Am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and get a lot of enjoyment out of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. Also love Basil Rathbone's and especially Jeremy Brett's interpretations to death. So would naturally see any Sherlock Holmes adaptation that comes my way, regardless of its reception.'The Sign of Four' is one of my favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, due to the ingenious climax and denouement (one of Conan Doyle's best), great story and one of Conan Doyle's most fascinating antagonists. Furthermore, interest in seeing early films based on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and wanting to see as many adaptations as possible of the story sparked my interest in seeing this 1932 film adaptation, as part of the series of films with Arthur Wontner. While it is not as good as the Jeremy Brett Granada version, to me the definitive version of the story, this is a worthy effort in its own right and anybody wanting to see early versions of Sherlock Holmes will get a kick out of it. The basic structure generally is intact, although there are alterations and Small's role is expanded (nice enough but considering the character was fascinating already it was perhaps not needed). For me, 'The Sign of Four' is not perfect. The sound is quite severely wanting and there is a slightly primitive look to the production values, although there is some evocative and handsome period detail. Also felt that some elements of the mystery are revealed too early in favour of expanding some of the characters and that, even for a character that never was the brightest bulb on the block, Jones is far too much of an idiot. Isla Bevan's performance sometimes descends into melodrama, though it is a better performance than the Mary Morstan of the Matt Frewer adaptation. However, the mystery and suspense of this riveting story are intact and handled very well. The climax is tensely staged. As said, the period detail is quite good. Writing is thought-provoking and the film is never dull and easy to follow. Excepting Bevan and Gilbert Davis (rather too buffoonish), the acting is not bad at all. Arthur Wontner may technically have been too old for Holmes but he did not look too old and his portrayal is on the money, handling the personality and mannerisms of the character spot on without over-doing or under-playing. Ian Hunter is a charming and amusing Watson, with nice chemistry between him and Wontner. Roy Emerton, Graham Soutten and Miles Malleson are particularly good in support. In conclusion, good. 7/10 Bethany Cox

It's an imperfect telling of the tale -- and a truly lousy print -- but entertaining nonetheless. The script spends too much of the running time on two hoodlums who are after the Rajputana pearls or whatever they're called. Good thing they're Indian, not Italian. And too much time on innocent young Mary Morstan in her flower shop. Holmes and Watson don't appear until about twenty minutes into the film. In the story as written, she simply shows up at 221b Baker Street because she's puzzled about the gifts of pearls she's been receiving. But at least, in this movie, the escaped Andaman convict, Jonathan Small, has his lengthy back story shown in a brief prologue, so that's gotten efficiently out of the way. The rest of the film follows roughly in the footsteps of the printed tale. Holmes and Watson pursue a stolen treasure that's in the hands of the two goons and their curious friend. Holmes makes some fantastic deductions that not even Conan-Doyle would have dreamed up. He infers from a man's penmanship that the writer had only one leg. Credo quia absurdum. But he gets one thing right when he deduces from a footprint that the foot had never worn shoes. I spent two years on a small Pacific island and it was almost immediately apparent whether the marks of bare feet in the sand had been left by natives or tourists.For those of us accustomed to a Sherlock Holmes that looks and acts like either Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett, Arthur Wontner is a strange specimen. He LOOKS like the Paget drawings! And in profile he strongly resembles Rathbone. But he's also shorter, like Brett. And, like neither of his two famous successors, he moves lazily, casually, stiffly. And his chief weakness is his voice. It's rather mousy and pinched. It sounds as if it's HE who should be behind the counter in that florist's shop, not Mary Morstan.Watson is Ian Hunter, better known as Richard the Lion Heart in "The Adventures of Robin Hood." As one of the Sholto brothers, Miles Malleson is incredibly youthful and looks something like Alfred Hitchcock. No one else in the cast stands out except Thug Number Two, a tattooed giant of a man who could take Mike Mazurki apart.I've sort of made fun of it but I shouldn't be too harsh on the movie. It was hard to produce a sound movie with any dexterity in 1932 because of technical limitations. You can see some obvious examples in the movie. But it is, after all, Sherlock Holmes and, unlike the updated versions from Universal Studios in the 40s, this one tries to show us something of the original story.

The Sign Of The Four or at least the screen version of the Arthur Conan Doyle novel has something you'll never see in another Sherlock Holmes film. It's Baker Street heresy in fact to have Dr. Watson get the girl.But that's what happens here as young Isla Bevan seeks the aid of Holmes and Watson portrayed here by Arthur Wontner and Ian Hunter. She's scared out of her mind because she has some valuable pearls that belong to a treasure taken from the Island of Andaman off the Malay and Bengal coasts. She didn't acquire them honestly, in fact her Indian army father along with another two partners stole them. They acted on a tip from a crazed one legged prisoner played by Graham Soutten who swore vengeance upon them for leaving him in the joint and denying him his share. Soutten's out and taking his revenge.The part of the crazed prisoner is played by a real life amputee who gets around pretty good. If Soutten had been American, MGM might have cast him as Long John Silver in Treasure Island instead of Wallace Beery. Soutten has a couple of cronies from the carnival where he is employed and traveling incognito. That part of the film could almost have been called Sherlock Holmes meets Freaks.Young Ms. Bevan and Hunter start falling for each other, but Hunter in his attempt to one up Wontner puts her in harm's way. It leads to more of an action climax than you will usually find in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce series of Holmes films.Still the idea of Watson getting the girl is really too much for Baker Street purists to take.

I've seen all four extant films with Arthur Wontner playing Sherlock Holmes (the others are "The Sleeping Cardinal," "The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes" and "Silver Blaze"), and this one is definitely the best. Associated Talking Pictures clearly had better facilities than Twickenham (the company that made the others), and the multiple producers (including Rowland V. Lee and Basil Dean, who had previously directed a Holmes film himself) picked a story with lots of action and hired a capable director, Graham Cutts. Cutts usually gets dismissed patronizingly in biographies of Alfred Hitchcock (Cutts directed a number of films in Britain in the early 1920's on which Hitchcock assisted, including "The Rat" and "The Triumph of the Rat" with Ivor Novello) as a mediocre director who drank and womanized his way out of a major career. Judging by his work here, Hitchcock fans should probably be looking at Cutts as an influence on the Master; this film MOVES (most of the other Wontner Holmes films are boring and plodding), it's clearly staged with a sense of pace, it makes good use of unusual camera angles (including a surprising number of overhead shots), and the final fight scene (though obviously done with a stunt double for Wontner) is a genuinely exciting action highlight. Cutts also gets a marvelous villain performance out of Graham Soutten, and effectively uses the sound of his peg leg at a time when the art of suggesting off-screen action with sound effects was common in the U.S. but relatively unknown in Britain. He also makes Wontner a more convincing Holmes than in his other films in the role — Wontner even LOOKS younger here than he did in "The Sleeping Cardinal," made two years earlier — and Ian Hunter is a more effective Watson than usual even though it's a bit jarring to see a Watson who's clearly taller than his Holmes. As someone who'd watched the other Wontner Holmes films wondering what all the fuss was about — he's always seemed overrated in the role to me — this one has raised my opinion of Wontner as Holmes considerably. Isla Bevan is a striking leading lady with an interesting resemblance to Ginger Rogers — later one of the cinematographers on this film, Robert de Grasse, became Ginger Rogers' favorite cameraman at RKO.