Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942) on Netflix
Approved19421h 8mAdventureCrimeDrama
Sherlock Holmes smuggles the Swiss inventor Dr. Franz Tobel out of Switzerland to London, where the scientist's bombsight interests Professor Moriarty, now working for the Germans.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.5/107,440 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
As World War II spreads across Europe, Sherlock Holmes works for the British government. In Switzerland he poses as a Nazi agent to pry Dr. Franz Tobel, the inventor of a highly accurate bombsight, out of a Gestapo trap and brings him to London. Tobel agrees to give the sight to the Allies but insists on keeping its secret himself: he divides it into four parts and hands each to a different Swiss scientist, none of whom knows the others. He also slips away from Holmes to see his fiancée, Charlotte Eberli, and leaves her an envelope for Holmes should anything go wrong. When Tobel disappears, Holmes and Doctor Watson are left to work out the coded message he left behind.
Cast
- Harold De Beckeras Peg Leg (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- This was the first of six Sherlock Holmes films in which Dennis Hoey played Inspector Lestrade, the Scotland Yard detective who, with Watson, supplied much of the series' comic relief.
SPOILER
This is the second Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film in which Professor Moriarty dies; in 1939's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Holmes threw him to his death from the top of the Tower of London.- Holmes' disguise as an elderly German bookseller, taken from Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Adventure of the Empty House", was later parodied in the film The Pink Panther.
- The film is credited as an adaptation of Conan Doyle's 1903 short story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men", but the only element taken from it is the dancing men code.
