Sherlock Holmes Films Starring Basil Rathbone

Basil Rathbone 1892 - 1967


At Last....The Hound of the Baskervilles is here to buy...Click below

Click here to buy available Sherlock Holmes DVD/Video/Books/Radio Mysteries !!!


Pictures | Biography/Filmography


I quite enjoy watching the old Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson. I cannot admit to being a Sherlock Holmes fan in general but I think that their portrayal of the characters have drawn me more and more towards the stories of Conan-Doyles famous London detective. Every time I watch the films it is as if I am watching it for the first time, there is always my anticpation of there being a new twist to the tale.

"Rathbone in particular has become the Sherlock Holmes, with his piercing eyes, knife-sharpened features and finely-played trademark habits (the violin, the relentless drive and enthusiasm, the never-ending desire for knowledge). Bruce's Watson is also the stuff of movie legend, and he plays the character as a perfect humourous foil to Rathbone's intense seriousness - although Holmes himself is not averse to the odd witty quip. In short, these two actors made the roles their own, and it will take a very convincing and impressive performance to ever dislodge them".


The following are a synopsis of all the Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce together with my own personal rating for each film out of a possible 10.

                                  

  • FILM TITLE: The Hound Of the Baskervilles (1939)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION: For the first time a Holmes film was being set in the proper Victorian period. Rathbone and Bruce were not the stars of the film, though - that was a young English actor called Richard Greene (later to be known on television as Robin Hood, along with the sheriff played by Alan Wheatly, who was one of the first TV Holmes to appear in Britain.) However, when the film came out it was not Greene that the public wanted to see more of, but Rathbone-Bruce. It also had the first appearance of Mrs Hudson, played by Mary Gordon, who continued in the role in the Universal series of the forties.
  • My personal rating 9/10

  • FILM TITLE: The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (1939)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:The film involves a pitched battle of wits between Holmes and Moriarty. Moriarty sends Holmes a bizarre problem, or to quote from the film, "...I'll give him a toy to delight his heart..." It’s a drawing of a man with a strange bird hanging around his neck. The sister of the man that the note is sent to goes to see Holmes. Soon her brother is dead, and Holmes becomes so involved in her case that forgets to be on hand to see the 'The Star of Delhi' arriving at the Tower of London. Which is the way Moriarty wanted it, in his plan to steal the crown jewels. By the end of the film though Holmes has saved the sister from being murdered like her brother and rushes off to the Tower, knowing now it was Moriarty who had been behind it all. Finally as the two battle their way upwards to the Tower, Moriarty falls to his death.
  • My personal rating 9/10

  • FILM TITLE: Sherlock Holmes and The Voice Of Terror (1942)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:The film has Holmes pitted against a German spy for the Nazis, who calls himself ‘The 'Voice of Terror' for broadcasting in Britain acts of terror such as train crashes and fires. Holmes is called in by the inner council of the War Office. Soon he finds 'The Voice of Terror’ is actually a member of the inner council itself, a peer named Sir Evan Barham. Barham is not in fact Barham, though, but the German spy Von Bork. At the end of the film, Holmes has saved Britain from a German invasion. The story is loosely based on 'His Last Bow’.
  • My personal rating 8/10

  • FILM TITLE: Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon (1942)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:This story is loosely based on the 'The Dancing Men', but only in the use of the drawings themselves. The plot of the film centres around stopping the Nazis getting their hands on a new bomb sight, wrapped in a code of dancing men, which then leads Holmes towards the capture of Moritary. We are introduced to Holmes’ use of diguises, as he poses as a Swiss inventor, the criminal Lascar and an old German bookseller.
  • My personal rating 7/10

  • FILM TITLE: Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:Holmes is up against a German spy ring. The group are after some secret documents, whose use in the wrong hands would be disastrous for Britain. The agent carrying them disappears after destroying them, having first made a microfilm copy and placed it in a American match folder. This leads Holmes and Watson across the Atlantic to find the vital microfilm and do battle with the spies.
  • My personal rating 7/10

  • FILM TITLE: Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION: Holmes and Watson arrive at Musgrave Manor to find Inspector Lestrade waiting for them, at the first of a series of deaths. During the course of the film the ritual is read (This has also been changed from the ritual from the original story), and no one but Holmes can work out its meaning. In one of the more interesting scenes of the film, the ritual turns out to be describing moves in a chess game. Holmes arranges the members of the manor to play the pieces on a checked floor to find the secret of the murders, and arrest the murderer. No one in the film shines except Rathbone, Bruce, and of course Hoey as Lestrade.
  • My personal rating 9/10

