Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour

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11/18/2012 No great but this is also film history for it's time. See more 11/17/2012 ok B movie fare and another holmes' entry See more 04/20/2011 The Fatal Hour is truly a hidden gem of a film. Authur Wotner accentuates the cerebral and neurotic sides of Sherlock Holmes to excellent effect here. Fleming, as Dr. Watson, plays the perfect straight man to the eccentric Holmes. This film also demonstrates some early artistic film touches such as the fantastically dark and shadowed opening scene and claustrophobic interior shots which work to emphasize Holmes's "armchair-detective" style. The one serious fault I had with the film was the underwhelming first encounter between Moriarty and Holmes; the scene lacks the tension one would envision between the two. But even with this disappointing scene, I found the film a real treasure. I discovered this movie on the Hulu channel American Pop Classics, and they had some other really wonderful and obscure movies as well: http://www.hulu.com/studio/American-pop-classics?sort=name See more 10/26/2010 Arthur Wontner as Holmes and Ian Fleming as the reliable Watson are here in the earliest example of a Sherlock Holmes movie that I have seen. And this is Wontner's first appearance as the great detective. Compared to their later portrayals, which seemed to get lazier, I liked this mystery film from earlier in the 30's. Again the time period is moved up, but the style of the early 30's didn't bother me as much as the style of the later 30's in some other films. Visually the use of shadows and striking beams of light in a few tense scenes made for more interest in the mystery. Watching Holmes slowly uncover the clues and work to outsmart his nemesis proved the script was better to begin with for this who-done-it. It still seems a little odd the way Holmes talks about Moriarty like a conspiracy theorist that everyone doubts. That seems more like a movie creation than coming from the exciting words of Arthur Conan Doyle. See more Read all reviews

Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour

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