The House of Fear (1945) - film review

Drearcliffe House, a remote Scottish castle, is home to seven retired bachelors who refer to themselves as the Good Comrades.  When two of the men die in mysterious circumstances, their insurance agent invites Sherlock Holmes to investigate, convinced that foul play is afoot.  Each of the seven men has taken out an insurance policy, naming his six companions as his sole beneficiaries in the event of his death.  Holmes is intrigued when he learns that the two dead men each received an envelope containing some orange pips.  When one of the five surviving comrades receives a similar envelope, no one doubts that another death is imminent.  Can Holmes prevent it...?

A spooky old house is the setting for the tenth outing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, and neither actor shows any sign, yet, of tiring of the part which he had played on film and radio for almost six years.  In the opening credits, The House of Fear claims to be based on the original Conan Doyle story The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips, whereas in fact it merely takes one plot idea from the story, namely that the murder victim receives orange pips prior to his death.  In fact, the story is nearer to the Agatha Christie novel Ten Little Niggers, and bears a striking similarity with René Clair’s adaptation of this novel, And Then There Were None, released in the same year as The House of Fear.

This is one of the more enjoyable and polished of the twelve Sherlock Holmes films made by Universal in the 1940s, effectively combining the elements of the classic British murder mystery and the old dark house thriller, with a fair helping of slapstick to help relieve the wartime blues.  The heavily stylised design and cinematography show the influence of German expressionism, with bold shadows and slanted camera angles creating an unsettling sense of menace and tension, typifying a style that we now recognise as film noir.   To counterbalance the darker moments of the story, its authors manage to crowbar in some comedy, with Nigel Bruce and Dennis Hoey performing what looks suspiciously like an Abbott and Costello tribute act.  By this stage, Bruce and Hoey have succeeded in reducing the combined I.Q. of Watson and Lestrade to a single digit number and you now understand just why Holmes keeps saying "elementary".  The Sherlockian purists may cringe but it’s still all good fun.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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