Customer Reviews

Sherlock Holmes - Dressed to Kill

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AS I"VE SAID IN A EARLIER REVIEW THESE SHERLOCK HOLMES RESTORATIONS BY M P I ARE JUST WONDERFUL, I DOUBT THAT YOU WILL EVER FIND BETTER COPIES OF THESE WONDERFUL FOLIOS ( AS HOLMES WOULD HAVE CALLED THEM ) SO PLACE YOUR ORDER, CRANK UP THE MICROWAVE POPCORN, PUT YOUR FEET UP AND WATCH HOMES DEDUCE THE IMPOSIBLE......

This was the last entry in the series and while not one of the best, it was still an enjoyable entry. As usual, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce gave excellent performances. At this point in the series Rathbone was tired of his character role and wanted to move on. Patricia Morison who played Hilda Courtney was a very good antagonist of Holmes. The MPI release is much more superior than some of the other poor releases that have been going around for years.

Movie: *** _____ DVD Quality: **** _____ DVD Extras: N/A

The final entry in the beloved Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes series relies less on plotting than it does on the expert characterizations of the two leading actors and their onscreen rapport. The mystery is rather simplistic and not particularly compelling: a prison inmate jailed for the theft of Bank of England printing plates has sent out coded clues divulging the location of the hidden plates in three music boxes he has manufactured while in stir. The boxes, intended for his gang, end up in the hands of innocent citizens by mistake. Holmes and Watson become involved in a deadly race to collect the three boxes, crack the code, and find the plates before the prisoner's band of cronies beat them to it.

In their fourteenth outing, the characters of the master sleuth and his sidekick fit Rathbone and Bruce like old, comfortable shoes that are beginning to show their wear. As their deadly adversaries, Patricia Morison, Frederic Worlock, and Harry Cording (remember him as the burly, mute servant in the 1934 film "The Black Cat"?) make an interesting - if unmysterious - trio. The film's name is taken from Morison's character, who has a penchant for dressing to the nines when she's not wearing some sort of disguise. In one scene, a fresh body falls on top of her floor-length white mink, and as she disdainfully pulls the fur out from under the unfortunate victim, she gives the distinct impression of being more worried about her outfit than she is the warm corpse!

The MPI video release features a generally commendable transfer from a 35mm print digitally restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Certainly this is the best edition of the film ever made available on home video; ever since its copyright fell into the public domain, "Dressed to Kill" has been released by second-tier video companies in an unending parade of almost unwatchable washed out and scratchy prints, often plagued by muddy audio. Here, although a couple of scenes briefly appear slightly out-of-focus or overly grainy, the majority of the transfer is sharp and clear in terms of both the video and audio quality. While not the best of the series, the MPI release is nonetheless recommended as a pleasant way to spend 72 minutes, and is definitely the edition to purchase if you plan on adding this title to your home video library.

I have all the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes' movies. This is one of the best and most interesting of them all. The use of the music boxes and the tunes are ingenious and the solving of the mystery is great. Enjoy and listen carefully and see if you can solve this before they do!!!

Dressed to Kill (1946) has the distinction of being the final film starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, and I think it closed out the series on something of a high note. The film has a few weaknesses, but it does place the art of deduction on a pedestal above and beyond the action, and that is just what I want out of a Sherlock Holmes film. Needless to say, the plot is not based on any work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but it does try to place itself within the milieu of the canon. Early on, we see Dr. Watson perusing the latest issue of The Strand; A Scandal in Bohemia has just been published, and this leads to a few comments on "the woman," Irene Adler. This sets up the new case in hand, one in which Holmes finds himself greatly tested by yet another woman. Hilda Courtney (Patricia Morrison) is no Irene Adler, but she is devilishly clever enough to pose quite an interesting and dangerous challenge to the great detective.

Like many of the classic Holmes stories, this adventure starts with a common object - a music box. One of Watson's old friends stops by and describes the theft of one of the plainest music boxes in his collection the night before. Thinking it odd that a thief would steal only a seemingly insignificant piece of the collection, Holmes sets his mind to looking for an explanation more complicated than any petty thief theory. He soon finds himself on a search for three music boxes, each of which plays the same tune (but with minor differences). The ultimate quarry is a set of stolen plates from the Bank of England. Convinced that the music boxes contain some type of code pointing to the location of the plates, Holmes is hard pressed to figure out the secret of the boxes. His foe is a clever one; not only is she capable of playing Watson for a fool, she is clever enough to outmaneuver Holmes himself.

A needlessly elaborate method of disposing once and for all of the meddling detective definitely weakens the effectiveness of this story, but all in all I found this a perfectly enjoyable Holmesian adventure. Watching Holmes try to figure out the secret of the music boxes calls to mind the spirit of Holmes' original adventures and showcases the detective doing what he does best.

Of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes mysteries starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, three are in the "public domain," meaning the copyrights have elapsed. As a result, numerous distributors offer varying-quality copies of SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON (1942), THE WOMAN IN GREEN (1945), and DRESSED TO KILL (1946). This Digiview edition of DRESSED TO KILL, the final entry in the Rathbone-Bruce series, is typical of the public domain lot: the picture quality is fair but watchable, with a few transitional fades missing (TV print?) and a replaced "End" title. Nevertheless, it's always a pleasure to watch Rathbone and Bruce in action, even if DRESSED TO KILL is a second-echelon Holmes effort.

Serious collectors will want to get MPI Home Video's beautiful restorations of the entire Rathbone-Bruce series. However, for casual viewers who can't resist an impulse buy (I got it for $1 at Wal-Mart), this Digiview cheapie is okay for the price.

