Review of Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943) by Art S — 07 Aug 2014

Last weekend, when I was first struck down by this nasty cold, I watched another of the Rathbone & Bruce Sherlock Holmes films to whisk me away from my stupor. I probably watched all 14 in the series with my Dad on Saturday nights on Channel 38 back in the early '80s, but the plots are largely forgotten now.

And even though I read the complete Conan Doyle stories/novellas a few years ago, that hardly affects my ability to recognize much in these liberal adaptations. Faces Death comes closest to the old Charlie Chan formula that sees the detective confronting a houseful of suspect character actors - only unlike in Chan films, there are only 1 or 2 plausible suspects here and one of them gives himself away so badly that the solution to the murders is rather obvious (even if his reasons remain unclear until the end).

However, somehow, the creepy weirdness of the setting (an old mansion that has become a convalescence home for veterans, complete with secret passages and dank dungeon) manages to elevate the film beyond its otherwise not so dramatic plot.