THE SAINT'S DOUBLE TROUBLE (1940)

In Cairo, a nicely dressed man (Bela Lugosi) sends a large box off to a Prof. Bitts in Philadelphia. The return address on the box is that of Simon Templar, better known as The Saint, a reformed gentleman thief who frequently helps the police even if not everyone is convinced that he has truly reformed. But if we've seen any of the previous Saint movies from RKO we know that this man is not Templar. Bitts is excited to get the box; it contains a 4,000 year old mummy that Templar had promised years ago to send to the professor. Anne, the professor's daughter, had a teenage crush on Templar but was upset by his criminal activities, and she still doesn't think well of him. That evening, Templar (George Sanders) visits the professor and takes a look at the mummy, clearly looking for something else that should be there. Ann has a mildly bitter exchange with Templar and we pick up on the fact that Templar seems a bit confused by some of her remarks. In fact, this man is not Templar at all, but a lookalike crime boss named Bates. That evening, a man is murdered right outside the professor's home, and a card left on the body puts the blame on The Saint (it's signed with a hasty sketch of a stick-figure man with a halo). As it happens, Inspector Fernack from New York, who knows Templar, is visiting Philadelphia, and he agrees to help the cops. The real Templar shows up and, though Fernack believes he's innocent, Templar must stay in hiding. Thus begins a series of incidents in which Templar is mistaken for Bates, and Bates for Templar. More deaths occur with Saint calling cards, making it hard for Fernack to stand up for Templar, but with the help of Anne, and after escaping death by drowning, Templar finally brings Bates down and justice is served.

I enjoy the Saint movies but the character never comes to life like Poirot or Perry Mason or Charlie Chan. The chief pleasure here is watching George Sanders cavort in his understated way, wryly delivering dialogue and remaining unflustered no matter what comes his way. He's fine in the dual role, though he changes not a whit of his performance between Templar and Bates, both having the same mannerisms, accent, and way of carrying themselves, though they do dress slightly differently, and Bates sometimes speaks at a slightly faster pace. Part of the fun becomes trying to keep track of who Sanders is playing at any given moment. Helen Whitney (aka Helene Reynolds) is fine as Anne, as is Jonathan Hale who returns from previous films as Fernack. But the most fun comes from Bates' two henchmen (John F. Hamilton as Limpy—guess why—and Elliott Sullivan as Monk) who are frequently confused by the doppelganger gimmick. Monk makes some amusing malapropisms, such as saying that someone is suffering from "hallelujah fascinations" instead of hallucinations. Bela Lugosi is quite good, fairly successfully putting Dracula out of our minds after his first scene. The B-movie budget shows in bland sets and a script in which some plotpoints are never explained. The bad guys are diamond smugglers but one tends to forget exactly what the MacGuffin is. Still, it's fun watching for Sanders and his dual role hijinks. Pictured are Sullivan and Sanders. [DVD]

WORKING GIRLS (1931)

Two small-town sisters, Mae and June, come to New York and get a room at Rolfe House, a boarding house for working women. Mrs. Johnstone, the house mother, tries to keep them on the straight and narrow, closing the windows and pulling the blinds when wild music and dancing start up in the next building, but the girls manage to listen and do a little dancing themselves. 19-year-old June applies for a job as assistant to academic researcher Prof. Von Schrader, but when she admits she has virtually none of the advertised requirements, he ends up hiring her sister Mae, who at least has more education. June sneaks her way into a job at a hotel telegraph office and starts dating Pat, a carefree saxophone player who plays radio gigs. Meanwhile, Mae falls in with Boyd, a handsome Harvard man turned lawyer and both dating sisters wind up barely getting home by the midnight curfew. When Von Schrader proposes to Mae, she tells him about Boyd and he lets her go, assuming she'll be getting married soon. Mae sleeps with Boyd but he leaves town on a business trip and when he returns, he's engaged to a rich girl. June goes to dinner with Von Schrader and talks him into rehiring Mae. He does, though he is now clearly smitten with June. Soon, the situation is this: Mae is pregnant, Boyd is dumped by his socialite gal, and June tries to engineer a literal shotgun wedding for Mae and Boyd, while Von Schrader pines away for June. Happy endings, anyone?

