Didn’t realise just how early this was … 1929/30 … and having no music suits me to the ground … the sfx are … um … interesting.

“The Bishop Murder Case” is one of the best in the Philo Vance film series. The mystery seems a bit silly at first when children’s nursery rhymes are used by the perpetrator of the crimes to publicize his murders, not unlike methods used by present-day serial killers.

But once the plot unfolds the nursery rhyme angle makes complete sense. The Bishop is a key figure in solving the mystery as the title indicates. So keep your eyes focused on that clue. I won’t say any more except to add that this is a complex mystery.

Basil Rathbone is second only to William Powell in breathing life into S.S. Van Dine’s famous private investigator. It’s obvious from this performance why Rathbone was chosen at the end of the decade to play Sherlock Holmes. The other actor who shines in this movie is Roland Young.

Though much of the acting hearkens back to the silent era which was coming to an end, Rathbone and Young seem modern in their approach. From playing on stage and in silent pictures, actors were used to wild exaggerations and outlandish gesticulations which were no longer needed now that movies could talk. Several of the characters in “The Bishop Murder Case” have not yet adjusted to working with sound. Not so Rathbone and Young.

Another early talky distraction for modern viewers is the absence of music for dramatic effect. Since live music was used to accentuate the silent screen action and mood, it seems strange that music was not immediately utilized for the same purposes on the talky screen.

Producers were misinformed that music coming from nowhere would puzzle and confuse the audience.*

So it took a few years for Hollywood to rid itself of this misconception. The decision not to use music plus fairly primitive sound effects (the viewer will readily recognize the sound of thunder as the sound of huge sheets of metal being snapped) (detract) from the overall effect of this otherwise clever and well-written murder mystery.

……

*Disagree … music out of nowhere, for no good reason, is a pain imho.

(1055) Sadly, approaching elevenses, the archive server from IYE is not responding on any device, inc. on the new ipad air 7. Cunning plan was to run a Holmes episode during elevenses and a filum later … but there it is. So another real life post, then a film coming up after that, some good ones in reserve just now … that’s one blessing. (1126)

 

15. Meanwhile, Yorkshire Rose reports

“Knife Attacker on the Loose Young woman stabbed in Islington park with Met Police hunting knife attacker The attacker is on the loose with a large police presence remaining in place at Elthorne Park A woman has been stabbed in North London. Met Police officers rushed to Elthorne Park in Islington just before 9pm yesterday (Monday, November 3) after being alerted to the knife attack. Officers found a woman, aged in her 20s, injured at the scene and she was treated for stab wounds. She was taken to A&E as a priority. A Met Police spokesperson said: “At around 8.55pm on Monday, November 3, police responded to reports of a stabbing in Elthorne Park, Islington. Officers and the London Ambulance Service attended the scene and a woman in her 20s was treated for stab wounds. “She was taken to hospital and we await an update on her condition. No arrests have been made at this early stage and residents can expect to see an increase in officers in the local area while enquiries continue.”

14. Rupert was getting around to this

13. Idealistic is not just college age girls

… dreaming of heading off to Morocco on their own to be raped, tortured and beheaded … even violent Woke beta males also succumb … no, the sad thing is the Corbyns of the world … even Zoe Raisin could be excused because of her family roots but Corbyn can’t once an adult human has got past the point where he should have grown up … those who have not and are still Trotting out the utter bollox they are … that’s a thousand times worse.

12. Winter of Brass Monkeys

11. Hypocrites Not So Anonymous

(0859) Morning all. (0943)

 

10. Handling setbacks

I rarely wax evangelical, preferring to just point to the horses near water over there and say, “They at least have some chance.” However, for 2000 years, there’s been an available way on offer to find comfort, courage and protection … it’s just that humans turn every which way but that … and it’s by no means accidental.

Part of the push to prevent people finding the upwards path is to corrupt and suppress the message, any which way, burn down churches, jail anyone openly praying while encouraging the enemy cult to do just that in public spaces. No great surprise there, nor the fall of NYC.

The theme of this item is not so much those two paragraphs but more to suggest that as well as those is the overall strategy of noting, learning, shelving for next time. There’s a mental health aspect to this … the bstds obviously want us trapped in unrequited anger and frustration … eventually, it impedes effective action, the ability to strike when needed.

