Dressed to Kill (1946)

Year 10, Day 83 - 3/24/18 - Movie #2,885

BEFORE: I'm shuffling around 3 of my 5 VCRs today, something I've been meaning to do for a few weeks, but it's just never been a good time.  I'm always taping something on one level of the house or the other, and often in all three rooms at once.  But my daily TV recording + playback VCR often chooses to not rewind a tape, no matter what I do, which forces me to carry that tape downstairs to a VCR that will record, because the device I have specifically for rewinding tapes gave up years ago.  So I'm moving that bedroom "TV show" VCR down to the basement, to be part of the 3 VCR stack that (ideally) can make dubs from DVD to either DVD or VHS, or from VHS to either format.  I can still use it to play either format for dubs, and if it chooses to not rewind, I can easily move the tape to another device in the stack.  It's being replaced by the living room VCR, which I've been using only to tape movies to dub to DVD in the basement.  And the new living room VCR is the one that was on the bottom of the basement stack, which wasn't being used for anything, except to connect to the TV, since it still has a coaxial output.  That's being replace by a dead VCR that will not record or playback, it just makes a groaning noise like it wants to die, but since it also has an old coaxial output, I need it to live a little bit longer, just to conduct the signal to the TV.

Yes, I know I should be going all digital and streaming, but I'm not.  It's a process, OK?  Anyway, it takes 6 to 10 VHS tapes upstairs just to hold the excess runoff from the DVR, because I can only watch so much TV each week, and if I didn't dub things to tape, the DVR would fill up and I'd start to miss stuff.  Same goes for the living room "movie" DVR, it has a smaller drive so I have to store some movies on tape while I'm waiting for something to pair them with on a DVD, or else that one will fill up too.  I've made strides to watch more things on Netflix and iTunes in the past year, but the old system for taping off cable and burning DVDs is still in place as the main source.

I'm finally at the end of the Basil Rathbone/Sherlock Holmes series.  14 films, so he and Nigel Bruce should win the year easily in a tie.  Mary Gordon made 10 appearances as their housekeeper, Dennis Hoey made 6 appearances as Inspector Lestrade, and several other actors kept turning up again and again, so we'll see a bunch of their names in the year-end recap.

THE PLOT: Sherlock Holmes sets out to discover why a trio of murderous villains, including a dangerously attractive female, are desperate to obtain three unassuming and inexpensive little music boxes.

AFTER: I've seen Sherlock Holmes start in the Victorian era, then (somehow) skip over World War I but then get involved with fighting Nazi agents in World War II.  He's gone from horse-drawn carriages to motorcars, and tomorrow I'll see him go a step further, into more modern times.  But I have to remember these films were set in what used to be modern times, post WW2 London.  It was a different time, their economy was just getting back on track, and a simple item like a music box (or what they called "musical box", not sure why the extra syllable, but these are people who say "aluminium", after all...) was apparently something of a prized possession.  According to this film, some people collected them, so I guess they were sort of valuable?

And people apparently bought them at auctions, and not just the rare ones, this might be a plothole because the film shows very cheap music boxes being sold at an auction, for just one or two pounds each.  (That's another thing I don't understand, old British money, like how many shillings were in a pound?  I have no idea.).  And the auction house employee said they got several music boxes each week, built by prison inmates.  So if they're common, plentiful and cheap, why were they being sold at an auction?  Aren't auctions usually for expensive items, like artwork, vases and rare furniture?  Why would an auction house sell items for just a couple of pounds, weren't there stores for those kinds of transactions?  Didn't they set prices for things in 1946 London, like why not just price the music boxes at two pounds and sell them straight to the customers, instead of wasting everyone's time at the auction.

For that matter, if the auction house had three identical music boxes, why not sell them as a lot, or sell them to the three highest bidders, in order to save time?  Instead I have to listen to the auctioneer say "tinkle tinkle tinkle" each time he describes the box's music, and that gets annoying very quickly.  Just say, "same as the last item" and start the bidding, already.

But it is important to the story that these three music boxes are special, and in fact they are slightly different, and that's the point.  The prisoner who made the music boxes had some valuable information to get to someone on the outside, and this was his method of doing that.  There's nothing inside the box, but even though he's only able to put his hands on one of the three boxes, of course Sherlock is able to figure out that there's a sort of code in the musical notes.  But this leads me to a real NITPICK POINT, which is that a musical piece is really not a good place to put a letter-based code, because the musical notes already HAVE letters, at least A through G, so imparting a different set of letters on them doesn't make much sense.  But I guess if someone just stuck to those letters, it might be hard to engineer a message that didn't use the letters H to Z.