This pre-code film is an uneasy blend of melodrama and romantic comedy, and things do work out for all concerned without a gun being fired, which is not quite how I expected it to end when I was at the halfway point. It's also a blend of realism (the conditions of the working girls, the relationship between Mae and Boyd) and the unreal (the ease with which they find jobs, most of the plot involving Von Schrader) that feels awkward at times. Dorothy Arzner directed and to her credit, things don't get too sentimental or romantic. In fact, both Mae and June wind up at the end in relationships that seem more practical than happy, and I suspect the marriages will last just long enough for the sisters to build up new defenses and get back out on the streets again. They come off as more or less accidental gold-diggers with neither one seen as hardened or especially well-skilled in their use of feminine wiles. This is a B-film from Paramount which means it looks good but has second-rank stars. Two women who never got past the starlet stage play the leads: Judith Hall is June, the smarter of the two, and Dorothy Hall is Mae, the naive one. Both are fine if not standouts. Stuart Erwin is casually charming as Pat, the sax player who pops in and out of the story when needed. Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, who plays Boyd, starred in WINGS, the first film to win an Oscar for best picture, and later married Mary Pickford. Paul Lukas (Von Schrader) would go on to a long career, winning an Oscar for WATCH ON THE RHINE. You may recognize Frances Dee and Claire Dodd as other boarding house residents. One young woman, the front door keeper, is perhaps coded as a lesbian though nothing comes of it. Recommended if only for the slight subversion that the working girl romance is given. Pictured is Rogers. [Criterion Channel]

STRANGE FASCINATION (1952)

Paul Marvan (Hugo Haas) is a once-promising concert pianist whom we first see listening to a piano recital at the Carnegie Hall stage door. Dressed shabbily, we see him go to a Salvation Army hall where he plays piano for no one. In a flashback, we see Paul a few years earlier in Salzburg where he has won accolades for his performance of Chopin pieces. Rich widow Diana Fowler (Mona Barrie) thinks he could be a hit in the States and offers to sponsor a concert tour for him; he would start small (in Columbus, my home town!) and slowly build to an appearance at Carnegie Hall. Divorced from his pianist wife due to career jealousies, Paul has no ties in Salzburg so he accompanies Diana to New York City where he lives in a wing of her luxury apartment. Her children and her bitchy card playing friends don't quite approve of the arrangement but it seems rather innocently one-sided; she's clearly in love while he's focused on his piano playing. He feels bad about asking her for more favors, primarily needing money to pay for the insurance on his hands, but she never turns him down. Alone at a club one night, fussing about his table and chair, he unwittingly spoils the timing of Margo (Cleo Moore), the performing dancer. She thinks he did it on purpose and when she finds out who he is, she goes to his recital, intending to spoil it by fussing and making noises, but she becomes wrapped up in his playing and winds up getting his autograph and meeting him for drinks. One thing leads to another and, both admiring him but also sensing that he might make a good meal ticket, Margo breaks up with her dancing partner Carlo and moves in with Paul, eventually marrying him. Diana is not happy but remains faithful and continues to supply him with money when needed. After a leg of his concert tour is canceled due to weather-related disasters, his career dreams begin to fade and Margo goes back into show business in a musical that her former partner Carlo is choreographing. Driven by desperation and remembering his hand insurance, he deliberately sticks his hand in a printing press, mangling it so he can't use it. But the insurance claim is turned down when the company becomes suspicious. We return to the beginning of the film, with Paul playing in the Salvation Army hall with one hand. Could some kind of happy ending be in store for him?

