![]() Holmes' perfect-pitch deductions surrounding the encryption melodies are enjoyably preposterous, and we love lines such as a villain's "By now we assume that Mr. Along the way we get the Rathbone-Bruce duo back at 221b Baker Street, "Fatso" Watson's friend "Stinky" knifed in the back by "extremely astute cold-blooded murderers," the sleuths slumming for clues in a singalong pub, a poison gas that "the Germans use with gratifying results in removing their undesirables," Watson's hand in the cookie jar, and the climactic confrontation at the museum home of Ben Jonson. The crime lord heading the dastardly counterfeiters is sultry Hilda Courtney (Patricia Morison). Coded within the music box tunes, you see, is the location of stolen Bank of England pound-note engraving plates. The plot turns on three cheap music boxes that Holmes must locate and keep safe before a criminal gang finds them and destroys England's economy. Readers faithful to Arthur Conan Doyle's original tales weren't sad to see Bruce's comic-sidekick Watson finally retire, although devotees will smile as the film unabashedly acknowledges that it's pilfering elements from "A Scandal in Bohemia," Watson's first "slightly lurid" Holmes short story published by Conan Doyle in The Strand in 1891. Watson are always welcome, the successful series has run its course and here it's picking its own fur to weave a plot. ![]() This is Universal's twelfth film in the line, and while Rathbone's super-sleuth and Bruce's Dr. After all that plus more than 200 half-hour Sherlock Holmes radio adventures with Nigel Bruce, it's understandable that Rathbone wanted to leave Holmes and Hollywood behind. What began in '39 with 20th Century Fox's The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes had by now degenerated to modest B-movie pulp potboilers with contemporary stock villains such as Nazis, the Scarlet Claw, and the Spider Woman. This rickety 1946 thriller is the final installment of Universal's Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone. Dressed to Kill) Prelude to Murder (a.k.a. ![]() The DVD Journal | Quick Reviews: Prelude to Murder (a.k.a.
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