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When Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Wontner) officially announces his retirement,
professor Moriarty (Lyn Harding), the only crook he could never prove guilty,
is one of the first to congratulate him.
However, Holmes does not plan to stay idle in retirement & soon gets
information from one of his undercover agents in Moriarty's organisation that a
murder is to be committerd - & really, Moriarty was hired by Amreican
Balding (Ben Welden) to get rid of a renegade member of his organisation ...
whatever that is.
Holmes & Watson (Ian Fleming, no not the Ian Fleming, but still, an Ian
Fleming) are soon called to the country estate of John Douglas (Leslie
Perrins), who has been brutally murdered, his face literally shot away - &
it does seem the killer has left thrugh the window, leading the police to
search the vicinity for the killer ... but Holmes has different ideas - about
both the jkiller & the victim - & forces Douglas' wife Ettie (Jane
Carr) to come clean.
She tells of how she met Douglas back in the USA & immediately fell in
love with him, even though he became a member of the Scowlers, a criminal
organisation, & soon became the favourite of Boss McGinty (Roy Emerton),
much to the dismay of above mentioned Balding who was previously McGinty's
favourite and had his claims on Ettie. However, all his attempts to
discredit Douglas or even have him arrested failed, & even when a Pinkerton
detective showed up in town, Douglas seemed to have a plan to get rid of him.
The gang had high hopes in that plan, but then it backfired when Douglas turned
out to be the detective himself & had the whole gang arrested by the police
...
This seems to be the end of the story, but then Balding broke out of prison,
with nothing on his mind but killing Douglas - in which he seems to have
finally succeeded.
Delighted to finally know who he is looking for Lestrade rushes oft to
arrest a killer, but Holmes is still not satisfied ... & finally he
discovers a secret passageway, & iin it ... Douglas, very much alive -
turns out the dead man wasn't him at all but of all people Balding, who indeed
wanted to kill him, but was killed himself in an ensuing struggle - &
Douglas merely seized the opportunity to fake his own ddeath to escape further
vengeance of the Scowlers.
Case solved, but in the end, Moriarty also shows up (if only to confirm he
was involved in the crime), but Holmes, Watson & Lestrade already await
him, & during his escape he is killed by a bullet & a fall from a high
tower into the swamps ... but is he.
The direction of this movie is pretty stagey, & seeing Holmes deducting
proves to be rather dull as it is presented without either suspense or humour,
but the shifting of the plot to America & replacing the very sober
detective work with a more earthy gangster story proves to be a pleasent
change, adding vastly to this movie's entertainment values. However, why the
character Moriarty was even written into the story remains something of a
mystery, fotr the core plot would work equally fine without him (somehow I got
the impression that Balding hired Moriarty to kill Douglas, but in the end he
tried to kill Douglas himself - so why even bother hiring Moriarty ?).
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