1938’s Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror has the titular detective residing on Baker Street, and solving crimes with his bumbling assistant. There’s also a middle-aged woman who cooks, cleans and fusses over him. There’s even a Scotland Yard detective who has never bested Blake. Any similarities to Sherlock Holmes are purely intentional.
The film opens in China, with the very British David Farrar getting stabbed in the back, literally, by hoods that work for a diabolical mastermind known as The Snake. It is no surprise when it is revealed Tod Slaughter is The Snake, as he has been the villain in every film I have seen him in so far. What is surprising is Farrar, as this minor character, would play Sexton Blake in a couple of pictures seven years later.
Farrar is going to miss his boat back to London, and so sends friend Billy Watts in his stead, so as to Sexton Blake back in London. He knows there is going to be a meeting there of the crime syndicate The Black Quorum, which is headed by The Snake.
George Curzon in Sherlock…um, Sexton Blake and Tony Sympson might as well be his Watson, but is named Tinker. If there are any obvious differences between the series, it might be that Sherlock rarely kicked Watson in the backside, as Curzon does to his assistant here.
Watts has the misfortune of showing up at Blake’s apartment when the useless Sympson is the only one there. While waiting for Blake to return, Watts is smart enough to be suspicious of an open window in Curzon’s apartment, but stupid enough to go to that window. It is there he is killed by a South American poison dart, something I believe the Chinese rarely employ as a murder weapon.
Curiously, a great deal of the plot hinges on philately, and I was trying to imagine how one markets a film with so many scenes about stamp collecting. I’m imagining a narrator going, “THRILLL to hot stamp auction action! You’ll be enthralled by extension discussion about the perfection of perforations!”
It is at such an auction we first see Slaughter. He’s at such an auction with fellow high rollers in the collecting community. Later, we will see the same group all wearing black hoods in one of their meetings as The Black Quorum. Since everybody there knows every other person, I wondered why they bothered with the hoods. Seems to me it would be easier to determine if the group had been infiltrated by an interloper if they met unmasked.
This is the kind of affair which involves invisible ink and trapdoors. I was wondering when magic decoder rings would factor into the plot. There really isn’t any mystery here, and Curzon doesn’t make what I consider to be brilliant deductions.
Sympson is too stupid to be believed, such as when he fully believes Slaughter to be a priest, and proceeds to smoke a drugged cigar the man offers him. Then again, Slaughter did appeal to the man’s vanity, and Sympson is amazed the alleged priest knows his name. “Why not? Your name is known in every household”. I can only assume it is used as a synonym for idiot.
Also in the film is Greta Gynt as a secret service agent who appears to be some sort of Mata Hari. She’s really only here to get abducted by the villain. In the film’s standout scene, Curzon goes to rescue her and what appears to be a high-society soiree is really all mannequins in formal wear. The detective proves how ineffective he is by getting captured himself. He then is tried by a secret tribunal, and such scenes always leave me wondering why they both and whether the sentence is ever anything but death. I guess it’s naïve to wonder if such kangaroo courts ever allow the accused access to legal counsel.
I wanted Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror as part of a boxed set of Slaughter’s films and was confused as to see a film there which isn’t horror. It is no surprise it is has been one of the few disappointments on this set so far. I can’t imagine who would find this a satisfactory film, but if you do, the ending will leave you with hope for a sequel, as our brilliant detective doesn’t bother pursuing the villain, instead going on vacation. Cut to detectives with an expression like, “That’s our Sexton!” All that missing is a sad trombone sound.
Dir: George King
Starring George Curzon, Tod Slaughter
Watched as part of Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray box set The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments, 1935-1940