And shame on the auction house for so easily giving up the names and addresses of the people who bought the music boxes.  "Sorry, sir, we've got a strict policy against violating the confidentiality of our clients." "Here's five pounds."  "OK, I'll get you their names and addresses."  Huh?  What a breach of data, couldn't the auctioneer possibly foresee that someone would be looking for this information in order to rob or kill those clients?

Also starring Nigel Bruce, Frederick Worlock, Harry Cording (all carrying over from "Terror by Night"), Patricia Morison (last seen in "Song of the Thin Man"), Edmund Breon (last seen in "The Thing from Another World"), Carl Harbord, Holmes Herbert (last seen in "The House of Fear"), Mary Gordon (last seen in "The Woman in Green"), Ian Wolfe (last seen in "The Pearl of Death"), Anita Sharp-Bolster (last seen in "The Thin Man Goes Home").

RATING: 4 out of 10 duck noises

Terror By Night

Year 10, Day 82 - 3/23/18 - Movie #2,884

BEFORE: Almost done, just one more Basil Rathbone film to go after tonight.  By Monday I'll be watching more current films on a different topic.  So March Mystery Madness is almost over, thank God.  I'm glad I did this, cleared these films off the list, but I have no desire to ever watch them again. 

THE PLOT: When the fabled Star of Rhodesia diamond is stolen on a train to Edinburgh and the son of its owner is murdered, Sherlock Holmes must discover which of his suspicious fellow passengers is responsible.

AFTER: This is a totally different film from "Pursuit to Algiers", which featured an emerald thief on a boat.  This one has a diamond thief on a train - see?  Totally different thing.  But Holmes still has to interact with all of the passengers and figure out if everyone is who they say they are, and if not, then who are they?  Who's not telling the truth? 

But as usual, Holmes is two steps ahead of everyone else, even Watson, who barely caught the train as it was pulling out of the station.  Watson even brought a friend along on this trip, Major Duncan-Bleek - was he TRYING to make Sherlock jealous?  And what exactly were the sleeping arrangements on the train, hmmm?  Hey, the Holmes-Watson relationship is solid enough to survive a few twists and turns, it's not like they ever said they were exclusive or anything.  Watson's free to see other detectives or military personnel if he wants.

If you've been following along, you can probably figure that Holmes is not going to let the real diamond be in any danger of being stolen.  If he's on the case, he's probably going to do a switcheroo, or possibly even two or three, just to be on the safe side.  And if the diamond appears to be stolen, it's because Holmes LET it be stolen, so he could observe the theft and track the criminal.  But is that really the responsible thing to do here?  I've noticed in a few of these films that people often keep dying, even after Holmes is on the case. 

If he's so smart, why can't he solve the crimes in a way that prevents these murders from happening?  I've seen him use Watson or other people as bait, is that really the best way of doing things?  Or is he afraid that if he prevents the crime from happening, then it will look like he didn't DO anything?  Is Sherlock Holmes' ego really so fragile that he needs people to DIE so that he can take credit for solving their murders?  It seems like a weird way to earn a living, that's all.  More emphasis should be placed on crime prevention, not crime solving. 

In a little over two weeks, I'm going to watch the remake of "Murder on the Orient Express", another movie with a famous detective solving a murder on a train.  Though I've seen the original movie from the 1970's, and I'm wondering why anyone bothered to remake this.  Doesn't everyone already know the famous ending to this story?  So unless they've changed that, how could this story manage to have any surprises left in it?   I guess I'm going to find out.

My main issue with "Terror By Night" involves Holmes knowing things that the audience couldn't possibly know, the solution is all based on things that we didn't see, facts that were in Holmes' brain, and I'm not sure if that makes for the best mystery film.  It's also odd that Scotland Yard has no jurisdiction in Scotland - can that be right?  You'd think they would have changed their name at some point, because it's just too confusing this way.