Two ways to put it is … don’t get mad, get even, plus keep our powder dry. A third way is behind the title of the old blog … to nourish obscurity and to bide one’s time until the moment arrives. And a fourth piece of advice is biblical … concerning keeping the flame alive and being vigilant.

A fifth is Ephesians 6:11 to 13. To be in warrior mode, not “beta woe-is-me” mode.

This item is for those with eyes to see … time is edging closer now.

9. That girl should not be walking down a tunnel like that, alone

8. The difference between “should”

… and hellbent on “not”:

7. Steve B’s chart quiz

THE CHARTS ARE BACK ❤️❤️

Please repost so others can play !
Top songs chart
A nice uk chart .what year is it from
Try to do it without using google or Grok . Some great tracks here . #music #popchart #wednesday pic.twitter.com/AMheqo5nV6

— steve (@bagshaw2112) November 5, 2025

6. Shan’t go into it much further than this

https://twitter.com/Basil_TGMD/status/1985914823561957539

 

The moment I saw this … I really like this chap’s series, not least because he’s a genuine sort himself … there’s another, on Concrete, coming up maybe tomorrow … yes, the moment I saw this, I knew it was going to be a personal journey back to 1989, a significant year for the leaning tower as you’ll see.

Being overdramatic for just a moment … there was an incident on the second stage of the loggia where I believe I may well have fallen to my death … some sort of Guardian again?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa

The tower was leaning, for reasons which will become apparent both in the Wiki article and the video and let’s start referring now to its angle in degrees and minutes, plus its stone construction and its peculiar design … it was leaning at over 5 degrees in 1990, the year after my visit, they knew then they’d need to halt the lean before it toppled … so 1993 to 1996 saw it come back to well below 4 degrees.

My journey

I’d been in Firenze, or Florence, in a piazza with that Spanish girl I’d met and was taking in Rome and Pisa before heading north to Scandinavia … found myself on the train to Pisa and at one point, looking out of the windows, we were surrounded by seemingly endless fields of sunflowers … then the station in Pisa.

Don’t know why but I thought it would be just a small town, with the tower easily signposted … it wasn’t in the least, nor was there much around to indicate the way. Following the crowd did not work as there was no crowd … just everyone going about his or her business. Uh huh.

Found the tower eventually and again was stunned by how few people there were about. Yes, there were certainly tourists with their standard photo taking, pretending to hold the tower up from a distance and yes, it was 50 metres or so, so not small … but all the same, the whole thing across the grass seemed unprepossessing for want of a better word.

Never mind, headed for the small door at the base, where the mosaic surround was and I was in, climbing the narrow, slippery stone stairs.

The incident

There was a door which suddenly opened, bright light pouring through, there were maybe three others, total, with us, who decided to step out.

Gulp. The instant my feet were on the stones, I knew there was trouble. Stunned that we were actually allowed out there, not far from the downside’s most “down” point, I could not see below, back pressed against the wall of building stones but I knew that one quite likely slip of the feet on those slippery stones and there would be no way to stop sliding … the pillars were too far apart to help.

I was fairly certain that this was the second stage of the loggia and that’s borne out in the picture with that diminutive human framed in the doorway … could only think that one slip and I was gone … no guard rail nor raised foothold, quite the opposite … it was slightly convex and dropped away near the outer edge … I was sure death was a misstep away, so to speak, and had my hands flat against the wall behind.

Only thought was keep one’s head, slowly ease back through the door, just as the other two or three were doing.

Made it downstairs, thought never again, thanks … and in fact, that was true … never again, both with my own future doings, plus they apparently closed the tower to the public soon after … which made me think about Stonehenge … yes, I’ve been through it a few times, touching the stones, have kissed the Blarney Stone in Cork or wherever, saw Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin and obvious the Wall … and so on.

All my life I’ve been the last of this or that.

(0529) Dark outside, dark in NYC, light for us if we wish. (0619)

 

5. Moosh corner

4. Yes but it’s not just Labour, is it?

The entire uniparty policy has been this way … I can trace it from 1971 but of course, it goes way back to the late 1800s.

Long time readers know about the keyposts which we can still access on Groupthink, plus Green’s Strong Group of Friends plus various nourobscur blogs I had with similar articles. Plus The Venetians, plus The Missing Children, plus 12 Atonalism. Yes … replace comprehensive learning with ideological narrative and there it is. “Your sons and your daughters are beyond your control”, as Zimmerman sang, also add The Who.