Hugo Haas made a name as director, writer, and star in B-picture melodramas which usually followed the outline of this one in which he plays an older man taken advantage of by a young, sexy woman, often played by the blonde and buxom Cleo Moore (this was the first of seven films they made together). Moore's bad girl characters usually had some mildly redemptive quality, and here, Margo, though certainly a gold digger, is also truly appreciative of Paul's talent, and sticks with him longer than she needed to. She's also not the cause of his downfall. Diana is the character who is the most used; she hides her love for Paul and somewhat masochistically continues to help him out despite being largely ignored by him in the last half of the film. Some viewers on IMDb call this movie sad and depressing, but it's no more so than any generic melodrama of the era. In fact, against all odds, there is a relatively happy ending for Paul, and hope is held out that he might be able to play concerts again. The acting all around is par for the course, with Moore giving the best performance. Haas typically underplays a bit, which works in some scenes and doesn't in others. Barrie doesn't seem to understand her character and she reacts to everything with a blank, underplayed stoicism. Rick Vallin is fine as Carlo, in a role that should have been better developed. Though Diana's world is supposed to be high class, the film's low budget undercuts that with cheap sets that don't begin to suggest the world of a socialite. Otherwise, this is watchable, and highly recommended for fans of Haas, Moore, or soapy melodrama. [Criterion Channel]

MONSTROSITY aka THE ATOMIC BRAIN (1963)

"Can death be outwitted?" a narrator asks us over footage of a scientist in a hazmat suit engaging in brain transplantation experiments. Will rich old people be able to obtain young healthy bodies? So far, this scientist, Dr. Frank, has put animal brains into a drooling stitched-up thug who looks like an insane Stephen Stills (pictured) and who serves as a guard, and a lovely naked woman who walks around in a trance. All this work is being done for the bitter old Mrs. March who has a plan: she will essentially kidnap a young woman, make the woman the recipient of her will, and have her old lady brain put in the young woman's body so she can be young, sexy and rich. We learn that the doctor has a nuclear reaction switch installed in his lab so he could, if needed, blow the entire place to smithereens (I call that Chekhov's nuclear reaction switch because you know you'll see it again). Mrs. March has advertised for maids and winnowed the replies down to three lovely women: the British Bea, the Austrian Nina, and the Mexican Anita. When they arrive at the mansion, the old lady's first move is to make them turn and pose like models. This sets off mild alarm bells for the women, but not enough for them to leave. Anita is immediately rejected and is given a basement room near Dr. Frank's lab while the other two get upstairs bedrooms. The next day, the upstairs girls are told that Anita has left, but actually the mad doctor has killed the old lady's cat and put its brain into Anita, causing her to crawl and prowl and meow. Nina and Bea become suspicious, and when Bea runs across Anita perched on top of a gazebo, Anita hisses and scratches out one of Bea's eyes. With Anita and Bea out of the running, it's just a matter of time before Dr. Frank straps Nina down to prepare her for the brain transplant. This low-budget 60s horror/sci-fi flick is nothing special, though it may appeal to those who like the combination of sexy ladies, the piling on of outré incidents and cheesy special effects. My favorite moments involve Anita acting like a cat, among the best acting moments in a movie that is indifferently acted by all. Marjorie Eaton as Mrs. March seems to be giving it her all, but she turns in a rather shrill one-note performance that wore me down by the halfway point. Erika Peters, who had a fairly active career in TV shows of the 1960s, is pretty good as Nina. Frank Gerstle, a busy character actor, is adequate but a bit low-key as Dr. Frank. Everyone else feels a bit amateurish, and the post-dubbed sound doesn't help. Though only an hour long, this plods along predictably to a sort of fun final punch-line scene. Don't bother. Released to TV (and mocked on MST3K) as THE ATOMIC BRAIN. [YouTube]

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1972)

Here's a sort of a bonus entry to my recent series of posts about the Sherlock Holmes films of Basil Rathbone. In 1972, ABC made three TV movies as pilots for a series that would have rotated different detectives including Hildegarde Withers (heroine of a series of B-films in the 1930s), Nick Carter (hero of a pulp fiction series and three films in 1939 and 1940), and Sherlock Holmes. The series never happened but the films were broadcast, and this was the first. Stewart Granger played Holmes and Bernard Fox was Watson. Granger was a British actor who came to Hollywood in 1950 and specialized in period and adventure films (King Solomon's Mines, Scaramouche). Fox, also British, had a long career as a character actor, best remembered as Dr. Bombay in the Bewitched TV series). This version, the first American Holmes film in color, begins with Holmes seen in silhouette with his pipe and deerstalker hat as Watson narrates, beginning with a flashback to 1762 as the wealthy Hugo Baskerville kidnaps the daughter of a man who owes him money. During drunken carousing, the abused woman escapes the castle and runs across the nighttime moors. Hugo gives chase, but a demonic hound that glows in the dark (a very good effect) kills him, and Baskerville men have been cursed ever since. Dr. Mortimer (Anthony Zerbe) comes to see Holmes after the latest Baskerville has died on the moors with hound prints nearby. He is concerned because the heir, Henry, is coming from Canada to run the estate, despite advice not to. He doesn't quite believe in the curse, and neither does Holmes, but clearly something sinister is afoot. From this point on, the film follows the 1939 plot to a tee, so you can read the summary in my post. 