Also starring Nigel Bruce (carrying over from "Pursuit to Algiers"), Alan Mowbray (last seen in "Every Girl Should Be Married"), Dennis Hoey (last seen in "The House of Fear"), Harry Cording (ditto), Renee Godfrey, Frederick Worlock (also last seen in "Pursuit to Algiers"), Mary Forbes (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes in Washington"), Skelton Knaggs, Billy Bevan (last seen in "The Pearl of Death"), Geoffrey Steele (last seen in "Doctor Dolittle").

RATING: 3 out of 10 plates of curry

Pursuit to Algiers

Year 10, Day 81 - 3/22/18 - Movie #2,883

BEFORE: Another snowstorm, even though it's spring - and unlike the last two, which managed to avoid NYC, this one hit us pretty hard.  We got like 18 inches, which sort of makes up for skating on the last two storms.  I feel bad because even though my boss gave me the day off yesterday, I didn't really get out and shovel until this morning, by which point my neighbor had done the bulk of the work.  I heard him shoveling yesterday and again today, but that wasn't enough to motivate me to get my boots on.  But I did shovel his walk and his steps the last two times that snow did fall here, I think while he was away - so karmically I felt justified in not pitching in this time.

These Sherlock Holmes films are a bit like snowstorms in late March, I keep hoping each one is the last one, though I know that it possibly, probably isn't.  But the snow's got to stop coming eventually, and two more Basil Rathbone films after this one, and then I can move forward and turn things around.

THE PLOT: Holmes is recruited to escort the heir to a European throne safely back to his homeland after his father's assassination.

AFTER: Holmes and Watson are contacted by foreign officials, who need their help in making sure that the prince of Rovinia, who was educated in the U.K., gets safe passage back to his country, where he will assume the throne.  There are simply too many Russian agents about who would love to take out the prince, which seems a little weird here that Russia is portrayed as the enemy, weren't they allies of the U.K. during World War II?  Or by the time this film was released in 1945, was it clear to most Brits that Communist Russia was up to no good, and would be an enemy going forward?  (Wikipedia says the Cold War didn't really start until 1947, so I think I'm right to be confused.)

Anyway, the plan is to fly the prince home, only a last-minute change means that there are only two seats for passengers on the plane, and Watson does NOT appreciate being separated from Holmes, and he was against taking the mission in the first place, because it interrupted their plans for another fishing trip up in Scotland.  (Jeez, guys, get a room already.  Or just admit to everyone that you've got feelings for each other, and enjoy taking vacations together.  Fishing trip, yeah, right...)

This one was a little tough for me to follow, there were just too many characters on the boat to Algiers.  Like, I wasn't sure if the singer who Watson was spending time with, who he seemed to have an attraction to, was the same woman who was hanging out with the prince, who was masquerading as Watson's nephew.

And the woman who kept calling Watson "Ducky", was that the same woman who called him "Ducky" when they went to the fish and chips place, earlier in the film?  If not, then that seems like an odd coincidence, but if it was, then why did he suspect her of being an enemy agent?  Because if she was the same woman who was at the pub, where Holmes and Watson were recruited for this assignment, wouldn't that mean she was on his side?

This is at least the third film where Holmes uses Watson as something of a decoy, and at least the second film where he tells Watson to go and be "as conspicuous as possible" in a social situation.  The first time I thought he said "inconspicuous", so I figured that either Watson didn't understand the meaning of the word, or Holmes was counting on the fact that Watson sticks out like a sore thumb, so that even when he's trying to be undercover, the opposite effect is achieved.

Also starring Nigel Bruce (carrying over) , Marjorie Riordan, Rosalind Ivan (last seen in "The Robe"), Morton Lowry (last seen in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"), Leslie Vincent, Martin Kosleck (last seen in "Foreign Correspondent"), Rex Evans (last seen in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man"), John Abbott (last seen in "Mrs. Miniver"), Gerald Hamer (last seen in "The Scarlet Claw"), William Davis, Tom Dillon, Frederick Worlock (also carrying over from "The Woman in Green"), Sven Hugo Borg.

RATING: 4 out of 10 games of shuffleboard

The Woman in Green

Year 10, Day 80 - 3/21/18 - Movie #2,882

BEFORE: This seems like it might be appropriate for the first day of spring, which was yesterday, or perhaps St. Patrick's Day, which was four days ago.  But according to the poster, it looks like Sherlock Holmes will be facing off against the Wicked Witch of the West from "The Wizard of Oz", so who knows?   Guess I have to watch it and find out - this is Basil Rathbone's 11th appearance in a row here.

