Description

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) is the fourth in the Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series) series of Sherlock Holmes films. The film is credited as an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes tale “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” but the only element of the source material to be used is the dancing men code.
This is the second Basil Rathbone “Sherlock Holmes” film in which Moriarty dies. He is thrown to his death from the top of the Tower of London by Holmes in 1939’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (film). During the course of the adventure, Holmes adopts the disguises of an elderly German bookseller (taken from the Arthur Conan Doyle story The Adventure of the Empty House), the lascar sailor Ram Singh, and the Swiss scientist Professor Hoffner. His disguise as the bookseller was parodied in the film The Pink Panther (1963 film). The film is a loose adaptation of The Adventure of the Dancing Men; while credited as an adaptation, the only content which bears similarity is the “dancing men” code.

Cast

• Basil Rathbone – Sherlock Holmes
• Nigel Bruce – Doctor Watson
• Lionel Atwill – Professor Moriarty
• Kaaren Verne – Charlotte Eberli
• William Post Jr. – Dr Franz Tobel
• Dennis Hoey – Inspector Lestrade
• Holmes Herbert – Sir Reginald Bailey
• Mary Gordon (actor) – Mrs Hudson