Watch Sherlock Holmes Faces Death For Free

Sadly Over-hyped

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This lame entry does a terrible disservice to the great detective..for example..when Sally rushes to find Holmes at the pub to tell him her brother Phillip is missing, Holmes response: "did you check his room?"...really. Why did it take so long for Holmes to realize the Musgrave Ritual was chess terms???..why did he play the chess game with humans.was it really necessary? Why did Holmes dig he broken needle fragment out of Phillip Musgraves's head? Don't they do autopsies on murder victims in England? Why did Dr. Sexton leave the Crown Grant down in the crypt? Why didn't the Musgrave's claim the land ages ago? "Oh, I'd rather stay poor, and let two generations down the road claim the land"...????? Why did Sally throw away a fortune??? Is there a law in England that states when you inherit land you have to evict the former tenants?!?!?...the whole movie is filled with idiotic nonsense....

This entry in the Rathbone/Holmes canon has all the typical elements present and correct, and carries on the wartime theme by being set at a home for war wounded officers. Fans of the actor - or, indeed the author - will find it passes the time amiably enough as I did, even if there's no way that you can say this is a classic of the series. There are no real stand-out performances from the supporting cast members, and even the villain of the film is a lacklustre one.Once again it's down to Rathbone and Bruce to salvage the film as best they can, with able comic relief from Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade who brightens up the film every time he's on screen. Rathbone gives a typically stirring speech in the closing stages of this film (a propaganda-tinged one, no less) although Bruce doesn't have any real moments to shine in this film - he's fine, but Hoey gets all the best jokes.The setting, an isolated mansion, is a familiar one, and atmospheric too. There's even a lightning strike which causes a suit of armour to crash to the ground. The mystery, involving the 'Musgrave Ritual' is directly based on one of the Conan Doyle stories. The typical twists and clues are all there and rather easy to spot. The film includes every mystery aspect possible - the room locked from the inside, the whodunit, the string of grisly murders, etc. - and as such it's a solid addition to the 'old dark house' sub-genre of movie-making.

After Universal had 'used' Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in three consecutive films as an audience magnet for their wartime flag wavers (and with increasingly poor box office results), the master sleuth finally is back in his 'natural' crime element; in contemporary England this time (no more Victorian nostalgia as in the first two movies with Basil Rathbone produced by 20th Century-Fox), but still in a rather creepy atmosphere: an old manor in Northumberland, which has been turned into a rest home for shell-shocked soldiers - and when the daughter of the house falls in love with one of them (and an American on top of it all!), her brothers clearly object to her marrying him; and are both murdered within a few days...This movie really's got the 'creepy old house' feeling about it, Holmes investigates again with his usual methods; and there isn't even any Moriarty involved - so this is a real good, clean, suspenseful and clever whodunit, which keeps the watchful viewer's eye and mind busy constantly if he wants to guess the culprit in the end before Holmes catches him in an old dark vault underneath the building - or is HE the one who's caught?? Very entertaining, well played and directed, a real enjoyment for classic whodunit fans!

More of a whodunit than a matching of wits. The suspense really starts when Holmes begins to unravel the puzzling Musgrave ritual. To that point, the screenplay has meandered more than usual; at the same time, the movie keeps up interest with the customary sinister atmosphere. The human chessboard is a cleverly memorable centerpiece that effectively focuses the action. Note also the imaginative touch in the opening scene with the raven. The scene could have opened in more pedestrian fashion with a mood-setting conversation among pub patrons. However, adding the offbeat and sinister raven is just the kind of touch that lifts this series above other detective shows of the day.I expected Hillary Brooke would do one of her coldly composed matron roles she was so good at. Instead, plays an uncharacteristic ingénue role (Sally) and not nearly as well. Note Milburn Stone of Gunsmoke fame in an uncredited walk-on as the young American officer. I don't know why someone thought the flashbacks of the actual crimes was necessary, but for me, they were a contrived distraction—surely the master detective's reconstruction of the crimes should have been enough. The movie does have its moments, as fans would expect, but on the whole the first 20 minutes is weaker than usual suggesting some uncharacteristic padding.