14 appearances in a film series isn't even a record, by the way.  I looked it up, and although Rathbone and Bruce are, like, solid top 5, their filmography as Holmes and Watson is only half that of the actors who appeared in the "Blondie and Dagwood" series of films that started in 1938 - 28 films starring Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake, in just a 12-year period!

THE PLOT: Sherlock Holmes investigates when young women around London turn up murdered, each with a finger cut off.  Scotland Yard suspects a madman, but Holmes believes the killings to be part of a diabolical plot.

AFTER: OK, so the "Woman in Green" wasn't really green, like she didn't have green skin after all.  She might have been wearing a green dress or something, but since this was still a black and white film, I don't know how that was supposed to come across.  I don't know why some films from 1945 were still black and white, I mean, they HAD color film by then, were some companies just too cheap to spring for it?  Did this have something to do with war rationing?

Anyway, it's all an evil plot by a certain criminal mastermind, making his third appearance in this film series, though played by three different actors who looked nothing alike, continuity be damned.  Women are being killed all across London, and the killer is quite annoyingly not sticking to one class or women or one neighborhood, as Jack the Ripper had the "courtesy" to do.  Serial killers apparently all get stuck with one M.O., and don't tend to deviate from that, apparently.  So the very lack of a pattern suggests to Holmes that something else is going on here - and why do all the corpses lack their forefingers?

It's at this point in the Sherlock Holmes franchise, however, that the filmmakers apparently no longer cared whether the actors could believably deliver their lines, or in the case of the actress who plays the young Maude Fenwick, whether they could speak coherently at all.  I simply could not understand a word she was saying, from the context I had to figure out that she believed her own father was a killer, because she saw him in their garden, burying what looked to be a woman's finger.  This was an important clue, so it was kind of crucial that this actress should have been able to speak clearly and get her point across, only she could only mumble, as if her mouth wouldn't open or something.  It's bad enough that Watson has talked throughout the series like he's half-drunk all the time - but I assumed that was just part of his back-story.

Anyway, the trail leads Holmes & Watson to the Mesmer Club, which points out that hypnotism was something of a cool fad in the 1940's, before people really understood what it was or what its limits were.  But man, filmmakers jumped on the trend and started making films like "The Manchurian candidate" that treated it like a form of brainwashing, with the ability to turn men into programmed killers.  There's a little bit like that here, with a military man acting as a pawn to try and take Holmes out.  But I've been told that people under hypnosis can't be made to do things that they wouldn't normally do in their regular lives.

But Holmes has to play along with the woman in green if he's going to uncover the scheme.  Big NITPICK POINT here, whenever we see the images of people being hypnotized in her bowl of water, the reflections are never backwards, as they should be.  It seems someone couldn't figure out how to reverse the film's image when it was superimposed on the water.  Couldn't they just have the two characters reverse positions on the couch, and/or turn the camera upside-down?

Also starring Nigel Bruce, Paul Cavanagh, Sally Shepherd (all carrying over from "The House of Fear"), Hillary Brooke (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes Faces Death"), Frederick Worlock (ditto), Henry Daniell (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes in Washington"), Matthew Boulton (last seen in "Shall We Dance", Eve Amber, Tom Bryson, Mary Gordon (last seen in "The Pearl of Death")

RATING: 4 out of 10 incorrect pronunciations of the capital of Uruguay

The House of Fear

Year 10, Day 79 - 3/20/18 - Movie #2,881

BEFORE: At this point, I can't remember a time when I wasn't watching Sherlock Holmes movies, so that's a definite sign that I've watched too many.  I'm eager to be done with this chain so I can move on to something, anything else.  Basil Rathbone carries over for film #10 in this series.

THE PLOT: Sherlock Holmes investigates a series of deaths at a castle, with each foretold by the delivery of orange pips to the victims.

AFTER: This one's a cut above the others, I think, partially because it's based on a true Sherlock Holmes story, "The Five Orange Pips" (a "pip" is a seed, by the way...) and because even though I have read that story, I didn't remember the conclusion, so the twist came as a nice surprise.  You probably won't be able to figure out the case here before Sherlock does, unless of course you're familiar with the original short story.