  • FILM TITLE:The Spider Woman (1944)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION: The basis of the film concerns a series of deaths of men who are well-to-do and fond of the gambling tables, and who kill themselves in their pyjamas in what becomes known as the "Pyjama Suicides". The film opens to Holmes and Watson on holidays, with Holmes then faking his own death in order to investigate the sucides (which are fact are murders). Rathbone disguses himself as Rahjhi Singh, an Indian officer who is fond of the tables. Before long he meets the murderer, a female Moriarty, Andrea Spedding alias "The Spider Woman". As Holmes discovers, she selects her victims as those who need money and persuades them to pawn their life insurance to one of her accomplices, before killing them.This she does by placing a giant spider in their bedroom as they lie sleeping. Once the venom gets into its victim’s bloodstream, the excruciating agony drives the victim with to self destruction.The question remains how the spider gets into the rooms. By a pygmy, in fact, who can slip himself through small doorways. Ultimately the spider woman and her gang is rounded up.
  • My personal rating 7/10

  • FILM TITLE:The Scarlet Claw (1944)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:For the second time, Holmes and Watson are taken out of London, this time into the Canadian backwoods. It’s a very dark film, filled with murder, mystery and a streak of revenge. Some strange apparition appearing in the village, La Morte Rouge (The Red death), kills Lady Penrose. Holmes goes to the village to investigate the murder but encounters hostillity among the people. Soon, more murders take place, and the villagers place their blame on the monster of the village. However Holmes soon places the pieces together, surmising the murderer is an actor called Ramson, who killed another actor in a jealous rage over an actress, the actress having later married Lord Penrose. Holmes discovers the monster is Ramson himself in disguise as other inhabitants of the village.
  • My personal rating 10/10 This one is by far my favourite.

  • FILM TITLE:The Pearl Of Death (1944)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:Conover,the villain, has stolen the Black Pearl of the Borgias and hidden it in a bust of Napoleon. Holmes sets out to find it, during which time there is series of break-ins in which only busts of Napoleons are broken over the floor, and victims have their backs broken, a method used by the Hoxton Creeper. Soon Holmes learns that six busts were made, and finding the name of the last person to have bought a bust he sets a trap for Conover and the Creeper. However when the Creeper overpowers him, the only thing that can save Holmes is the chance to talk his way out quickly, telling the Creeper that Conover will doublecross him and persuading him to kill Conover as he did the other victims.
  • My personal rating 8/10

  • FILM TITLE:The House Of Fear (1945)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:The story begins with an insurance agent visting Holmes and asking him to investigate strange happenings at Drearcliff, a seaside manor house, where a group of men has entered a life insurance policy, naming one another the beneficiaries. It seems two of the men had died six months earlier, murdered horribly after receiving an envelope in the mail an containing an orange pip. Holmes begins his investigation and finds things going increasingly wrong. During his stay at Drearcliff, four more die, leaving the seventh as the fall guy. Again Hoey appears as Lestrade, which is a delight.
  • My personal rating 9/10

  • FILM TITLE:The Woman In Green (1945)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:The plot of the film is that young woman are murdered and found with their right index fingers cut off, and so Holmes is asked by Scotland Yard to help out. Holmes soon discovers that the evil Moriarty is behind it all, that it is a vehicle of blackmail, and that rich victims are chosen, hypnotised and drugged to wake up the next day to find a severed thumb inside their pocket, following which money is demanded of them. However Holmes stops Moriarty, and Moriarty falls to his death rather than face a hanging.
  • My personal rating 9/10

  • FILM TITLE:Pursuit To Algiers (1945)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:The majority of the film is set on an ocean liner, within which Holmes is entrusted with protecting the heir to the mythical kingdom of Ravenia, east of Algiers, from assassins hired by his enemies. Holmes plans to fool the assassins by passing Watson's nephew off as the prince, while the real prince is the steward. The assassins kidnap the wrong man and are arrested.
  • My personal rating 8/10

  • FILM TITLE:Terror By Night (1946)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:The events take place on a train. Holmes with Watson are on board to see that the diamond, the Star of Rhodesia, returns safely to Scotland from London. But there is a murder and the diamond is stolen. Along on the trip is Lestrade. As Holmes begins his investigation he finds that the star has been taken by Moriarty's second in command, Colonel Moran, and that the colonel is behind the murder.
  • My personal rating 7/10

  • FILM TITLE:Dressed To Kill (1946)
  • FILM BACKGROUND/DESCRIPTION:This film is all about stolen music boxes and a criminal who has stolen the plates of the Bank of England, who in prison makes music boxes, and within the music boxes leaves clues as to where he had hidden them. Holmes works out the mystery of the boxes, where the plates are and the identity of the outside gang.
  • My personal rating 7/10

Gregory Goldsmith
Bringing you Basil as Sherlock since 25th September 1997
Preston, England

Pleaseme g_goldsmith@yahoo.com with any comments or suggestions you may have for my page. It would be nice to hear from you whether you are a fan of Basil Rathbone or not. If you have a Basil website let me have your web address and I will try to visit you as soon as possible.


Pictures | Biography/Filmography


Thanks for taking the time to visit me
Even though I may not be, my web page is


In Association with Amazon.com


If you would like to make a link to my pages from your web site, please feel free to use the banner below which I have recently created



This page hosted by Get your ownFree Home Page

1