes and blackouts. I have been watching this movie off and on for over 30 years, and it has never looked as crystal clear as it does in UCLA's stunning print on the recent DVD. Sound is sharp and clear, too, with some lines of dialogue understandable to my ears for the very first time. Speaking of dialogue, it's quite an indictment of today's Idiots-R-Us culture that a cheap B-movie from 60 years ago sounds like Shakespeare now. For example, when Basil Rathbone's Holmes reminds Thomas Gomez that the English believe every life has value, the sweaty little Nazi sneers "A quaint notion of an even quainter nation." Not bad. The plot purports to be based on Sir Arthur's wonderful endpaper Holmes story "His Last Bow," but it uses nothing beyond the villain's last name and the great closing lines. In its day, the British were outraged at this movie, with its suggestion of treachery and treason at the highest levels of government, and the country owing its salvation to the noble bravery of a prostitute. Doesn't sound so shocking now, does it?

Detective Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal literary creation, is reportedly the most filmed fictional character in cinema history, having been portrayed in hundreds of movies by literally hundreds of actors. Of those fortunate enough to have played the great detective, one actor – Basil Rathbone – remains the most fondly-remembered, having appeared in fourteen Sherlock Holmes films during a seven year period between 1939 and 1946. The first two pictures in the "series," 'The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)' and 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939),' were big-budget entries produced by Twentieth Century Fox. With the onset of World War Two, plans for further films were promptly shelved, apparently seen as less topical and, hence, a poor investment decision. In 1942, Universal Studios recognised a window of opportunity, and hired both Rathbone and Nigel Bruce {as Holmes' humble sidekick, Dr. John Watson} to reprise their respective roles in 'Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942).'A low-budget but technically-accomplished affair, the film is war-time propaganda in the greatest sense of the word, but, if you can stomach the unashamed patriotism, then an excellent mystery reveals itself. Though purportedly based on Conan Doyle's 1917 short story, "His Last Bow," the film bears only a passing resemblance to its source material. In order to compete with most of Hollywood's early 1940s output, Holmes and Watson – being "ageless, invincible and unchanging" – are relocated to the modern era, where the great detective "remains – as ever – the supreme master of deductive reasoning," and so can put forth his talents towards defeating Nazi Germany. This is not altogether different from the premise of "His Last Bow," in which an aging Holmes aids England's WWI efforts by bringing the sinister German agent Von Bork to justice. This was one of the few Sherlock Holmes stories narrated in the third-person, and, chronologically, the detective's final mystery.In war-torn London, a menacing German voice taunts England over the airwaves. This "Voice of Terror," obviously based on the real-life Lord Haw-Haw, regularly appears on the radio to denigrate the Allied war effort, and to reveal the latest devastating Nazi victory. The British Defence Committee has exhausted every possible option, and so place their faith in the remarkable investigative powers of Sherlock Holmes. The mystery itself is adequately intriguing, and, though some of the supporting work is a bit wooden, both Rathbone and Bruce display impeccable chemistry in the leading roles, and Thomas Gomez is suitably slimy as the enigmatic German agent, R.F. Meade. Elwood Bredell's black-and-white cinematography is exquisite, particularly given the relatively low-budget, and, in one scene, he does an exceptional job of capturing the warmth and sheer intellect behind Rathbone's piercing gaze, a single brief instant that perfectly captures the essence of Sherlock Holmes.The film ends with Holmes' wonderful meditation on the approaching conflict: "There's an east wind coming, Watson... Such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less. And a greener, better, stronger land will be in the sunshine when the wind is cleared." I was all set to praise the film's screenwriters (Robert Hardy Andrews, Lynn Riggs and John Bright) for their incredible writing talents, before a re-read of the original story reminded me that I'd heard that speech somewhere before! Nevertheless, full credit should be offered for their foresight in recognising the enormous power of Holmes' final words. There's even a few flourishes of humour in the screenplay, particularly in Holmes' mocking deprecation of Watson's powers of deduction, but also in the self-referential moment when Holmes reaches for his iconic deer-stalker hat, before reluctantly settling for a fedora after Watson remonstrates.