There are notable differences, however, between the original story and the filmed version - here Holmes and Watson are contacted by an insurance company after seven rich gentlemen all move to a house in Scotland and form a club of sorts, called "The Good Comrades", with the men all acting as each other's beneficiaries where their life insurance policies are concerned.  You'd think that would be a red flag right there, or that the insurance company wouldn't allow anyone to be named as a beneficiary unless they were related to the policy-holder.  But let's assume for a minute that someone at the insurance company was asleep at the switch" that day when this was approved.

When one of the gentlemen gets a message delivered during dinner, containing seven orange seeds, that man is then found dead, and horribly mutilated.  A few days later, another member of the club gets a delivered message that contains SIX orange seeds, and he meets the same gruesome fate - that's when Holmes and Watson are called in.  The situation then becomes something like Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" story, with the people in the house being bumped off, one by one.  Holmes seems unable to stop the burning and crushing of the club members, until they're down to just two.  Well, the solution seems simple, right?  Just wait for the next-to-last man to die, and whichever man's left standing, there's your killer.

Thankfully, it's not that simple.  And then a murder occurs in town, one that doesn't seem to fit the pattern at all, what's going on there?  A few other things don't seem to add up either - like why warn people that they're about to be murdered?  And then, once warned, why do the men who receive the messages STAY in the house, instead of running for the hills?  And why doesn't anyone pay closer attention to who's coming to the house and slipping the messages under the door?  Why not position someone at a window where they've got a good view of the front door?

Also starring Nigel Bruce, Dennis Hoey, Holmes Herbert, Harry Cording, Wilson Benge (all carrying over from "The Pearl of Death"), Aubrey Mather (last seen in "Mrs. Miniver"), Paul Cavanagh (last seen in "The Scarlet Claw"), David Clyde (ditto), Sally Shepherd, Gavin Muir (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes Faces Death"), Florette Hillier, Cyril Delevanti (last seen in "The Night of the Iguana"), Richard Alexander (last seen in "Follow the Fleet"), Doris Lloyd (ditto), Alec Craig (last seen in "The Spider Woman").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Singapore tattoos

The Pearl of Death

Year 10, Day 78 - 3/19/18 - Movie #2,880

BEFORE: I think it took about 6 months last year for me to assemble all 14 of the Sherlock Holmes films and dub them to DVD - most of them ran on this channel called Movies! which I wouldn't ordinarily pay attention to, because they run commercials, but this was the easiest way for me to get them all for free.  I think Starz ran "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon", but the rest were mostly relegated to this commercial channel.  Six months to track them all down, and now two weeks to watch them all in order.  Anyway, I'm over the hump now and I just have to run out the clock this week, then I can get back to modern times.  Film #9 in a row for Basil Rathbone & co. today.

THE PLOT: When a valuable pearl with a sinister reputation is stolen, Sherlock Holmes must investigate its link to a series of brutal murders.

AFTER: By 1944 it seems they were really churning out these Sherlock Holmes movies, one was released every few months or so - so they were a bit like the modern superhero movies (6 Marvel movies released in one year?  Aren't they a bit afraid of burning out the trend?) or I don't know, maybe the "Fast & Furious" films.  THREE Sherlock Holmes films came out in 1944, and another three in 1945.  And the films kept getting shorter and shorter, most of these later ones seem to run just over an hour each.

And they were drawing from a pool of only about 20 actors, again and again, so the same people popped up in multiple roles, and nobody seemed to mind.  Ian Wolfe was in four of them, always playing some kind of shopkeeper whose business kept getting interrupted by Holmes' investigations, like that actor (Clifton James) who played a Southern sheriff in TWO James Bond films, and several other movies, or that other guy (Fritz Feld) who played a waiter or maitre d' in over 100 movies...

"The Pearl of Death" opens with the theft of the title item aboard a cruise ship, and the woman who steals it is worried about being nabbed at customs, so she asks this kindly older gentleman to hold on to a package for her, telling him that it's film that she doesn't want to be exposed.  Which sounds a bit odd, I mean, this was before customs officials were using x-ray machines to check people's bags - plus, why would the officials expose the film of a younger woman, but not the film of an older man?  Of course, the older man is really our hero in disguise, because he somehow predicted the theft before it happened - so the thief manages to hand over the stolen item right into Sherlock's hands.  Boom, story over in just 10 minutes' time.

Only it's not the end - after delivering the pearl to the Royal Museum, Holmes has to go and prove how easy it is to disable the museum's newfangled electric security system, just to make a point, and the thief takes advantage of the resulting lapse in security to steal the pearl again.  Now Holmes has to get the pearl back, because he's sort of responsible for it being stolen in the first place.  Er, second place.

