Watch Party Watch: The Woman in Green (1945)

Watched:  01/13/2023

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Roy William Neill

I wasn't expecting much, and this movie delivered not much!

Nah, it was... fine.  Especially as it was only 66 minutes.  You're in, you're out.  

Once again Basil Rathbone plays Holmes to perfection, and once again Nigel Bruce is playing Watson as a complete weirdo boob, setting the stage for a thousand imitators after.

I wish I'd noticed this was a wartime film, because it would have explained why the men in this movie, minus Rathbone, are all at least sexagenarians or older.  

Women are turning up around London - murdered!  And missing a finger!  Is a new Jack the Ripper on the loose?  One with penchant for ladyfingers?  

Holmes is brought in, and suspects (as always) Moriarty.  Anyway - it's a kind of clever Moriarty ruse.  He's having the frankly pretty good looking Hillary Brooke lure rich, society men to her flat where she hypnotizes them.  Moriarty slips a finger into their pocket and when they wake up, they think maybe they murdered someone and fall for a blackmail scheme.  It's... woefully overly complex and there's a bodycount that was always going to draw too much attention.  

Anyway - it's pretty okay!  But I will say - it takes a long, long time to get to the usual Holmes sleuthing, really to the point where I wondered aloud "this is the weirdest structure for a Holmes mystery".  But once it kicks into gear, there you are.

Watch Party Watch: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Watched:  08/19/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1930's

Director:  Alfred Werker

Well.  What's not to like, really?  

If you like Holmes books, this is... close-ish.  Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are kind of the model for on-screen Holmes and Watson.  There's a great villain in Moriarty.  And a young Ida Lupino is charming as hell at the center of it all.  

What's amazing is how undated the film feels some 80 years later.  You can imagine all of this as the plot and performances in a modern Sherlock retelling,  And maybe that's because they made 14 of these movies in the span of less than a decade - not quite a serial, but certainly a series that left enough of an impact that this was how it was done until the 21st Century decided "what if Holmes was not at all like Holmes?" in two separate series of movies and a TV show.

I won't say the movie was flawless, but it was very, very *fun*, which is what I'm looking for in my Holmes reading or adaptations.  Give me a Holmes and Watson on the case, and a mystery I can't solve on my own, and I'll come back for more.

It will *surely* annoy Jamie that now that I know there are 13 more of these, I'm gonna watch them.  But she knew what I was about when she married me, so.