Dressed to Kill, also known under the better & more appropriate title Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Code, starts in Dartmoor prison as inmate John Davidson puts the finishing touches to a handmade music box. Jump to Gaylord Art Gallery where three plain wooden music boxes are put up for auction & fetch very little money from three separate bidders. After the auction the gallery's owner Ebenezer Crabtree (Herbert Holmes) is paid a visit by a Colonel Cavanaugh (Frederick Warlock) who shows a great deal of interest in the three music boxes, when he is told that they have been sold Cavanaugh pays Crabtree to let him know who brought them. An old friend of Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) named Julian Emery (Edmund Breon) pays him & Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) a visit & tells a tale of how he was knocked out & a seemingly worthless music box stolen from his house, Holmes becomes intrigued why a thief would leave valuable possessions & steal a wooden music box. Later that night Emery is murdered for another music box, the music box he brought from the auction. Holmes believes that the owners of the other music boxes are also in danger & that these boxes are some sort of coded message...
Produced & directed by Roy William Neill this was the last of fourteen Holmes films made between 1939 & 1946 to star the duo of Rathbone & Bruce as Holmes & Watson. The script by Leonard Lee based on the novel 'The Adventure of the Six Napoleons' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a good solid mystery that focuses on the finding of plates to print money rather than focus on the murder aspect. It moves along at a nice pace, is never boring & is engaging but it tends to lose credibility as it goes on. Why, for instance, go through all this trouble to relay a simple message? Why not just visit Davidson in Dartmoor prison & let him tell you verbally where the plates are? Why not send the message in one go? Colonel Cavanaugh states that he received a message about the music boxes too late to buy them in the auction so there are obviously less complicated ways to communicate with each other. I just don't buy the fact that they need to go through all this trouble to relay one simple location, I really don't. The climax is very rushed & abrupt as well. Having said that it makes for good entertainment, is a good way to pass 70 minutes & has a few nice twists, turns & doubles crosses.
Director Neill was a old hand at these Holmes mysteries by the time Dressed to Kill was made & the film is well made but probably won't impress too many people these days. The usual horror overtones are almost completely absent, apart from Hamid (Harry Cording) the knife throwing killer there really isn't much here. For some reason he lets the viewer know who the villains are straight away so the mystery element is also severely compromised.
Technically Dressed to Kill is well made with nice black and white photography, good production values & suitably ambient sets. The acting is good although you can see that Rathbone was beginning to get bored, apparently four more Holmes films were in production but he said he was 'immensely tired' of playing Holmes & they were never made, obviously. Bruce as Watson plays it for laughs again, Patricia Morison as the main villain Hilda Courtney does well.
Dressed to Kill isn't the best of these Holmes mysteries but it's far from the worst. I liked it, but then I like all of the ones I've seen. I definitely think it's well worth watching especially for mystery & Holmes fans alike.
Produced & directed by Roy William Neill this was the last of fourteen Holmes films made between 1939 & 1946 to star the duo of Rathbone & Bruce as Holmes & Watson. The script by Leonard Lee based on the novel 'The Adventure of the Six Napoleons' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a good solid mystery that focuses on the finding of plates to print money rather than focus on the murder aspect. It moves along at a nice pace, is never boring & is engaging but it tends to lose credibility as it goes on. Why, for instance, go through all this trouble to relay a simple message? Why not just visit Davidson in Dartmoor prison & let him tell you verbally where the plates are? Why not send the message in one go? Colonel Cavanaugh states that he received a message about the music boxes too late to buy them in the auction so there are obviously less complicated ways to communicate with each other. I just don't buy the fact that they need to go through all this trouble to relay one simple location, I really don't. The climax is very rushed & abrupt as well. Having said that it makes for good entertainment, is a good way to pass 70 minutes & has a few nice twists, turns & doubles crosses.
Director Neill was a old hand at these Holmes mysteries by the time Dressed to Kill was made & the film is well made but probably won't impress too many people these days. The usual horror overtones are almost completely absent, apart from Hamid (Harry Cording) the knife throwing killer there really isn't much here. For some reason he lets the viewer know who the villains are straight away so the mystery element is also severely compromised.
Technically Dressed to Kill is well made with nice black and white photography, good production values & suitably ambient sets. The acting is good although you can see that Rathbone was beginning to get bored, apparently four more Holmes films were in production but he said he was 'immensely tired' of playing Holmes & they were never made, obviously. Bruce as Watson plays it for laughs again, Patricia Morison as the main villain Hilda Courtney does well.
Dressed to Kill isn't the best of these Holmes mysteries but it's far from the worst. I liked it, but then I like all of the ones I've seen. I definitely think it's well worth watching especially for mystery & Holmes fans alike.