Film Review
Dressed to Kill was the last
of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes films featuring Basil Rathbone as the
famed Baker Street detective and Nigel Bruce as his trusty companion Dr
Watson. Having played Holmes on radio and film for seven years
(starting back in 1939 with
The Hound of the Baskervilles
and
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes),
Rathbone was not sorry to give up the part, although Bruce still
relished playing Watson and would continue portraying the character on
radio for another year, with Tom Conway taking over the mantle of
Holmes. This was not, however, Rathbone's final association with
the great detective. He would appear as Holmes in a half-hour
American television drama,
The
Adventure of the Black Baronet, in 1953, and then in a
short-lived stage play that same year. This play was intended to
feature Bruce in the role of Watson, but the actor was too ill to work
at the time and died when the play was in rehearsal.
With its carefully constructed plot and Holmes's reliance on deductive
reasoning rather than ad hoc plot twists to solve the mystery,
Dressed
to Kill feels like a genuine Conan Doyle story, far more so
than many other entries in the series. In fact, the plot is
loosely based on the writer's short story
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,
which had previously been adapted for an earlier film in the series
The Pearl of Death
(1944). There are numerous references to other Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes stories, notably
A
Scandal in Bohemia. The film may not be as imaginatively
directed or shot as some of the films that preceded it, some may cringe
at Nigel Bruce's attempt at a Donald Duck impression, but overall this
is a satisfying piece of escapist fun, and a respectable swansong for
Basil Rathbone's exemplary Sherlock Holmes.
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Roy William Neill film:
Terror by Night (1946)
Film Synopsis
When one of Dr Watson's old friends, Stinky Emery, is murdered at his
home in London, Sherlock Holmes is intrigued - not so much by the
killing but by the theft of an ordinary wooden music box which Emery
purchased shortly before his death. Holmes discovers that the box
was acquired at an auction house, one of three boxes that were sold,
each made by inmates at Dartmoor prison. Holmes manages to trace
the owners of the other two boxes, but his unknown opponents steal one
of the boxes before he can act. He does, however, succeed in
recovering one of the boxes. He deduces that the tune played by
the music box is a secret code, one that will reveal the location of a
set of stolen Bank of England printing plates. Will he be able to
crack the code from the one piece of the puzzle he has in his
possession?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.