MEET SEXTON BLAKE (1945)

During a nighttime air raid in London, a man named Russell is killed by falling debris and someone cuts off the dead man's hand. Later, that person man gets in a fight on a bridge and is thrown into the river with his body landing on a barge that is passing under. Russell's hand is found in the man's coat pocket. (The scorecard so far: 2 dead men, 1 murder, 1 amputated hand.) Detective Sexton Blake examines the body and, in Sherlock Holmes style, deduces that Russell was a foreigner and a professional photographer. At his Baker Street address, Blake and his young sidekick Tinker talk to Raoul Sudd who is engaged to Russell's sister, and is also brother to Johann Sudd, a notorious arms dealer—the dead man on the barge was an employee of Johann's. Russell had photographs of film stars which have gone missing, along with a ring that was on his amputated hand, and Blake eventually learns that the photos have, invisibly superimposed on them, a secret formula for a new super-strong alloy which could be useful as war material, and the ring contains instructions for reading the invisible formula. Blake brings the police, Inspector Vetter and his stoic sidekick Belford, into the matter; Johann shows up accusing his brother of theft; and Raoul goes missing. We meet Noddy, a waitress who is sweet on Tinker (though Tinker seems more interested in his boss than in her) and who helps sniff out a mysterious woman by her pungent perfume. The primary villain seems to be a bearded man who they all nickname ‘Slant Eyes’ but who actually goes by Dzed (or perhaps DZ, I was unsure); when Blake and Tinker are trapped in a basement by the bad guys, Dzed shoots them point blank and escapes, but it turns out that Dzed missed completely, which raises suspicions in Blake's mind. Later, Dzed knocks out a female Free French agent, then kisses her. How many people here are not what they seem?

Sexton Blake was a British pulp fiction detective much like Sherlock Holmes: he lives in Baker Street, has a sidekick (though unlike Holmes and Watson, Blake is very solicitous of Tinker, always calling the younger man Old Son), and a friendly landlady, Mrs. Bardell, whose main character trait is making malapropisms; at one point, she worries that Blake will wind up dead and she will have to "idemnify" him in a "mortararium." As a British B-movie, it's a bit cheaper than the Holmes B-movies being produced in Hollywood at the time, but it's generally good detective fun: well-paced, nicely acted, and fairly easy to follow. The print I saw got very murky during scenes in darkness but was otherwise quite watchable. Blake is well played by David Farrar (pictured at right) who would hit a career peak a couple of years later in BLACK NARCISSUS. John Varley is handsome and nicely low-key as Tinker (anyone who calls him Mr. Tinker is told right away that it's just Tinker). Katherine Harrison is good as Mrs. Bardell, with Gordon McLeod and Cyril Smith fine as Vetter and Belford. Betty Huntley-Wright is energetic as Nobby. There's not a lot of action, but a couple of short fisticuffs scenes are pulled off well. At the end, Blake lifts his drink and says, "Here’s to the next crime!" Farrar did one more Blake film, THE ECHO MURDERS, though sadly without Tinker, though the character also appeared in TV shows and comic strips, and new stories appeared through the 1960s. [YouTube]