skjam | Entries tagged with basil rathbone

Dressed to Kill (1946) dir. Roy William Neill

Three seemingly-identical music boxes have come up for auction. The first is purchased by music box collector Julian "Stinky" Emery (Edmund Breon), the second by toy shop owner Evelyn Clifford (Patricia Cameron) (though she doesn't leave her name) and the third by Mr. Kilgour (Harry Allen), a transplanted Scotsman, as an inexpensive present for his daughter (Topsy Glyn). They all got what seemed like bargain prices. An hour later, another man arrives at the auction house eager to buy music boxes, and is frustrated to learn they're already gone.

Stinky, as it happens, is an old school chum of Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce), partner of Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone). Stinky mentions that he was coshed and one of his music boxes stolen, a cheap French one. Holmes is immediately intrigued. Stinky's collection includes at least one piece worth thousands of pounds, no self-respecting thief would have walked off with a lesser box. As it turns out, the French box looked very similar to the one Stinky recently purchased at auction. One with a rather peculiar melody. Interesting, but nothing Holmes can act on at the moment.

The boxes were created in Dartmoor Prison as part of a fundraising effort. The inmate who made them, Davison (Cyril Delevanti), intended that they fall into the hands of his outside confederates to reveal the location of some especially juicy loot. The gang is led by Mrs. Hilda Courtney (Patricia Morison), an attractive woman with impressive acting skills. Her accomplices are Colonel Cavanaugh (Frederick Worlock) a "gentleman" burglar, and Hamid (Harry Cording), a chauffeur/hitman who reads poetry and has unrequited feelings for Mrs. Courtney. (It's never mentioned what happened to Mr. Courtney, if he ever actually existed.)

When Stinky is murdered (Hamid got impatient and jealous while Mrs. Courtney was trying to get the music box through seduction) and the first music box goes missing, Holmes and Watson take up the case, attempting to bring the killers to justice and solve the three-box riddle.

This was the last of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies. Unfortunately at some point the original print was lost and it had to be reconstructed from television cuts, thus the end credits are missing. It's an okay story, referencing "A Scandal in Bohemia" while very much not being the same. Mrs. Courtney is clever and Holmes enjoys their spar, but she's no Irene Adler.

My favorite part of this movie is the use of music. The music box tune is "The Swagman" though usually slightly "off" due to the plot. Holmes plays "Danny Boy" on the violin. And while of course Holmes can memorize any tune he hears if he wants to, he doesn't have an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music, so consults ace busker (and former murder suspect) Joe Cisto (Wallace Scott) at an actor's pub, which allows us to enjoy the music hall number "You Never Know Who You'll Meet."

Hamid's interest in love poetry was an interesting touch, and I'd have liked to have more emphasis on that as part of his character.

Watson is again depicted as rather dim, but his ramblings do inspire a couple of Holmes' epiphanies.

Content note: Murder (no blood), mild peril to a child, an oblique reference to the Holocaust. Elementary schoolers on up should be fine.

At about an hour, this is one of the lesser Holmes movies, but still quite watchable thanks to Rathbone and Bruce. A good choice for family movie night or a rainy afternoon.

Current Music: "Across Land and Sea"--Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen

Captain Blood (1935) dir. Michael Curtiz

When he was a wild Irish lad, Peter Blood (Errol Flynn) fought for the French against the Spanish, the Spanish against the French, and learned to sail with the Dutch. But with his earnings, he got training in the medical arts and retired from action to become a doctor. In 1685 Dr. Blood is called out of his bed to treat a wounded man. Unfortunately, the man is a rebel against King James II (Vernon Steele). And under the king's proclamation, anyone who gives aid to a traitor is themselves a traitor. A cruel judge sentences Blood and the other rebels to hang, but the king is in need of cash, so the sentence is commuted to being transported to the West Indies and sold into ten-year slavery.

Peter's pride initially would condemn him to the sulfur mines, but his handsomeness and bearing attracts the attention of Arabella Bishop (Olivia de Havilland) and she buys him. Having no actual need for a slave, she loans him to her uncle Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill) to work on his plantation. Discovering that Governor Steed (George Hassell) of Port Royal, Jamaica, is having no luck with the local doctors in treating his gout, Arabella gets Dr. Blood permission to leave the plantation from time to time to use his medical skills.

Discovering that his fellow slaves contain several trained sailors, Blood conceives a plan of escape.
A fortuitous coincidence gives him and his crew the chance to seize a Spanish man of war, and the doctor becomes Captain Blood, one of the two greatest pirates in the West Indies. The other is his new partner, Captain Levasseur (Basil Rathbone). But Colonel Bishop has sworn to take Captain Blood down, and there's still the matter of that death sentence....

This 1935 movie based on the book by Rafael Sabatini was a return to full-on swashbuckler epics for Warner Brothers after a couple of similarly-themed but lower budget films had done well the year before. The leads were relative unknowns; this was Errol Flynn's first major American role, and Olivia de Havilland had only been in one big picture before, only a few months prior, A Midsummer Night's Dream. But they had a veteran director, a strong supporting cast, and an excellent composer for the soundtrack (though Erich Wolfgang Korngold lifted heavily from Liszt for lack of time and insisted on being listed as "musical arranger." And audiences saw the chemistry between the leads and loved it.

This is indeed one of the classic Hollywood movies. Good acting, excellent direction, swell music, and let's not forget the fight scenes! It's nearly two hours, but they're well-spent. There are fun supporting characters, like Honesty the man who isn't honest, and the Reverend Ogden, preacher turned pirate with a bible verse for every occasion.

