The House of Fear (1945)

The House of Fear (1945) is a Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson creepy housekeeper gothic Scottish mansion private club bump in the night serial Holmes shocker from the Rathbone Bruce era canonical super non-canonical interpretative adaptive spooky updated intrigue tension and suspense consulting detective clever finale pip of a thriller mutually insured bodies piling up underwriter's nightmare crime horror film starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, directed by Roy William Neill, and loosely based on the 1891 short story "The Five Orange Pips" by Arthur Conan Doyle, with Aubrey Mather, Dennis Hoey, Paul Cavanagh, Holmes Herbert, Harry Cording, Sally Shepherd and Gavin Muir.

The various Pandros are broadly enthusiastic about The House of Fear, frequently placing it among the strongest of the Universal Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, although there is a significant minority opinion that its splendid atmosphere disguises a foolish, implausible and underdeveloped plot. 

It is so kinda regarded as one of the best films in the series, merely an above-average entry, an enjoyable but logically ridiculous entertainment, and, at the extreme end, one of the weakest Sherlock Holmes films Universal produced. What almost everyone agrees upon is that it looks and feels terrific. Its Scottish setting, Gothic mansion, black-and-white photography and old-dark-house machinery create an atmosphere substantially more impressive than the film’s modest budget might suggest. 

The story sends Holmes and Watson to Drearcliff House, a remote Scottish home occupied by the seven members of the Good Comrades Club. The men have made the financially questionable arrangement of taking out substantial life insurance policies with the surviving members as beneficiaries. Someone then begins methodically reducing their number. Before each apparent victim dies, an envelope appears containing orange pips, the quantity diminishing as the company itself diminishes. Holmes is approached not initially by Scotland Yard but by the insurance company, understandably alarmed by the prospect of continuing to pay enormous claims while the beneficiaries steadily become richer. The murders continue after Holmes and Watson arrive, with Inspector Lestrade eventually entering proceedings as well. 

Many of us reviewer types immediately associate the construction with Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (or Ten Little Indians), since another isolated collection of people is being eliminated one by one while suspicion passes between the survivors. The important distinction is that these men have gathered voluntarily and Holmes is present as an investigator rather than trapped alongside them. 

The device nevertheless provides the movie with something relatively unusual for the Rathbone series: a genuine whodunit in which the identity and even precise nature of the villain remain uncertain. Several Pandros particularly enjoy this distinction from Holmes films in which the criminal is revealed comparatively early and the suspense instead derives from watching Holmes catch him. Here there are numerous suspects, abundant red herrings and an escalating numerical pattern built into the orange-pip warnings. 

The relationship with Arthur Conan Doyle is much less substantial than the credits might suggest. The House of Fear takes the orange-pip device from “The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips” but otherwise creates a substantially different mystery. Some Pandros regard this as perfectly legitimate. The new story may have little connection with Doyle’s narrative, but it gives Rathbone’s Holmes an appropriately Holmesian environment in which to observe, reason, investigate secret places and eventually explain what everybody else has failed to understand. 

Indeed, indeed, indeedio, one view is that Universal had by this stage discovered how best to modernise Holmes: keep overtly contemporary material in the background and allow Holmes himself to dominate. Despite technically belonging to the series of wartime-set adventures, The House of Fear contains so little that depends upon the 1940s that much of it could almost have taken place in the Victorian period. 

Other of us reviewers are far less forgiving. For a Conan Doyle purist, calling the picture an adaptation of “The Five Orange Pips” is considered almost absurd, since the original story concerns an entirely different motivation and history. For this camp, the film not only abandons its ostensible source but fails to replace it with anything sufficiently intelligent. The Holmes of Doyle is admired for extraordinary intellectual speed and deductive precision; the Holmes of this particular screenplay can instead appear curiously passive while bodies accumulate around him. 

The great strength, however, is Drearcliff House itself. Several of us kinda reviewer types, ye know, effectively regard the building as another member of the cast. The remote Scottish location, cliffs, wind, rain, darkness, corridors, secret passages, echoing chambers and ominous nocturnal noises place the film somewhere between detective mystery and Universal horror. 

There are footsteps in the night, strange sounds, shadowy figures and the formidable Mrs Monteith wandering through the house with the solemnity of somebody for whom delivering an announcement of imminent death is just another domestic duty. The recurrent image of the dour housekeeper appearing with another envelope of orange pips on a salver is singled out as especially effective. 

Roy William Neill receives considerable praise for transforming limited resources into something visually distinctive. The photography is repeatedly described as noirish, Gothic or even faintly expressionist. High-contrast black-and-white images, tilted compositions, shadows, low or unusual camera positions and carefully arranged interiors create a sense of menace that the screenplay does not always earn by itself.

The sound design also contributes substantially: wind, footsteps and other noises sharpen the sensation that the house is alive with concealed movement. One Pandro goes so far as to suggest that the cinematography is what makes an otherwise mediocre film tolerable. 

