I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part VII-“Bumbling Down The Primrose Lane”-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “Sherlock Holmes And The Spider Woman” (1943)-A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Bruce Conan

[Well I am still standing although it has been a close thing of late, a very close thing. But even if I don’t make it to the end, the end being finishing up the twelve, no fourteen, damn films that were made about the fraudulent so-called deductive reasoning amateur private detective Sherlock Holmes’ legend, then I will at least have gotten this very important review out to the previously fawning public. Despite endless harassment and threats to me and my family who I have now twice had to move for their own protection from a nefarious organization, a cult really, calling itself the Baker Street Irregulars I finally have the proof I need to debunk an important aspect of the legend. The film under review, The Spider Woman, will put paid to my important contention that Sherlock Holmes, aka as Basil Rathbone but whose real name is Lanny Lamont which is the name I will use for the rest of this review and his boon companion Doc, Doc Watson, were lovers, were to use a word from the time “light on their feet,” committed “the love that dare not speak its name” for then obvious reasons that it was a high crime in Merry Olde England. If you don’t believe me just ask famed playwright Oscar Wilde or more recently code-cracker Allan Turing. 

A lot of the charges which I have hurled at the Lamont legend (remember aka Sherlock) about his abilities as a private detective can be considered somewhat inconsequential. For example, Lanny’s inability to shoot and hit the side of a barn when pursuing dead ass criminals, his letting the bodies pile up due to his inane bone-headed adherent to deductive reasoning when even a rank kid P.I. knows for dead certain that murder, murder one, murder most foul has no such rhyme or reason and his inevitably letting others face danger and grab the miscreants. But for private detectives of his era the failure to pursue and bed the most hardened femme fatale due to his preference for men, for bumbling Doc Watson is fatal to his legend. Proves beyond a doubt that he is a fake and a fraud. I have used the examples of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade who went down on the pillows with one of the most gun-simple femmes around, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe to make my case. Enough said.       

I have been accused, mercilessly accused, of being anti-gay, homophobic, a Neanderthal, politically incorrect and a million other things in a smear campaign which I believe has been orchestrated by the denizens of the Kit Kat Club, a homosexual club that has been around since the days of King George III and my discovery that Lanny and Doc were member was one of the first pieces of hard evidence for my decisive claims. These men are also part and parcel of the more broad based Irregulars, a band of bandits and desperadoes who have been plaguing the citizenry of London with their criminal activities from robbery to dope, maybe murder if we ever find out the facts about a lot of bodies that have washed up from the Thames over the years are committed to claiming Lanny and Doc publically to the Homintern. These cultists have gone out of their way to malign me and my discoveries by those simple anti-gay charges. That despite my well-known, this space’s well-known early support for LBGTQ rights, support for same-sex marriage when that was nothing but a dream over a decade ago (although being on marriage number three I am not sure if that will work out any better than in my case but good luck), and a stellar defense of heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower and Trans advocate Chelsea Manning.   

If say one of today’s famous private detectives Lance Lawton came out of the closet and said he was gay or Tran or whatever I, and I hope everybody and their sister would agree we would yawn, could care less and good luck. But back in the day, back in the heroic age of the private detective a right of passage was to go mano a mano with some dangerous woman, better women, hit the sack (real or implied as was the case on the screen), and personally sent them over to the law a la Sam Spade or forget them and move on to the next dangerous woman. Simple, case closed]  

*****

Sherlock Holmes And The Spider Woman, starring Basil Rathbone (I have mentioned previously my doubts that this was his real name since unlike myself he had never been transparent enough to say that he had been using an alias. I have since uncovered information that I was generally right and found at first that his real name was Lytton Strachey a known felon who spent a few years in Dartmoor Prison on weapons and drug trafficking charges. It turns out that I was either in error or the victim of a cyber-attack since then it has come out that his real name was not Strachey but Lanny Lamont, who worked the wharfs and water-side dive taverns where the rough trade mentioned by Jean Genet in his classic rough trade expose Our Lady of the Flowers did hard-edged tricks), Nigel Bruce (a name which upon further investigation has been confirmed as a British National named “Doc” Watson who also did time at Dartmoor for not having a medical license and peddling dope to minors in the 1930s and 1940s where I had assumed he and Lanny had met up. Again a cyber-attack error they had met at the Whip and Chain tavern at dockside Thames while Lanny was doing his business on the sailor boys), 1943 

I first mentioned publically my suspicions about fraudulent Lanny’s preference (after much research especially that decisive membership in the Kit Kat Club) in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon where Lanny and this good-looking young woman were trapped together in a room after Lanny had been captured by a bad guy and the young woman had been kidnapped since she probably had the formula to the secret weapon of the title. Lanny made no play, didn’t even look at her the whole time they were captivity. Proof positive he was sailing under a false flag. This Spider Woman saga is the definitive proof.          

The story sets up that an unnaturally large number of prominent and wealthy men in London are committing suicide with no explanation for the spike. Lanny faking as usual his disdain for what is happening while on vacation up in Scotland fakes his death after having a tiff with Doc causing the good doctor in an unmanly manner to bubble over in tears and head back to London to settle Lanny’s estate. Suddenly Lanny comes back to life and all is forgiven by Doc who is glad as hell to see him. Lanny’s ruse was allegedly so he could smoke out the murderer of that pile of wealthy guys, a murderer who could only be a woman by Lanny’s lights (and just another example of his contempt for women). The hounding and pursuit of some woman to take the fall against all other possibilities drives the rest of the disgusting story.     

Naturally Lanny has to set a trap, a trap involving himself at first once he figured out that this woman, this good-looking femme gang leader is using a life policy scam to kill these guys who may have been wealthy at one time but whose gambling had led them down the primrose path (although you know in the end that he will fall down, will let the real coppers of the corruption-filled Scotland Yard, coppers these days who have bungled the investigation of the whole Baker Street Irregulars crime spree). Further investigation shows that the method used dastardly for sure was to use an immune pygmy to set a deadly spider on each victims’ premises. Nice right. Sherlock temporarily falls into the femme hands but escapes in terror and let’s Scotland Yard as expected close the operation down. I can’t let this one go without mentioning Sam or Phillip would have bedded her, would have headed toward the danger and then dropped her like a hot potato.