How did I escape the clutches of the Narrative? Well I did not completely … student radical days, days of loss but I’m sure there was a Guardian of some sort, all the same. Eventually one matures and if one’s formal education had been pretty trad, pretty good … then that helps.

The majority? There are ways.

3. Steve at 1193

• Bomb Threats Received in Seven New Jersey Counties as People Vote in Heated Gubernatorial Race, Forcing Multiple Polling Site Closures – Trump Admin. Responds
• Reporting from Rome: EU Open Borders Policies Fueling Violent Crime in Italy
• Jack Smith Seized Trump’s Government-Issued Phone, Subpoenaed His Personal Records During Arctic Frost Investigation: Bondi
• “Spare Me Your Definition of What MAGA is. We’ve Been in the Trenches with MAGA from the Beginning When You Guys Hated Trump” – Steve Bannon Calls Out RINOs
• Kiev Anger As Zelensky Claims Victory As Pokrovsk Resistance Collapses
• Dr Russell Blaylock: Aluminium, childhood vaccines and the rising rates of autism
• The end of cash is very close
• Much more.

2. Mass formation psychosis

In NYC, it was obvious when I saw an interview with a girl who’d just voted early for the creep and was asked if socialism was the way to go then. “Not necessarily,” she replied. Soviet expats were also interviewed and almost all asked why a society would wish it upon themselves.

Part of the answer is in n4 above.

1. DAD at 1193

a) Cows are collapsing, say farmers and suspect statutory feed. Following dissatisfaction among cows with new feed, the national association demands clarification.

b) A historical analogy was drawn between the Nazi leader and Jordan Bardella, the president of the Rassemblement National, on France 5 mainstream television programme.

c) Are UK Police taking orders directly drom the Mosques?

d) The German Establishment is willing to commit crime to limit AfDs ability to govern.

(1728) Evening all.

 

20. These nutters are the problem

… enabling destruction of the west:

19. Is it the NYC creep’s sick smile that females fall for?

https://twitter.com/9mm_smg/status/1985685963289567528

18. More sleaze

Longer … a short film, sixth of the series but first of the new style:

Review of this film:

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death is the first film in the Universal Sherlock Holmes series (1942 -1946) to abandon the idea of Sherlock Holmes as a prototypical 007 spy-hunter, battling Nazi agents and keeping Britain safe from the Axis powers.

The bizarre experiment which began, apparently without a shred of irony, with Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror was brutally maimed when Sherlock Holmes in Washington flopped.

And so, the direction of the series changed (for the better) with the fourth outing, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death…to the point that it can almost be viewed as the starting point of a completely new Holmes series.

Here, the allusions to WWII are vague, at best. Gone are the overt references to the Nazis and the intrusive patriotic speeches…which merely impeded the proceedings in the previous films. Holmes is in his element here, solving a dense mystery by using deductive reasoning. The film is still modern, making use of such devices as automobiles, telephones, and electric lights.

But this is all incidental. If we overlook the updating of the surface elements, the story itself is rather timeless. Telephones and automobiles were present in Conan Doyle’s later Holmes stories, anyway…and the Gothic tone of this film (and several of those which followed) gives it an almost Victorian or Edwardian feel, despite being obviously set in the mid-20th Century.

And most importantly, Holmes is back to the business he should never have abandoned.

Loosely based on The Musgrave Ritual, the film is entertaining and certainly of higher technical quality than its predecessors, despite the fact that the series was forever doomed to the ranks of the low budget B-pictures. The camera work is evocative, with fluid motions and intriguing angles…which would become a staple of the Holmes series…and the direction is excellent, with Roy William Neill (who also began his role as Associate Producer with this film) really coming into his own as the driving force behind the franchise.

Rathbone’s Holmes (whose hair has, thankfully, undergone quite a transformation) is in better form here than in previous entries…detached and focused, he relies on reasoning, rather than chance, in order to solve the mystery that’s presented to him. Nigel Bruce, as Watson, turns in his usual bumbling-yet-lovable performance. Dennis Hoey once again manages to out-bumble Watson as Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard…a canonical character who made his first Universal appearance in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, and would go on to appear in a total of six of the twelve films.

