Sherlock Holmes Faces Death
                                                                                                          
Director: Roy William Neill
Year: 1943
Rating: 6.5
In the sixth in the series, Holmes gets very woke at the end of the film. Nothing has changed.

"There's a new spirit abroad in the land. The old days of grab and greed are on their way out. We're beginning to think of what we *owe* the other fellow, not just what we're compelled to give him. The time is coming, Watson, when we shant't be able to fill our bellies in comfort while other folk go hungry, or sleep in warm beds while others shiver in the cold. And we shan't be able to kneel and thank God for blessing us before our shining altars while men anywhere are kneeling in either physical or spiritual subjection.

Dr. John H. Watson: You may be right, Holmes... I hope you are.
Sherlock Holmes: And, God willing, we'll live to see that day, Watson.

Damn, lefty Hollywood scriptwriters!

The film opens in the nicely named The Rat and Raven pub which in fact has a raven flying about that can smell the dead. Rats are probably inhabitants as well, but we don't meet any. They are all gossiping about the ancient Musgrave Mansion up the road which is supposed to be haunted and has a bloody history. The seaman who blurts out "blimey" is Peter Lawford who quickly disappears from the film. This is basically a Gothic Old Dark House tale from a script that could have been sitting around for decades in a dusty drawer and then amended to include Holmes and Watson and tie it loosely to Doyle's 1893 short story, The Musgrave Ritual. They are both back from their sojourn across the Atlantic where they nabbed Nazi spies. No Nazis in this one and it could for all purposes have been set in Victorian times. I sort of miss the Nazis of the first three Universal Holmes films, but this puts the pair on much more traditional ground. And equally for Universal who had produced a few classic Gothic horror films.




The Musgraves are two brothers who hate each other and their younger sister (Hillary Brooke) plus a butler and cook. It is a large ominous building with the required foggy grounds, hidden passageways and dank basement. They have opened it up as a convalescent home to a few wounded soldiers and who is on the medical staff? None other than our Dr. Watson. When another doctor is stabbed by an unknown assailant, Watson sends for Holmes. The bodies begin to pile up and Holmes has to solve the Musgrave Ritual. This is a written speech that has to be said by a family member though no one knows exactly why. Tradition. In the short story unravelling it leads to a hidden treasure and has to do with large trees. Here it is a human chess game.




On hand are Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) bumbling about, Milburne Stone (Doc in Gunsmoke) as one of the patients, Mary Gordon as Mrs. Hudson and the wonderful Halliwell Hobbes as Brunton the Butler. Hobbes is one of my favorite character actors - very successful in the theater; like Rathbone and Bruce had served on the front line in WWI and appeared in some 100 films but is best remembered as often playing the proper English Butler. Here he has a larger role than usual. A good outing by Holmes and Watson and running a brief 68 minutes.