Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone)
That he does. Called in by Scotland Yard's Inspector Gregson* (Matthew Boulton [20 Jan 1893 – 10 Feb 1962] of The Man in Half Moon Street [1944 / trailer] and The Undying Monster [1942 / full movie]) to help solve a series of murders in which all the victims, all women, have been found missing a finger, Sherlock Holmes literally stumbles upon the nefarious plans of Moriarty (Henry Daniell [5 Mar 1894 – 31 Oct 1963]) and his henchpersons. Basically, bad-gal Lydia Marlow (Hillary Brooke in her third appearance in the series**) is luring nice, upstanding (and horny) men back to her apartment, where she hypnotizes them into committing the dreadful deed(s) so that Moriarty can later confront and blackmail them for all that they have got. Upon finding a severed finger in their coat pockets, after suffering a "blackout", even such upper-crust staples of society as Sir George Fenwick (B-movie regular (Paul Cavanagh [8 Dec 1888 – 15 Mar 1964], of The Sin of Nora Moran [1933 / full movie] and too many other fun films to mention) would rather pay up than go to the police (or his friend Sherlock Holmes). To make sure that Holmes doesn't ruin his nice set-up, Moriarty decides that the great detective must be eliminated before he can solve the crimes and, after a hypnotized sharpshooter fails at the job, he has Lydia hypnotize Holmes as well...
* As Dennis Hoey [30 Mar 1893 – 25 Jul 1960], who usually played the pointlessly bumbling Scotland Yard contact Inspector Lestrade in the Universal series was busy on another film, his pointlessly comic character is thankfully absent from the movie; his absence is even commented upon by Holmes.
** Hillary Brooke ([8 Sept 1914 – 25 May 1999] of The Man Who Knew Too Much [1956 / trailer], The Maze [1953 / trailer], The Strange Woman [1946 / full movie], Ministry of Fear [1944 / trailer] and Invaders from Mars [1953 / trailer]) is also found in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) and Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943 / trailer). In Voice of Terror, however, her part was both un-credited and negligible.
A colorized trailer to
The Woman in Green:
The eleventh film in the Rathbone & Bruce series, and even if the films were beginning to creek by then, The Woman in Green is an entertaining, painless way to spend an hour — as are most of the Sherlock Holmes programmers. Of course, unless you see the colorized version, you can never be sure what color the titular woman is wearing, but whatever she's wearing, Hillary Brooke makes a pleasing blonde villain as the bad gal Lydia Marlow. And Henry Daniell (of The Great Dictator [1940 / trailer], The Body Snatcher [1945], The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake [1959 / trailer] and a lot more) — who, like Brooke makes his third appearance in the series* — is a perfectly cast, suavely evil Moriarty. He is, arguably, the best Moriarty of the three times the bad guy appeared in the series. (George Zucco's Moriarty pulls the strings in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [1939 / trailer], while Lionel Atwill's does so in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon [1942].)
* A third actor also makes his third appearance in the series: Paul Cavanagh had previously appeared in The Scarlet Claw (1944) and The House of Fear (1945).
B&W Fan-made trailer to
The Woman in Green:
The Woman in Green is nicely atmospheric and, like many of the better Holmes films, disturbingly brutal (if bloodless) at times in appearance and general feeling — indeed, to come up with and conduct the scheme they pursue, both Moriarty and the Woman in Green must be less simply evil than downright psychopathic. (Supposedly the first draft even involved the murder of young prepubescent girls, but the censors forced the change to adult women.)
The narrative, supplied by Bertram Millhauser (24 Mar 1892 – 1 Dec 1958), is an original one, though Millhauser does pepper his tale with oblique borrowings from at least two Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tales, namely The Final Problem (1893) and The Adventure of the Empty House (1903) — the shooter sort of comes from the latter tale, while some dialogue, the called-away Watson, and Moriarty's demise all blow kisses in the direction of The Final Problem. (The Adventure of the Cardboard Box is often given as a source as well, but that tale involves a woman receiving a parcel containing two severed ears and involves neither a series of dead ladies nor Moriarty.) Millhauser also borrows direct plot points from a prior second feature he had written, the Philo Vance flick The Garden Murder Case (1936 / trailer). One scene and some dialogue that is definitely from Millhauser is the following dryly humorous exchange between Inspector Gregson and Holmes over a whiskey and soda at Pembroke House, when they notice the "mature" Sir George Fenwick sitting with a much younger attractive woman (probably wearing green):
Gregson: "Is that his daughter with him?"
Holmes: "Don't be so naive, Inspector."
Holmes: "Wonder where she's taking Sir George Fenwick."
Gregson: "Don't be so naive, Mr. Holmes."
Like most of the entries, Roland de Gostrie (a.k.a. Roy William Neill) handled the directional chores, and does a nicely professional job. Likewise, Virgil Miller's cinematography is crisp and clear but ever so slightly dark and shadowy, and the acting in general still has zing. Like normal, the story has a few sketchy elements to it, with Holmes solving the crime less through detection than by coincidence. And as much as we like the associated dialogue, we here at a wasted life, for one, find it a bit too pat that Holmes should go to some club for a drink and coincidentally see Lydia Marlow, or "the Woman in Green", with one of her victims, Sir George Fenwick, who also just happens to be an acquaintance of his. And, if you get down to it, sometimes Moriarty's actions are questionable at best — are we the only ones to realize that if Moriarty had not revealed himself to Holmes, the great detective would have had a hard time proving that the villain was not dead, as was believed? Really, alpha men and their egos...
The Woman in Green is in the public domain, so scratchy B&W prints of the movie are easy to locate online. While not quite as effective as the three films preceding, The Woman in Green is still one of the better Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies. Well worth a gander, in any event.
While it lasts – a colorized version of
The Woman in Green:
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