Some of the video boxes for the US video release incorrectly claim that the Ian Fleming playing Dr. Watson was the Ian Fleming who was the creator/writer of the James Bond novels. Although both men have the same name - a not particularly uncommon one in England - the actor playing Dr. Watson was not the same man as the James Bond author, and was in fact not even related to him. This Ian Fleming had a 40-year career as an actor and played in over 100 British films.
This movie is based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel The Valley of Fear, and the name appears as a title reference in the movie itself. For the movie, Mr. Douglas' wives were combined into one character; in the novel, he married another woman, Ivy, after Effie died of scarlet fever.
While waiting for Motiarty, Balden says, "Dammit, I've been waiting for an hour!" Somehow this utterance slipped past the American censors and is quite audible in the version played on TCM.
This is the only Holmes film that features both Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran, Holmes's top nemeses.
That is, until Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).
That is, until Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).
Like all the films featuring Arthur Wontner as Holmes, this one has a contemporary 1930s setting, making the flashback sequence pitting undercover detective Douglas against the Scowrers somewhat problematical since, historically, the real-life incident on which this sequence is based, Pinkerton operative James McParland's infiltration of the Molly Maguires, occurred in the 1870s, a full half-century earlier.
The Molly Maguires was an Irish 19th-century secret society active in Ireland, Liverpool and parts of the Eastern United States, best known for their activism among Irish-American and Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. During the 1870s, McParland infiltrated and helped to dismantle an organization of activist Pennsylvania coal miners called the Molly Maguires. They lost 20 members to vigilante execution after being accused of murder and other crimes.
The Molly Maguires was an Irish 19th-century secret society active in Ireland, Liverpool and parts of the Eastern United States, best known for their activism among Irish-American and Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. During the 1870s, McParland infiltrated and helped to dismantle an organization of activist Pennsylvania coal miners called the Molly Maguires. They lost 20 members to vigilante execution after being accused of murder and other crimes.