Reviewers on IMDb do not like this film, mostly because of its 70's TV-movie limitations. It's silly to carp too much about such things as cheap sets and costumes and models and post-dubbing since those elements are baked into films made for TV (or video). I think the sets are effective enough, and the hound appearance (at right) early on is better than in the 1939 film—maybe just because it's in color. It's also very silly to complain about ways in which this differs from the Doyle story when virtually all dramatizations have done so. (As noted above, this seems to be directly based on the Rathbone film, not Doyle.) There are complaints about acting which are perhaps more applicable, though I find the actors here to be more than adequate. Granger doesn't get much respect as Holmes. I'm not really a fan of the actor, but he seems fine here. I think his biggest problem is that he's not particularly distinctive, as the movie itself really adds nothing new to the story, but I would have watched his series if it had been produced. Bernard Fox is a bit better as Watson, though he benefits from doing some subtle channeling of Nigel Bruce in terms of distracted hesitation. Zerbe is good as the doctor, keeping us in a bit of suspense as to his motives. William Shatner, a couple of years after Star Trek, is very good as Stapleton, a Baskerville neighbor, and I wish he'd gotten more screen time.  The two main women in the cast, Jane Merrow (whom I never would have recognized as being Alais in The Lion in Winter) and Sally Ann Howes (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) are not up to snuff but that may be more due to the writing. I liked Ian Ireland, unknown to me before this, as Henry, and it's nice to see the esteemed British actor John Williams (the inspector in Dial M for Murder) in a small role. I'm in the process of digging up the other two mystery pilots and hope to report back on those soon. My final verdict: harmless and even enjoyable. Recommended if you can get past TV-movie prejudices. Pictured at top left are Fox and Granger. [YouTube]

DRESSED TO KILL (1946)

In Dartmoor Prison, an inmate, John Davidson, is working at his job of making music boxes to be sold at auction. Davidson is serving time for counterfeiting, and a fellow inmate asks him why he doesn’t go for an early release by telling the authorities where he hid the five-pound plates. He doesn't say but he clearly has a plan. At Gaylord's auction house, the three innocuous music boxes are sold fairly cheaply to three people: an upper class fellow nicknamed Stinky who collects music boxes, a middle class man named Kilgour who buys it for his little daughter, and Evelyn Clifford who plans to offer it for sale at her toy shop. After the auction, Col. Cavanaugh shows up, wanting to buy the music boxes. Being too late, he bribes the clerk into giving him the names and addresses of the buyers. At 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes is playing "Danny Boy" on his violin and Dr. Watson is celebrating the publication in the Strand Magazine of his latest Holmes adventure, "A Scandal in Bohemia." Watson's old friend Stinky shows up to chat and tells of being knocked unconscious by a burglar. Despite all the fancy music boxes he owns, the burglar took only a cheap, plain one. However, when Holmes and Watson visit, we discover that the stolen box is not the one that Stinky bought at auction, though it looked similar. Holmes admires the box's unusual tune and memorizes it. Later, Stinky has another late night visitor, the lovely Hilda Courtney who nonchalantly offers to buy the auctioned music box. He refuses and Hilda's brutish chauffeur Hamid throws a knife at Stinky and kills him. Investigating the scene of the crime, Holmes notices the music box gone, goes to the auction house, and gets the names of the other two buyers. When he and Watson go to the Kilgour home, Mom and Dad are gone but they run into a housemaid leaving on an errand who invites them to stay and wait. Eventually, they discover the little Kilgour daughter tied up in a closet. Sure enough, the housemaid was actually Hilda in disguise and she has taken the music box. A cat and mouse game ensues as Holmes tracks down the toy store box. Hilda and Cavanaugh have boxes #1 and #2 and Holmes has box #3 and the memory of box #1's tune. He discovers that, though 1 and 3 play the same tune, there are small differences, and that the music must be coded somehow to reveal the whereabouts of the counterfeit plates. Will Holmes get ahold of #2 before Hilda can get #3, and can either one figure out the code?

