Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943)

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes once again crosses swords (or at least gunfire) with Professor Moriarty, or at least the actor who played the role several years before, villain extraordinaire, George Zucco. In modernizing Holmes, the setting is switched to modern day London, ultimately leading Rathbone and Nigel Bruce's Dr. Watson to Washington DC where they seek to protect an important document from getting into Nazi hands. By integrating the Holmes stories with current events, the writers made the character not only timely but eternal, and other writers have followed suit in putting detectives of certain eras in modern settings to make them more relevant. In Holmes' case, it's a first visit to the land of baseball and apple pie, where a shot of the Lincoln memorial sets the theme for democratic ideals, always worth fighting for to preserve. Ironically, Rathbone and Bruce are decked out in their period costumes while everybody else is in modern dress. In addition to the villainy of Zucco, there's also the prickly Henry Danielle as another nasty Nazi and veteran character actor Bradley Page, here a reporter rather than the American criminals he usually played. Zucco shows up as the proprietor of a Washington D.C. antique shop (with Ian Wolfe as his well spoken but suspicious assistant), reminding me of Conrad Veidt and Judith Anderson as Nazis who ran an auction shop in "All Through the Night". Of course, in keeping with the pro democracy propaganda, Rathbone ends the film with a little speech on the values of freedom, followed by the theater's promotion of war bonds as money lent, not spent.

"Sherlock Holmes in Washington" isn't as bad as some fans make out. For once, the supporting cast don't have to put on their lamentable Cockney accents, as the plot is based in America mostly. Basil Rathbone is very settled as Holmes and his approach is much more natural than Jeremy Brett's. George Zucco is outstanding as the villain, those coal black eyes that could hold their own in the never- ending hell. Henry Daniell is also effective as another villain of the film. The story plays more like an Espionage plot and it works well. The middle section of "Sherlock Holmes in Washington" is rather weak with an unnecessary diversion from the plot. However, the film quickly improves. I found Nigel Bruce's clowning around to be rather irksome but it's not the actor's fault. It is the writers who are to blame. Anyone who is familiar with Nigel Bruce as Watson, might forever identify him as a buffoonish but lovable and loyal companion to Holmes. However, you only need to see Nigel Bruce in the 2 period films of Sherlock Holmes made by "20th Century Fox" and to listen to those excellent radio episodes to know that he could play Watson as the serious character of the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. I do like "Sherlock Holmes in Washington" but it would be overshadowed by the Holmes films from 1944.

Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Watson (Nigel Bruce) are sent to Washington to retrieve a top secret document hidden inside a book of matches before it falls into the hands of an international spy ring led by evil German Heinrich Hinckel (George Zucco).The third in Holmes's rather tedious wartime adventures, this film is one of the weakest in the entire Rathbone/Bruce series with very little intrigue and not nearly enough suspense to sustain interest, even over a scant 71 minutes run-time. It's a full twelve minutes before Rathbone even appears on screen, even longer before he gets to Washington, and once in the capital of the good-old US of A, he's given a guided tour of the city, taking in all of its landmarks (this bit's more like a travelogue than a thriller).Finally, the action begins proper, but it's far from exciting stuff, with a clue leading Holmes' to trawl Washington antique shops in search of the bad guys' lair. Meanwhile, the matchbook is passed from person to person, all of whom are unaware of the secrets it contains, eventually landing in the lap of Hinckel, who also remains oblivious to the microfilm within. When Holmes at last arrives on the scene, he must try and get the matchbook from the evil German without giving the game away. Yawn!Little more than a flag-waving exercise for the allies during WWII, Sherlock Holmes in Washington marks an all-time low for the series; thankfully, this would be the last film to pit Rathbone's Holmes against the threat of the Third Reich, the great detective getting back to solving domestic crimes in his next outing.4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.

Serviceable third entry in the Universal series takes Sherlock (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) to America where Holmes attempts to secure valuable documents being kept on microfilm after the man carrying them is murdered. Among the bad guys who'd like to get their hands on it are the reliable George Zucco (sporting an unusual head of hair for a change) and Henry Daniell. One rather tedious element involves the coincidental passing around of a mysterious matchbook, which always rather conveniently just manages to change hands. This film reportedly did not fare very well at the time and so from the next feature onward it was decided to drop the early formula Universal had employed; instead of featuring Sherlock Holmes as some sort of superhero who battles Nazi spies, they got him down to more traditional sleuthing. This approach was deemed more preferable by most fans of the legendary detective. **1/2 out of ****