There are, as always, a few quibbles. King James II is perhaps historically mischaracterized to make him more villainous. Captain Blood may object to himself and fellow Englishmen being enslaved, but his hatred of slavery isn't against the idea of it. (A few black people are seen in cameos, but none of them are relevant even though they too would be slaves.) There's period sexism towards Arabella, who largely shrugs it off.

Content note: Slavery, torture, whipping. The women we see in Tortuga are heavily implied to be prostitutes. A man deliberately mutilates himself.

Overall: A great movie for enjoying a night in, or if you can see it at a film festival. My DVD had "Warner Brothers Night at the Movies" with extra shorts to simulate the whole moviegoing experience in 1935.

Current Mood: hot

Terror by Night (1946) dir. Roy William Neill

The Star of Rhodesia, a large diamond, has long been associated with blood and death, bringing woe to its owners and those around them ever since it was dug up. The current owner is Lady Margaret Carstairs (Mary Forbes), a formidable dowager. Her son Roland Carstairs (Geoffrey Steele), fearing that the diamond is the target of thieves (a recent robbery attempt was made) has engaged consulting detective Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) to protect the diamond on the overnight train from London to Edinburgh. Naturally, where Holmes goes, Dr. John H. Watson (Nigel Bruce) follows. Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) is also on board, ostensibly going fishing up North.

A few hours later, Roland is dead, and the Star of Rhodesia is missing. Holmes and his friends must sort out the matter. Since they're on a train, the possible suspects are limited, but there's a high percentage of shady characters. There's a hard-faced young woman who's escorting her mother's coffin, a mathematics professor who objects strenuously to being questioned, one of Watson's military acquaintances who has a gambling habit, an elderly couple who are visibly nervous about Scotland Yard being present, and Lady Carstairs herself seems more upset about the diamond theft than her son's murder! Even the baggage car guard takes on a sinister aspect.

This was one of the last Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films; the writing team was running thin on ideas, and Mr. Rathbone wanted to do other things. (Nigel Bruce was already typecast so stayed on as Watson for the radio show.) It's also set in "the present day" to save money on costuming and sets. It's a short film, just under an hour, but doesn't feel rushed.

Holmes is, as always, the smartest man on the train, well ahead of everyone except the murderer, and even then catches up quickly. Once he breaks the alibi problem, the movie just goes ahead and shows us the baddie, though the characters in the story have to wait for Holmes' reveal. Poor Watson is particularly dim, engaging in an affable argument about whether the rice or the spice blend is most important in a good rice curry with his fellow veteran of India rather than observe his surroundings. (Holmes himself does not like curry, preferring steak and kidney pie.) Lestrade isn't much smarter, but does get a moment when he grasps Holmes' plan and gets to triumph for a change.

The movie's title is a bit of an exaggeration, though there is a tense sequence where Holmes finds himself on the outside of the train, and not by choice.

My copy of the movie came with a short film of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle late in his life talking about the origins of Sherlock Holmes and (much more enthusiastically) his interest in psychic phenomena.

It's not top-rate, but this is a pleasant enough movie, and due to its shortness would pair well as a double feature with another old-fashioned mystery or movie set on a train.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: "We'll Meet Again"--Vera Lynn

Tales of Terror (1962) dir. Roger Corman

This trilogy of scary stories was loosely adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe by Richard Matheson. By now, Roger Corman and Vincent Price were a practiced team at these adaptations.

In "Morella", Price plays "Locke", a widower who has spent the last 26 years obsessively mourning his wife Morella, even keeping her well-preserved corpse in their old bedroom. Their daughter Lorena (Maggie Smith) unexpectedly arrives to spend some time with her estranged father on the grounds that she's terminally ill.

It turns out that the birth went badly, injuring Morella. When she overexerted herself a few months later, Morella died cursing the child for doing this to her. Locke also blamed the baby, and had Lorena banished. But now that she's arrived, and time is running out, Locke realizes that his actions were unjust and decides to reconcile with his daughter.

Of course, this is a horror movie, so a happy ending isn't in the works.

"Black Cat" combines the Poe stories "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado." Peter Lorre plays Montresor, an unemployed sot who bullies his wife Annabel (Joyce Jameson) for the few pennies she earns sewing so that he can spend all night drinking wine. He also hates her pet cat. One night, Montresor gets in a wine-tasting contest with connoisseur Fortunato (Price) and holds his own thanks to his practical experience despite his habit of drinking the entire glass rather than just tasting.

Fortunato assists Montresor home, and is introduced to the lovely Annabel and her darling black cat. After that, Montresor doesn't get arguments about the money he spends drinking as long as he goes out of the house to do it. But eventually, he catches on....

The wine-tasting scene is classic comedy, and there's some interesting camera tricks during Montresor's drunken hallucinations.

"The Case of M. Valdemar" rounds out the movie with Valdemar (Price) as an elderly man dying of a painful brain ailment. Carmichael (Basil Rathbone) is a mesmerist who has had some success easing the pain through the use of hypnosis. Carmichael has gotten M. Valdemar's permission to hypnotize him at the very point of death, to see how long a person can be kept in an undying state. The answer is "a surprisingly long time." The film adds a more sinister ulterior motive to Carmichael's actions which makes for a more cinematic conclusion.

Mr. Price is also the narrator who links the stories.

"Morella" requires a bit of thinking to understand why the climax turns out the way it does. "The Black Cat" is the strongest sequence on its own, but younger viewers might find the dream sequence special effects offputting. "M. Valdemar" has the best suspense.

The color is lush and allows the settings to pop (but it's very obvious they are sets.)

Recommended for horror fans who enjoy some humor with their scares, and fans of the various stars.