We’ve come to the twelfth and final Sherlock Holmes film from Universal, and while it’s not the best of the batch, it's perfectly respectable. It doesn't have the thick atmosphere of some of the earlier ones (like HOUSE OF FEAR) but it's not a spy story (SECRET WEAPON) or a security guard story (like the previous one, TERROR BY NIGHT). In fact, the plot feels a lot like a traditional Holmes story as written by Doyle. It's not based directly on one, but the shoutout to "A Scandal in Bohemia" is fun. Patricia Morison, as Hilda, is perhaps the best femme fatale after SPIDER-WOMAN's Gale Sondargaard. Despite the title, she doesn't actually kill anyone, though she almost kills Holmes (a good scene), but she's a strong antagonist. Edmund Breon is fun as Stinky, though no one else really makes much of an impression. Mary Gordon puts in her last appearance as Mrs. Hudson, as do Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson. Some series regulars, such as Ian Wolfe, Harry Cording, and Olaf Hytten, show up. Rathbone may have gotten tired of the job, but it's nice that the series goes out with movies that are still worth watching. Pictured is Nigel Bruce, a bit flummoxed by a pop-up bunny toy. [DVD]

THE THIRD SECRET (1964)

When the secretary for London psychiatrist Leo Whitset opens up his office one morning, she finds him on the floor, dying from a gunshot wound. His last words are "Blame no one but me," so the police assume suicide. However, Whitset's teenage daughter Cathy (Pamela Franklin) disputes this claim, as does TV commentator Alex Stedman (Stephen Boyd, at right) who had been a patient of Whitset's for years. Cathy thinks the killer may have been a patient. Whitset called his patients "good healthy neurotics" but Alex thinks that one of them may have been a paranoid schizophrenic. As their investigation begins, they remember Whitset's philosophy that we all have three kinds of secrets: the ones we won't tell others, the ones we won't tell ourselves, and the third secret (which is not defined in any more detail). Cathy gives Alex the names of his current patients and he visits each one: an art gallery owner (Richard Attenborough) who is himself a frustrated artist; a judge (Jack Hawkins); and a secretary (Diane Cilento) with whom Boyd gets slightly involved. Meanwhile, as Cathy and Alex become close, her uncle finds them looking a little too intimate in her bedroom and suspects that the relationship is unhealthy. With Alex himself as a fourth patient, he soon learns that there is one more patient to hunt down.

This psychological thriller is interesting but less than compelling, and I'm not quite sure why it doesn't work better than it does. One reason is that little tension is generated along the way; the three patient visits feel mostly like the movie is killing time—though it is fun to see a very young Judi Dench as Attenborough's assistant. Boyd, who has the reputation of being a bit wooden at times, is fine here, not so much wooden as a bit distant, which works with the character. The 14-year-old Franklin is very good, playing a character who, though seemingly open and innocent, may be (as Boyd might be too) hiding secrets of her own. The widescreen black & white cinematography is excellent and the ending, which is perhaps a bit predictable, is satisfying. This film disappeared from view for some time, though it did get a DVD release from Fox a few years ago, but Fox is not always very good at promotion of their backlist resources. The YouTube print which I saw is crisp and clean, probably from the DVD or the British Blu-Ray disc. [YouTube]

TERROR BY NIGHT (1946)

