The Woman in Green

For decades, there's been no greater guilty pleasure than sitting down with a Basil Rathbone / Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes movie.

This past weekend offered up just such an opportunity and 1945's THE WOMAN IN GREEN did not disappoint.

Basil Rathbone is the perfect Holmes, and served as my introduction to the character back in the 1960's. The smoking jackets, the giant pipes, trench coats and almost supernatural intuition are all here, polished by Rathbone into a refined English sheen.

There's rarely been a more humorous, bumbling Dr. Watson than Nigel Bruce and he's given plenty of opportunities to bluster and make a fool of himself as our mystery unfolds. One of my favorite scenes is his scoffing at hypnotism, quickly followed by a scene in which he proves a very easy subject.

This time out, a Jack the Ripper style serial killer is loose in London, killing a long list of young women and each time, severing one of their fingers. After one of those finds their way in a tiny gift box to Holmes, he and Scotland Yard team up to track down our killer.

Paul Cavenaugh is Sir George Fenwick, who awakes one morning alone in bed in a flophouse. What's he doing there? What happened to the beautiful Woman in Green who seduced him the previous night? And why is there a severed finger in his pocket? He offers up Holmes the first big clues.

While Scotland Yard is convinced they have a madman on the loose, Holmes expects something much bigger. Could there be a big conspiracy? Could it even include Holmes most frequent foe, the dastardly Professor Moriarty? This was the third Rathbone film that featured a Moriarty face-off, but a different actor portrayed Moriarty each time out.

Very much a product of its 1945 production, the black and white feature was the 11th of 14 films with Rathbone and Bruce teaming up to solve a clever mystery.

Some of the dialogue is hilarious.

Holmes opines, "I smell the faint, sweet odor of blackmail."

After Watson gets called away on an inconvenient and rare medical matter, muttering, "I haven't used that bag since I brought little Amelia Whats-'er-name into the world. She grew up to be a very unattractive child. Huh, who wouldn't with a name like Amelia."

The mystery isn't too challenging this time out, but the conclusion is fun and the 1940's flirting around sex and romance generates more than a couple grins.

Anytime Rathbone and Bruce are on the case, you're in for old fashioned fun. This adventure discovers a solid B.