The Terror by Night (USA, 1946)

"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night."
Psalms 91:5

 

Of the numerous series that Universal had in production in the thirties and forties, the Sherlock Holmes series was definitely of the most consistent in quality. True, there were one or two turkeys amongst the twelve films featuring Basil Rathbone (13 Jun 1892 – 21 Jul 1967) and Nigel Bruce (4 Feb 1895 – 8 Oct 1953) as the famed detective and his good friend Dr. Watson – Sherlock Holmes & The Secret Weapon (1942) or Sherlock Holmes & The Voice of Terror (1942) are the two that come quickly to mind – but unlike any of the movie studio's horror series, most Sherlock Holmes entries tended to be either of equal or better quality to the film that preceded it. Terror by Night, the second to last film, is of no exception. Nowhere is to be seen the boredom that Rathbone supposedly felt for his reoccurring role, a boredom that led him to leave the series after Dressed to Kill (1946 / trailer) in search of stage work, notwithstanding the fact that four more movies were in pre-production. 

Colorized trailer to

Terror by Night:

Despite the title of this movie, the overall mood and feeling of Terror by Night is much less "horrorific" than such superb entries as The Pearl of Death (1944), The Scarlet Claw (1944), The House of Fear (1945) or The Woman in Green (1945). In fact, more so than most of the films that preceded it, Terror by Night is a traditional mystery story, a simple tale of a crime (and murders) committed by a person or persons unknown and how the crime is solved – and the criminals foiled – by the master detective. Gone (or at least substantially subdued) are the long shadows and seemingly supernatural or monstrous trappings that made many an earlier Holmes film almost come across like a horror film disguised as a mystery. 

In Terror by Night, the "why" is known from the beginning: the famed 400 carat "Star of Rhodesia" diamond is stolen, the people who die do so either to facilitate the crime or hide the identity of the criminals. The only question that remains unanswered is "who", and as to be expected, Holmes (Rathbone) solves the mystery as Watson (Bruce) and Lestrade (Dennis Hoey [30 Mar 1893 –25 Jul 1960]) bumble along for the ride. (They do so in more ways than one since the film is set on a train.) 

That the film is more of a traditional crime film is possibly due to the scriptwriter brought aboard for this entry, author Frank Gruber (2 Feb 1904 – 9 Dec 1969). Though Frank Gruber earned most of his money in his later years writing western novels and teleplays under his name and the pseudonyms Stephen Acre, Charles K. Boston, C.K.M. Scanlon and John K. Vedder, Gruber began his writing career writing lightly comic, hard-boiled pulp detective stories and novels. In fact, just prior to writing the screenplay for Terror by Night, he supplied the scripts to two acknowledged minor crime film classics, Jean Negulesco's The Mask of Dimitrios (1944 / trailer), starring Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, and the George Raft vehicle Johnny Angel (1945 / trailer). Hardly surprising, then, that Terror by Night is such a straight crime mystery. 

In theory an "original story" using minor plot elements from diverse Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories, the screenplay almost seems influenced by Agatha Christie's novel Murder on the Orient Express, which was first published twelve years earlier in 1934, as all the action in Terror by Night takes place aboard a night train. (In this case, not the Orient Express but one heading from London to Edinburgh.) 

On the train, Roland Carstairs (Geoffrey Steele [27 Jun 1914 – 7 Feb 1987], in the biggest film role of his life — a full five minutes of screen time), the son of Lady Magaret Carstairs (Mary Forbes [1 Jan 1883 – 22 Jul 1974] of The Picture of Dorian Gray [1945 / trailer]), hires Holmes (Basil Rathbone, of course) to accompany them on the journey for protection since there had already been an unsuccessful attempt in London to steal the famed Star of Rhodesia. (The piece of ice and its legendary trail of bad luck seem to be modeled after the actual Hope Diamond.) Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey, in his last appearance in the series) is also on the train, obstinately on his way to a fishing holiday, though it is pointed out to him that it is not fishing season. At the last minute Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) and Maj. Duncan-Bleek (Alan Mowbray* [18 Aug 1896 – 25 Mar 1969]), Watson's old army buddy from India, also manage to catch the train as well. No sooner does the train chug off into the night does Holmes find a mysterious note telling him to bug-off, Roland is found dead, and the diamond stolen! 

* Mowbray is a familiar face seen in many a film, usually in the background. Amongst others parts, he played Inspector Lestrade in the 1933 version of A Study In Scarlet (full film) and has a memorable bit part in the underrated but truly great film noir classic, I Wake Up Screaming (1941 / trailer). 

Well, actually, a fake diamond gets stolen, for Holmes exchanged the fake for the real one when he first got on the train. Lestrade takes the diamond into his possession but, of course, it gets stolen from him. Everyone in the train car is now a suspect, but most turn out to be red herrings — even as the body count grows! Holmes comes to suspect that the mathematical genius Col. Sebastian Moran, the evil compatriot of his arch-enemy Moriarty, is the brain behind the crime, but since the train seems full of people who pass the time doing math for fun this little tidbit doesn't help much. Of course, the viewer can figure out the bad guy long before anyone in the film does, but the ending does have an unexpected — if not possibly far-fetched — twist to it. 

Terror by Night is an enjoyable 50+ minutes of quick-paced entertainment with some fine moments. The fight scene in which Holmes is nearly thrown to his death from the train is probably one of the great highlights of the entire series, and even now, almost 50 years after it was filmed, it still packs an exciting wallop. Lestrade is surprisingly bearable, and Dr. Watson, though a buffoon as customary, is actually rather humorous at times – especially during his interplay with the suspect Professor William Kilbane (Frederick Worlock [14 Dec 1886 – 1 Aug 1973] of Ruthless [1948 / full movie] and She-Wolf of London [1946 / trailer]). 

The movie also features — and under-uses terribly — one of the great beauties to ever appear in the series, Renee Godfrey (1 Sept 1919 – 24 May 1964) as bad gal Vivian Vedder. She never had a career to speak of, but every scene in Terror by Night that she appears in she manages to steal completely from all other actors present. Her career, on the other hand, was stolen first by children and then by cancer.