Here we have three wooden music boxes that play the same tune...almost; a femme fatale as beautiful as she is deadly; the old darling Sam Johnson giving Holmes a key clue; and the last of Sherlock Holmes as we know him, at least the Holmes that looks exactly like Basil Rathbone. It's surprising that this final Holmes movie with the bored-to-death Rathbone as The Great Detective is one of the better ones.

Rathbone had cranked out fourteen of these films between 1939 and this one in 1946. The first two were first-rate. The rest varied between superior B movies to just programmers. They all managed instantly to make nostalgia a ticket seller. You can't underestimate the clop-clop of horses pulling carriages down cobblestone streets, gaslight in thick fog late at night or the elocution of our sharp-nosed detective. And although Dressed to Kill takes place toward the end of WWII, it has nothing to do with the war. Close your eyes for a moment when a car drives by and we might just as well be back 20 years before the turn of the century. Rathbone was so bored with the part he refused to sign a new five-year contract with MGM. He was, however, so professional that he didn't just walk through this movie. For fans of nostalgia, and I am when it comes to these 14 movies, Rathbone still delivers the goods.

But what is this movie (or any of the others) about? It doesn't really matter. We're not buying a plot, just an hour of so of satisfied contentment. For those who worry about spoilers, better read no further. Dressed to Kill deals with a plot that...could bring Britain to her knees

Patricia Morison plays the deadly, beautiful and well-dressed young woman who sees murder as an occasional inconvenience. A couple of years later she was out of B movies and had become a Broadway star as Kate in Kiss Me Kate. Nigel Bruce is, as always, Watson. If you like him as Watson you may like two of his lines: "Look, Holmes, it's morning!" and this one which, if spoken today in front of an elementary school, would most likely get the old gent arrested: "Would you like to hear uncle make a noise like a duck?"

Be sure to get the MPI release; the movie has been well restored.

The last of the Rathbone Holmes (sob), DTK is a typically fine outing, not Basil's best but still excellent. He remains the consummate screen Holmes, and I still see him in my mind's eye when rereading the stories. He conveys the intense intelligence and laser focus of Sherlock while never hamming it up; I've always felt that Doyle would approve.

Bruce is his usual understated Watson, and the villains are good, specifically the gorgeous Patricia Morrison, a femme fatale if ever there was one. The story is interesting, with enough serpentine workings to keep Holmes fascinated and fascinating. My only qualm is the original print, clearly not archived well, full of scratches and flaws. But that just adds at some points to the pleasantly aged feel of the film, so it's not the end of the world.

All in all, a satisfying conclusion to one of the best adaptations of any fiction series ever committed to film. I sure wish there'd been another dozen!

Basil Rathbone remains one of only two legendary Sherlock Holmes actors, even to this day. But the music-box mystery "Dressed to Kill" is not one of the better movies starring Rathbone -- while the mystery is genuinely entertaining, the plot isn't quite long or substantial enough.

Three plain music boxes are sold at an auction, one to Watson's old pal "Stinky" (Edmund Breon). The music boxes don't seem to be anything special, which is why Holmes (Basil Rathbone) is intrigued when Stinky is robbed of a similar music box -- and then found with a knife in his back. Obviously there's something special about the boxes.

Holmes and Watson (Nigel Bruce) rush to the next box's owner, and find that the little girl has been robbed by a disguised thief. But Holmes gets his hands on the third box, and learns what the thieves are after, and how the peculiar tune of the music box holds the key to unlimited wealth -- and ruin for England's economic structure.

"Dressed to Kill" was sadly the last of Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes movies, after thirteen other movies that ranged from Arthur Conan Doyle's own stories to ones made up for World War II. Some of those stories were amazing, and some -- like "Dressed to Kill's"'s counterfeiting gang story -- are merely middling in quality.

The music box code and the missing five-pound plates make for an interesting mystery, especially for the first half of the movie. The thieves are especially intriguing, including a menacing colonel, a chauffeur madly in love with his employer, and the well-clad Hilda Courtney, who yanks her mink stole out from under a just-murdered man -- and seems more concerned about keeping the stole pristine.

But the plot just isn't enough to cover even a short film (about an hour and even minutes, in case you're wondering), and after the rescue of the little girl, it lags badly. Even more unfortunate, scenes like Holmes' capture don't have much suspense, even though they should.

Rathbone's performance is as solid as ever, giving Holmes elegant intelligence that he doesn't have to work at. He even gets to give Holmes some wistfulness in the opening scenes. And Bruce gives a similarly pleasant performance, although he does have his goofy moments, like doing a Donald Duck impression for a traumatized little girl.

"Dressed to Kill" is an entertaining mystery, though it's rather slow and simplistic compared to Rathbone's other Sherlock films. But it's still worth watching.

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce made their final big screen appearances as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in "Dressed to Kill," the twelfth film in Universal's series, and the fourteenth time the two actors brought Arthur Conan Doyle's heroes to vivid life on film.

Even 35 years before Brian DePalma's thriller of the same name, the title wasn't original, having been previously used for one of Lloyd Nolan's Michael Shayne private detective thrillers. There isn't much original about this entry, but even if it's a fairly standard series episode, it still has the always superb Rathbone and Bruce to recommend it, as well as a satisfying mystery for the two to unravel.

Although Rathbone left the series after this film and moved on to Broadway where he won a Tony Award, he didn't succeed in escaping Holmes, and would wear the deerstalker again on stage and in an unsold pilot for a TV series. He remains the definitive Sherlock Holmes.

Brian W. Fairbanks