Echec à la mort

For those that know "The Musgrave Ritual," one of the better stories of the Holmes canon, this doesn't do too badly. It takes place in a convalescent home where Watson is helping veterans who suffer from a type of PTSD. The patients, sadly, provide some comic relief, and Watson's role is once again foolish and clutzy. However, once the bodies start showing up all over the place, under piles of leaves, in the rumble seats of cars, etc., Holmes must come to the rescue. There is a lot of lightning and thunder and dark and stormy night stuff going on. There is funeral service where the heroine is asked to recite the Musgrave ritual, an ancient set of cryptic statements that eventually become significant to the solving of the case. Holmes pull a few tricks from his bag of deceptions. Like the original, everyone ends up in a hidden cellar which holds a secret. It is a reasonably resonant offering in the Rathbone series and worth a watch. The atmosphere is worth the price of admission.

This is a very entertaining Sherlock Holmes film with some of the best - maybe THE best - camera-work I've seen in the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce series.

The photography was better than the story, which was disappointing only in that it was too easy to spot the killer. Heck, even I found it no problem, so it must have been too easy.

The characters were interesting and all quite different. Some were mental patients who had suffered from World War II. Miburn Stone played the lone American and I didn't recognize the man who went on to play "Doc" in the long- running hit TV series "Gunsmoke." However, his voice sounded familiar.

Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) investigate murders at Musgrave Manor, an estate being used as a convalescent home for soldiers suffering from combat fatigue during WW2. Fourth in Universal's marvelous Sherlock Holmes series is a highly enjoyable murder mystery within a gloomy old mansion. This one's just loaded with atmosphere. Great wind and lightning effects, nice use of shadows, and some cool sets. Good supporting cast includes lovely Hillary Brooke, Dennis Hoey, Halliwell Hobbes, and Milburn Stone of Gunsmoke fame, who at this point was a contract player at Universal. A very good entry in the series.

This is one of a good number of solid, interesting mysteries in the series of Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce. This one takes the basic idea from the Doyle story "The Musgrave Ritual", and combines it rather freely with several other plot elements to create an essentially new mystery. Some of the additions are rather imaginative in themselves, and overall the mystery has the kind of intriguingly offbeat tone that fits well with the famous characters.

The setting has Watson staying in the Musgrave house, which is being used as a convalescent home for army officers, when a series of violent crimes breaks out. The mystery that arises combines suspense with an interesting puzzle that must be solved. The villain in many of the movies in the Universal series is known from the beginning, but this is one of the exceptions, allowing the viewer to try to deduce what is happening from the same clues that Holmes has available.

Rathbone and Bruce always work well together, and Dennis Hoey always adds some good moments whenever he appears as Inspectator Lestrade. Some of the secondary characters, especially some of the recovering officers, are also interesting. Although this, like the rest of the Universal Holmes features, is set in the (then) present, the setting in the old mansion gives it an atmosphere more like the earlier era of the Doyle originals. Anyone who enjoys the other features in the series should not be disappointed by this one.

The opening world turning and the Universal anthem playing and then the foggy cut to Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as the great Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick Watson staring at us telling us that yet another one of their adventures lies before us always sent shivers of joy down my spine and engendered the greatest anticipation when I was young. These films hold up remarkably well considering,well, everything. The stories are not always the best, the scripts sometimes make too many assumptions about what they feel the audience knows or should know. The acting is very decent but like the script and direction - very formulaic and predictable. But somehow all of it works and we have little screen gems to be viewed again and again. Director Roy William Neill does yet again a fine,workmanlike job in this tale of Dr. Watson working in a convalescent home when murder and the the Musgrave Ritual collide. Though based on the short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, the screenwriter takes several liberties here. Firstly, we are in the present time rather than Victorian England. After the first two films in the Rathbone-Bruce series, Universal(when they took the series over from Twentieth Century Fox) changed the venue for cost reasons. They also had Holmes as a fighter against Nazism and such. This sixth film in the series makes a dramatic departure from that and goes back to the mystery roots delved into in the first two films. Wisely done. The story here concerns a ritual and people dying when the clock chimes thirteen bells. The real heart of these films is the performances of Rathbone and Bruce. they are not great. There is no pathos. No great acting scenes. But each man imbues his character with warmth and solidity that breeds confidence in what they are doing. Rathbone seems so earnest at times yet always has a way with words and a clever phrase. Bruce embodies the almost cartoonish buffoon with a heart of gold and loyal to the core. Character actors of great ability surround them. Dennis Hoey is always fun as Inspector Lestrade and his wit fencing with Watson is great fun. This film also has a gem of a performance by Halliwell Hobbes as Brunton the butler. He is comic perfection in his scenes particularly in his drunken one. Look for Gunsmoke's Milburn Stone(Doc) as Capatain Vickery. Like all the later Holmes pictures by Universal during WWII - look for the heavy-handed(No argument here as it being a necessary one)message delivered between Holmes and Watson. This is good stuff.