The Star of Rhodesia is an infamous diamond, thought to be cursed. Lady Margaret is traveling by train to Edinburgh with it and has hired Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to guard it, as there has already been one robbery attempt in London. Also on the train is Vivian Vedder, transporting her deceased mother's body to Scotland in a specially made coffin that we saw her inspect at a carpenter's shop. Other passengers: Lady Margaret's son Roland; Major Duncan-Bleek, an old acquaintance of Watson's from his days in India; Prof. Kilbane, a secretive mathematician; the Shallcrosses, a secretive older couple; and Inspector Lestrade, who tells Holmes he is on vacation but is actually keeping his eyes on the diamond. Not long into the journey, Roland is found dead and the diamond is gone, but Holmes reveals that he actually has the diamond and the missing one is a fake. Watson, certain he could do as well at detecting as Lestrade, starts an investigation, with some help from his buddy Duncan-Bleek. Holmes feels the case has the mark of an old pro named Moran, an associate of Holmes' nemesis Moriarty; as no one knows what he looks like, he could be anyone on the train. At one point, Holmes discovers that Vivian's coffin is empty, and has a false bottom with a compartment big enough to hold a small person (as we learn, a man with a poison dart gun who is now hiding on the train). Vivian admits that she was paid to accompany the coffin but knows nothing more. Holmes is also pushed out of the train by an unseen assailant, though he manages to get back on. In the end, the killer is unmasked, after which a delicious final twist occurs.

This eleventh film in the Universal series, somewhat like the previous PURSUIT TO ALGIERS, begins with Holmes not as a detective but as a security agent for hire. But all is forgiven when it does eventually turn into a mystery almost in the Agatha Christie mold—there's even a brief recap of the suspects at the half-hour mark. I also like that it's a train movie; aside from the opening scene at the carpentry shop, it's all set on or about the train, the Scotch Express. The mystery is tricky enough, and the last ten minutes are exciting, unpredictable, and fun. Though there is one more film left in the series, this is the last one with Lestrade (Dennis Hoey). It's fun to see Watson having a friend to chat with, and Alan Mowbray is fine as Duncan-Bleek. Very busy character actor Mary Forbes is good as Lady Margaret, and of course Basil Rathbone (pictured above with Hoey) and Nigel Bruce continue their impersonations of Holmes and Watson in a satisfactory manner. The short and odd-looking Skelton Knaggs, who made a decent career out of playing short and odd-looking people, is the poison dart killer working for Moran. Renee Godfrey, an American, uses an awful artificial British accent as Vivian, which I sure was meant to be a put-on disguise, but no, she's just bad at accents. A solid entry in the series. [DVD]

MRS. O’MALLEY AND MR. MALONE (1950)

After an opening theme song that sounds like it was written for a TV sitcom, we see the host of a radio quiz show call Hattie O'Malley (Marjorie Main), a Montana widow, and when she guesses the name of a Phantom Tune, she wins $50,000 and a train trip to New York City to get the money. (The song she identifies, "Possum Up a Gum Stump," is apparently an actual traditional fiddle song. It was the song her late husband was singing when he got drunk and died trying to fly.) On the train, she reads an article in a true crime magazine about the exciting exploits of Chicago attorney John J. Malone. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Malone (James Whitmore), drunk and penniless after a gambling binge, wakes up in the city morgue with a hangover. He discovers that Steve Kepplar, a former client, has just been released from Joliet Prison on parole (thanks to Malone) and will be hopping a train to New York, as it happens, the same one that Hattie O'Malley is on. Malone decides to get on that train in order to collect the fees that Kepplar owes him. Also on that train following Kepplar: detective Tim Marino who thinks Kepplar will head straight for the missing $100,000 from his bank robbery; Connie, Kepplar's ex-wife, who wants her alimony payments; Brynk, Kepplar's former business partner; and Lola, Kepplar's new gal. Malone meets Hattie at dinner and they hit it off well enough that she gets entangled in the attempts to find Kepplar, who got on the train but hasn't been seen since. Eventually there are dead bodies which appear and vanish, and then have to be moved, leading to the movie's best line: as Hattie and Malone walk a corpse down the train aisle past another passenger, she says, "Come now, mother, hardly a quart in you and you stagger around like you were drunk."