There is nevertheless some disagreement over precisely how accomplished the photography is. One view considers the mansion a wonderful location but wishes the filmmakers had lit it more adventurously, particularly when compared with some contemporary mystery series. Another considers the surviving black-and-white photography one of the film’s greatest pleasures, especially in a good restoration. For viewers who have watched the picture repeatedly and no longer find much mystery in the narrative, the visual atmosphere may become the principal reason to return to it. On a second or ninth viewing, the solution can seem much more obvious and the intervening material can start to look suspiciously like padding, but the gloomy house, photography and familiar performers retain their appeal. 

Rathbone himself receives almost universal approval. He is variously considered definitive, impeccable, commanding and simply born for Holmes. His voice, physical appearance, confidence and combination of cerebral detachment with sudden action make even the more absurd turns in the screenplay convincing while he is on screen. Some Pandros rank him alongside or above the other major screen Holmeses, and even less enthusiastic reviews of the film tend to exempt Rathbone from criticism. For many, the uncomplicated pleasure of watching Rathbone investigate another gloomy murder house is enough to justify the film.

Nigel Bruce as Watson produces more divided reactions. Admirers consider him one of the film’s great pleasures. His comic responses, muttering, nervous encounters with nocturnal dangers and exchanges with Lestrade supply much of the humour, including scenes involving grave digging, an owl, a cat and a suit of armour. Bruce can steal scenes through timing alone, and the affection between Holmes and Watson is considered especially pleasing here. Unlike some entries in the series, Holmes does not seem quite so relentlessly condescending toward his companion. Watson even notices a significant detail in the investigation, and the friendship between the two men can feel genuine rather than merely functional. 

Yet the familiar objection remains that Bruce’s Watson has been unnecessarily converted into a buffoon. For readers accustomed to Doyle’s competent physician and intelligent narrator, this treatment can be difficult to accept. One Pandro particularly resents seeing both Watson and Lestrade presented as idiots, even while acknowledging that Watson inadvertently moves toward part of the solution before Holmes. 

Dennis Hoey’s Lestrade generates a similar division. His competitive exchanges with Watson are regarded by some as hilarious, with both men unsuccessfully trying to demonstrate that they are cleverer than the other while Holmes remains effortlessly ahead. Others find Lestrade’s comic stupidity unnecessary because Watson already provides sufficient humour. On this reading, Lestrade weakens the sinister atmosphere whenever he appears and consumes valuable minutes in a film already too short to develop its suspects properly.

The supporting cast is nevertheless generally considered strong. The Good Comrades form a gallery of suspicious faces and eccentric temperaments: genial old men, sinister-looking men, a physician carrying troubling associations with an earlier murder case, a retired captain and others whose exact degree of innocence is difficult to judge. Aubrey Mather is repeatedly singled out for his genial eccentricity, while Sally Shepherd’s Mrs Monteith is among the most memorable figures in the picture, a gloomy, almost horror-film housekeeper whose presence intensifies the Gothic flavour. The film benefits enormously from Universal’s reliable collection of British character actors. 

The central argument among the Pandros concerns the mystery itself. Its admirers consider it clever, intricate and genuinely difficult to solve. The succession of grisly deaths, the large number of suspects and the peculiar condition of the bodies create uncertainty about what is actually happening. Several of the corpses are so extensively damaged that identification depends upon circumstantial details such as personal objects or distinguishing marks. 

What initially looks implausible eventually becomes significant. For some viewers the finale beautifully reorganises earlier events, explaining details that had seemed questionable at the time. The ending is consequently described as excellent, unexpected, satisfying, ingenious, jaw-dropping or simply priceless. 

For other Pandros, however, precisely the opposite occurs. The solution is not ingenious but ridiculous. It stretches credibility, and on repeat viewing may make the preceding film seem like an elaborate confidence trick. The climax can simultaneously be difficult to predict and fundamentally unlikely. One reaction is that audiences should simply enjoy the movie without examining the mechanics too closely, because analysis exposes how fragile they are. 

The most damaging objections concern behaviour rather than the final revelation. If everyone knows that another Good Comrade is likely to be murdered after receiving orange pips, why do the potential victims repeatedly remain vulnerable? Why are the surviving men not gathered in one guarded room? Why are they permitted to separate and go to bed? Why does Holmes, supposedly one of the world’s greatest intellects, apparently fail to adopt obvious preventative measures? 

Why do the men continue living in Drearcliff House at all? And given that the insurance arrangement itself supplies the apparent motive, why does the insurance company not freeze or challenge the policies once it becomes obvious that something extremely suspicious is occurring? These objections lead one particularly hostile Pandro to characterise the entire premise as brainless despite conceding that the film remains superficially enjoyable. 

A related criticism is that the brief running time does not provide enough character development. At roughly sixty-nine minutes, the film must establish seven Comrades, Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, the insurance premise, several murders, comedy, investigation and the final explanation. Consequently, the suspects sometimes function less as characters than as pieces on a board. 

We learn too little about their personalities, relationships and private histories to make deductive participation fully satisfying. One Pandro argues that a good whodunit gives an audience sufficient psychological material to assess motives and opportunities; here, the men can feel like disposable props whose primary purpose is to disappear one after another. 