Soon after, there's another string of murders, where each victim has their back broken, along with all of the dinnerware in the house.  The M.O. of the murder suggests the Hoxton Creeper, but why is he smashing up everyone's china?  Hint: this is based on the Conan Doyle short story "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons".

Also starring Nigel Bruce, Miles Mander, Ian Wolfe, Charles Francis (all carrying over from "The Scarlet Claw"), Dennis Hoey (last seen in "The Spider Woman"), Mary Gordon (ditto), Evelyn Ankers (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror"), Holmes Herbert (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes in Washington"), Richard Aherne, Rondo Hatton, Billy Bevan (last seen in "Mrs. Miniver"), Harry Cording (also last seen in "The Spider Woman").

RATING: 4 out of 10 newspaper headlines

The Scarlet Claw

Year 10, Day 77 - 3/18/18 - Movie #2,879

BEFORE: I was all set to brag about how I've managed to get my watchlist down from 160 to 150, and doubling up a few times this year certainly helped with that, but just as I got proud of myself, I found that there's a channel running a bunch of animated Superman films this week, so I just had to add those, and just like that, the list is back up to 153, and I have to start whittling away at it again.  Of course, there's a secondary watchlist that has all the films that I'd LIKE to add to my watchlist, and right now that contains another 123 films - those are films available on the Netflix and on Academy screeners that I can borrow, so I guess in a way I'm fooling myself when I say my watchlist contains 153 films, if you put the two lists together, it's really 276.  Progress is not being made very quickly, what can I say?

This is the eighth film where Basil Rathbone played Sherlock Holmes, and I've had it pretty easy this past week, since these films are all relatively short, but for some reason they're not holding my attention as much as I thought they might, so I still find myself falling asleep sometimes before making it through the whole film, forcing me to complete the film the next morning.  That's not a great system, because it takes longer overall, but it proves I'd rather be watching longer movies that have more action in them, which tend to hold my attention longer.

THE PLOT: When a woman in Quebec is found dead with her throat torn out, the villagers blame a supernatural monster.  But Sherlock Holmes, who gets drawn into the case, suspects a human murderer.

AFTER: There's no connection to World War II in this film, which seems a bit odd to me since it was released in 1944, and the war was still going on.  Perhaps by this time people in the U.K. felt that victory was assured, or else the filmmakers were tired of shoehorning patriotic messages into detective movies and were desperate to move on, to get back to good old-fashioned murder mysteries.  

Either way, Sherlock Holmes seems to have departed war-torn Europe for Canada, where he and Watson attend a symposium on the occult.  Well, at least they've got their priorities straight.  While there, a man at the conference receives word that his wife has died, and soon after, Holmes receives a letter from the same dead wife, who had a premonition she was going to die, and tried to hire Holmes by telegram.  Such were the perils of communication back in the day - by the time someone received your message, you might already be dead.  Though things still don't really add up here, did the wife peek at the guest list for the conference her husband was going to attend?  Even if that's the case, it seems like a big coincidence that the detective she wanted to hire would be so close to her home.

Holmes and Watson arrive, and find that the woman has not been buried yet, and that her throat was slashed by something akin to a wild animal's paw, or perhaps a gardener's claw.  Another coincidence, Holmes recognizes the dead woman, since she used to be a famous actress.  (It's awfully curious, Holmes can recognize a decomposing face from a movie or play he saw, but he doesn't notice that the house's butler looks exactly the same as the man who ran the antiques shop when he visited Washington, DC a few films ago...).

Why does the local innkeeper act so skittish, and why was he packing a bag?  What's the connection between the dead woman and the old judge who's in a wheelchair?  And why do the townspeople believe in a glowing monster who lives in the marsh?  It's not exactly a remake of "The Hound of the Baskervilles", but fans did notice some similarities between the two stories.

Also starring Nigel Bruce (carrying over), Gerald Hamer (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes Faces Death"), Paul Cavanagh, Arthur Hohl (also carrying over from "The Spider Woman"), Miles Mander (last seen in "The Private Life of Henry VIII"), Kay Harding, David Clyde, Victoria Horne (last seen in "Harvey"), Charles Francis, Ian Wolfe (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes in Washington").

RATING: 4 out of 10 missing sheep