SHERLOCK HOLMES' FATAL HOUR
(aka "The Sleeping Cardinal")
(1931)With Arthur Wontner, Ian Fleming, Minnie Rayner, Leslie Perrins, Norman McKinnel
Directed by Leslie S. Hiscott
Black and White
Reviewed by JB
In his time, actor Arthur Wontner was considered by many to be
the finest screen Holmes ever. Truth is, he's not bad at all,
even all these decades later, and is certainly better than the movie
around him. He looks like he leapt from the pages of The Strand onto the screen, and although he's not an active Holmes, he still manages to outthink and outwit everybody around him.
Alas, SHERLOCK HOLMES' FATAL HOUR is pretty much
what you might expect for a low-budget 1931 film: stage bound action,
no background music, a plodding pace and plenty of
slowly-recited dialog. A mish-mosh of elements from two of
the most famous stories "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House",
FATAL HOUR has Holmes on the trail of (wait for it) Professor Moriarty,
who is behind a counterfeiting and bank-robbing scheme. There are
some nice shadowy moments here and there, but the pace is too slow and
the acting too stilted for the film to be much more than a curiosity
today. Wontner would appear as Holmes in four more films, one of which, THE MISSING REMBRANDT, is considered lost.
½ - JB
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Copyright © 2008 John V. Brennan, John Larrabee