Movie Review: Terror By Night (1946)

The movie stars Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Alan Mowbray, Dennis Hoey and Mary Forbes.

I love Sherlock Holmes stories and try to make the time to watch movies with the legendary character whenever I have an opportunity to. This is one that I've wanted to watch for a while and finally found time to do so this week while home for lunch. As it turns out, this movie exceeded my expectations.

The thing that really surprised me about this murder mystery is it wasn't as easy to figure out the bad guy as I thought it would be. I was able to figure out some parts of the mystery, such as how the killer was able to get in and out of a well-guarded train car undetected. But, the person behind the crime wasn't who I thought it would be.

A large part of the reason for this were the various murder suspects. There weren't many who had the ability to carry out the crime. But, every one of them acted just suspicious enough to prevent them from being cleared. This included Lady Margaret (Forbes), who seemed much more concerned about her diamond than she did about her murdered son.

On top of it, some of the suspects are actually guilty of other crimes. This is something that does make solving the case more complicated because, even if someone is guilty, they may not be guilty of murder.

I think my biggest complaint about this movie was I wasn't a huge fan of the way Dr. Watson (Bruce) was portrayed. I'm used to the literary version of the character, who, in many ways, is Holmes' equal. In this movie, he wasn't much more than comic relief for Holmes (Rathbone) as he made an effort to mimic the detective and failed miserably. That was disappointing.

As I said, I wasn't a huge fan of Dr. Watson. But, overall, I thought this was a decent murder mystery and one I definitely enjoyed watching.

My Grade: B