Sherlock Holmes: Terror by Night

If you've grown up over the last forty years and have watched mystery films you couldn't have missed the Sherlock Holmes series of movies starring Basil Rathbone. He had the perfect looks and mannerisms of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous British detective, and with Nigel Bruce at his side as Dr. Watson they created an on screen presence that couldn't be beat. This is one of the few series of films that the stories and acting just got better as they went on. With the murder and intrigue that was easily transferred from the printed page to the screen the audience was given a treat to see their literary heroes come to life.
Holmes and Watson are hired to guard a huge priceless diamond on a train trip, but once their journey begins the owner is murdered and they must solve the crime before the train reaches its destination. The use of some of the oldest camera tricks, like shooting the actors from the waist down to hide their identity, helps this quick fast paced mystery. With the film coming in at an hours time its interesting to see how much story is pushed together without making things confusing for the audience. For a movie that was shot in 1946 its stood up well to time, not so much to the references to the time period but the action and the mystery story works and could have been easily shot today.
I remember watching these films during the 70s on Saturday afternoons and as a young boy I always wondered how Holmes could figure it out every single time. Now years later after reading the stories and examinations of Doyle's writings he purposely left information out of the readers hands leaving the all knowing Holmes with clues that only he could see. The film makers tried to carry this bit of story trickery to the movies but as in this case Holmes just comes off as an arrogant know it all that can do everything by himself. But that aside the chemistry between Rathbone and Bruce is what carried this series of films with the success that it had, and where this was the last installment in that series you can see the well oiled machine of their acting abilities.