This second-feature comic mystery was an unexpected delight. I do like Marjorie Main but I'm more used to her in supporting parts rather than as the star (I saw one Ma and Pa Kettle movie with her so many years ago I have no memory of it), so I wasn't sure about this. I'm not especially a fan of craggy-faced James Whitmore who usually does fairly dramatic roles, but he does a nice job being light on his feet with good comic timing, and he has good chemistry with Main. They make a fun pair, and it's too bad this didn't become a series of films. The interesting backstory is that this was based on a one-off short story collaboration between mystery writers Craig Rice (and her lawyer character John J. Malone) and Stuart Palmer (and his older lady character Hildegarde Withers). Withers had been featured in a series of B-films in the 1930s and MGM ran into copyright issues so they changed the character's name and background. This is sometimes referred to as a screwball comedy, though it's not antic or romantic enough for that, but it is amusing and fast paced, and has a great supporting cast. Ann Dvorak (Connie), Dorothy Malone (Lola), Fred Clark (the detective) and Phyllis Kirk (in the small role of Malone's secretary Kay) are all great fun. Smaller roles are filled by Douglas Fowley, Clinton Sundberg and Willard Waterman. Trivia note: Clark and Waterman would be standouts in AUNTIE MAME many years later, Clark as Mame's nemesis Mr. Babcock and Waterman as Claude Upson, maker of dreadfully sweet daiquiris. Great fun. [TCM; also on Warner Archive DVD]

PURSUIT TO ALGIERS (1945)

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are supposed to be heading to Scotland for a fishing vacation. As they stroll through the nighttime city streets, chatting about the recent theft of the Duchess of Brockdale's emeralds, they are followed by mysterious men who drop coded messages which lead them to a meeting with the prime minister of Rovenia. The king has just been assassinated and his son Nikolas, who is in London, needs safe conduct back to his country. Plans are made for Holmes to fly to Algiers and from there to Rovenia, but there is no room for Watson, so he takes a passenger liner. On the ship, Watson hears news that a small plane has crashed on its way to Algiers, and he assumes Holmes is dead, but of course, he's not: having his own suspicions, Holmes has arranged for Nikolas to accompany him on the liner. The problem now is that practically everyone they come into contact with seems suspicious. There are two sneaky looking men skulking about, mumbling about a king; Sheila Woodbury, a singer who becomes flustered when she learns that Sherlock Holmes is on board, and who may have tried to push Nikolas, posing as Watson's nephew, overboard in the fog; Agatha Dunham, an older socialite and health nut who has a revolver and wants to throw a big dinner party on the ship; Sanford, a porter who seems to be skulking about everywhere. When the ship makes an unscheduled stop in Lisbon, three more men get on: the sinister looking Mirko, the nondescript Gregor, and the burly mute Gubec. Holmes catches Mirko in the act of trying to throw a knife through his window and slams Mirko's hand in the porthole, injuring him. Eventually, all is sorted out, strange behaviors are explained, villains are thwarted, and even the stolen emeralds from the first scene of the movie are recovered.

The tenth film in the Universal series, after THE WOMAN IN GREEN, is often looked down on as the worst of the batch, but I'm not sure why. The main thing I have against it is that it is less a detective story than a bodyguard story: Holmes is hired not to do detecting but to guarantee safe delivery of a person. Of course, he does do some detecting eventually, but the mysterious tone of many of the previous films is gone here, except for a couple of scenes set in fog. There is no crime mastermind, like Moriarty or the Spider Woman, to contend with. There is no Lestrade or Mrs. Hudson. However, there is the enclosed area of the ship, which lends this some of the cachet of a train movie. There is also Martin Kosleck, who made his name playing Nazis in the 1940s, who is very good as Mirko. Marjorie Riordan, as Woodbury, gets to sing, as does Nigel Bruce (Watson) who gives a brief but effective performance of "Loch Lomond."  Rex Evans (Gregor) and Morton Lowry (Sanford) are fine; Gubec is played by Wee Willie Davis, a pro wrestler. Of course, Rathbone is Rathbone (pictured with Bruce), soldiering on even though he was certainly no longer challenged by the role. Watson relates the unpublished Holmes tale of The Giant Rat of Sumatra (a tale mentioned but untold in the Doyle canon), though we only hear the beginning and end. There is a nice twist that leads to a satisfying ending. The closing line is not patriotic or inspirational, but fun. Watson is upset that he was kept in the dark about a secret, and Holmes explains that Watson has too honest a face to keep such a secret, then says, "If you ever decide to take up another profession, never think of becoming an actor!" [DVD]