Terror by Night

Terror by Night is directed by Roy William Neill and written by Frank Gruber. It's based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle, loosely using ideas from the stories The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Empty House and the Sign of Four. It stars Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Alan Mowbray, Dennis Hoey, Renee Godfrey and Vivian Vedder. Music is by Hans Salter and cinematography by Maury Gertsman.

Plot finds Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone) hired to protect Lady Margaret Carstairs (Mary Forbes) and her precious diamond, the Star of Rhodesia. Who along with her son Roland (Geoffrey Steele), is aboard the express train from London to Edinburgh. It seems that the presence of the diamond on board this train is known by many characters, both good and bad. Holmes and his trusty companion Dr. Watson (Bruce), will need to keep their wits about them.

The thirteenth and penultimate film in the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes series, Terror by night is a considerable improvement on the one before it, Pursuit to Algiers. Like that film, this one is also set mostly on a passenger vehicle, but where the boat premise wasn't utilised for great drama and mystery previously, here on board a speeding train it is. Clocking in at under an hour in running time, film does have the feel of a TV episode, but the characters are interesting and the twists and turns in the plot are most welcome. Picture also sees more of Lestrade; true enough he's more inept than ever, as is Watson, but they keep the comedy on the high heat till the story veers into mystery solving time. Here there's also enjoyment to be had in trying to guess who the villain is; OK, so you don't have to be Einstein to figure it out, but the mystery unfolds with some wily Holmes trickery and some Dr. Watson gusto. 7/10