Overall, not the best film in the series, but a step in the right direction. Once the filmmakers got their proper footing, in regard to the series’ new and improved direction, they produced much better work…peaking, many (myself included) would attest, in 1944 with The Scarlet Claw.

Other subsequent Holmes titles, such as The Spider Woman and Terror By Night, also outshine, in my estimation, this fourth Universal venture. But this film marked the great change that heralded all the treasures to come…and as such, has amassed much favor among fans and critics alike.

And rightly so.

(1234) Afternoon all. (1234)

 

17. Two issues to sort here

First is these people still clinging to “it’s rare” or “most of them are good people, deep down” or “the nutter had a troubbled childhood” or whatever else they come out with. Totally irrelevant. Are there certain demographics from which attacks are more likely to come from, when they do … and what to do with those “communities”? Also are there native Manchurians too, e.g. Parallax, Manchurian, even Bourne type assets? That’s an ongoing question.

The second is, as Michelle put … what to actually do, to have prepared.

At base level, the first choice is fight or flight. Flight, if you’re quick enough, means you avoid jail. But not situations, e.g. on that train, favour flight.

The other is fight and that will mean prison, in with those creeps. The perp of course is released onto the street. So in a snap decision fight situation, you have to assume you’ll be one of two things … dead or injured or he will be … either way, you will be. Moderation and slowness in this is no option. You must pre-empt the attacker, strongly.

There are decisions before that though … for example, travelling that way, being in that part of a carriage, being near a fire point etc.

There’s another still. Rather than calling, “Help! Help!” … say something different such as, “Rush him, all of you!” … often it just needs the catalyst for people to fi d courage and spring i to action, en masse.

May I also suggest stab vest or flak jacket.

16. Destructive incompetence

 

This is the earlier warmup for the Holmes film this afternoon … not the best episode of a quite good series with this Holmes and Watson, ta IYE … but I went straight for it coz of the gal … Lucille Vines, born 1929 and guess what … still alive at 96. Strange bio … gave up the acting, married, baby at 43, also still alive. Sort of gal I’m susceptible to, reminds me of WN2, who looked not unlike Joan Collins in her better years. Holmes was certainly susceptible in the episode … to a point. Terrible accent … Connecticut yankee gal trying to be sou-western … and terrible acting … but who cares?

THE EPISODE IS HERE

(0945)(1044)

 

15. The one climbing up on the soapbox

… is almost certainly the communist of one shade or the other:

Despite the justice of the cause, the fame of the march, what on earth was that communist woman doing up there? I was in Melbourne city square following the GG dismissal of the Whitlam govt in 1975 and a man in the distance literally climbed onto a soapbox with a microphone.

I was with the sister of my mate at the time, he being largely apolitical, but she was communist … Trotskist I think. She smiled and named the soapboxer, said he was a Stalinist. Uh huh, said I, and you’re a Trotskyite, yes? Didn’t he get an icepick in his head?

Don’t say things like that … and it’s Trotskyist, not Trotskyite.

Uh huh, right.

Actually, I had not a clue what she was a member of, it looked right, knew I’d check before finally posting … bet she was a radical feminazi too, suffragette type.

14. Tariffs

He’s certainly in a bind with Roberts. Does he call out Roberts at paedo island, plus the rest of it … in which case, Roberts no longer cooperates, refuses to stop the lawfare judges, finds so many ways to stymie DJT before the midterms, even losing control of both houses … or does he go full on and call them all out …

… before the midterms?

13. Bona fides

There seems to be a thread, a theme, running through Unherdables today … and that’s the question of how … how to actually bring about the needed changes, without bad players poised to hijack that process. Bona fides is another way of naming this theme for today.

12. That’s definitely one litmus test

There was that one yesterday about Snyder with all his books … the idea is, knowing nothing ehatever about him, nor this namesake billionairess “Christian” with five husbands etc. etc. … that we would read and heed anything he said.

We’ll know them by their fruits, yes, but we’ll also know them by their modus operandi, their conduct.

11. There are certain things which won’t go away

So many scenarios posited … CK was shot, was not shot was one such scenario … I can’t see how all the students present did not see and know one way or the other. Where are they on social media? There’s a clear dislocation going on here. Someone is managing to suppress all these voices.

If the entire thing was staged though, then that explains it perfectly. Everyone in that space paid to do as they were paid to. Remember that old guy saying it was him?