Pacing assessments are correspondingly contradictory. Some Pandros believe the film races through its sixty-nine minutes without a lull. Others find surprisingly little tension, episodes that slow to a crawl, and a contrived middle section before the film gathers momentum again for the final quarter-hour. The same compactness that makes it an appealingly economical B-picture prevents its mystery from becoming completely developed. 

What remains remarkably consistent is the judgement that The House of Fear is entertaining even when it is silly. Its pleasures are elemental: Rathbone’s Holmes, Bruce’s Watson, a remote Scottish castle, stormy nights, a sinister housekeeper, secret passages, grisly corpses, orange pips, eccentric suspects, insurance fraud, comic interludes and a succession of apparent murders culminating in an elaborate explanation. It resembles both the Sherlock Holmes mystery and the Universal horror picture and frequently seems happiest occupying the territory between them.

For its strongest advocates, this combination places it near the summit of the Rathbone-Bruce series, sometimes alongside The Scarlet Claw, and occasionally above almost everything except the earlier Fox films. For moderate Pandros, it is simply a very good, atmospheric, slightly ridiculous Holmes adventure. For its fiercest critics, the cinematography and actors are disguising a script whose holes Holmes himself ought to have detected within minutes. 

Perhaps the most representative verdict lies somewhere between these positions: The House of Fear is a triumph of atmosphere over probability, an old-dark-house whodunit whose logic becomes increasingly vulnerable the more closely it is inspected, but whose visual style, familiar stars, macabre premise, briskness and Gothic charm make such inspection remarkably easy to postpone, especially with such tagger shocker advertisers as these boyo-de-lines:

HORROR stalking its halls!

YOUR BLOOD WILL RUN COLD! 

The various Professor of Film Studies opinions on The House of Fear are strongly, though not unanimously, favourable. It is repeatedly described as one of the better entries in Universal’s Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes series, and occasionally as the very best of them. Even critics who find the story foolish, thin or excessively contrived tend to concede that Roy William Neill creates a remarkably persuasive Gothic atmosphere from modest resources. 

The film’s enduring appeal lies less in impeccable detective logic than in its combination of sinister interiors, stormy weather, eccentric suspects, grisly murders, black humour and the familiar chemistry between Rathbone and Bruce. One Professor of Film Studies sees it as perhaps the last point at which the series could still produce a genuinely satisfying little mystery before a broader decline became apparent. 

The premise is immediately attractive. Seven wealthy older men, calling themselves the Good Comrades, live together in a remote Scottish mansion and have arranged their insurance policies so that the surviving members benefit when one of them dies. It is exactly the sort of arrangement that requires very little assistance from a murderer to become suspicious. 

Each impending death is announced by an envelope containing orange pips, with the number apparently corresponding to the shrinking membership of the club. An insurance company, understandably disturbed by the accumulating claims, asks Sherlock Holmes to investigate.

Several Professor of Film Studies responses admire the sheer neatness of this machinery. The club itself provides a closed group of suspects, the insurance scheme supplies a ready-made financial motive and the orange pips create an instantly comprehensible ritual of approaching death. The film establishes a pattern and then repeatedly varies it. Every new envelope intensifies suspicion; every death enriches the survivors; every reduction in numbers appears to bring the culprit closer to achieving his objective.

The resemblance to Agatha Christie is one of the most persistent observations. The House of Fear is frequently compared with And Then There Were None, and occasionally with Christie more generally. Seven characters occupy an isolated location, members of the group are eliminated sequentially, and the shrinking circle of survivors continually changes the likely identity of the murderer. 

The film consequently feels rather different from many Rathbone Holmes pictures in which the villain is identified early and Holmes spends the remainder of the narrative trying to defeat him. Here the pleasure lies in uncertainty. The audience is invited to guess who among the surviving men is responsible, even though some Professor of Film Studies opinions question whether the clues are sufficiently fair to make that guessing genuinely deductive. 

One particularly interesting interpretation places the film within the historical development of screen Holmes. Doyle’s Holmes had originally emerged as a figure defined by scientific logic, rational investigation and an outsider’s relationship to conventional society. In the early Rathbone films, that figure became more theatrical: his voice, bearing and eloquence were increasingly central, while Watson shifted from narrator to comic companion. 

During the Second World War, Holmes was then effectively enlisted into patriotic service, his logic and intelligence becoming symbolic weapons of national resistance. With the war approaching its end, The House of Fear represents a relaxation of that propagandistic function. Holmes is permitted to return to ordinary crime. Yet the mystery genre itself has changed while he has been away. Christie has transformed expectations concerning concealment, suspect groups and the manipulation of the murderer’s identity. Holmes therefore returns from wartime service to find himself operating inside something closer to a Christie puzzle than a traditional Doyle adventure. 

This is especially relevant because the film’s relationship to Conan Doyle’s “The Five Orange Pips” is extremely loose. The principal borrowing is the ominous delivery of orange seeds. Beyond that, the film constructs a largely new story. 

Some Professor of Film Studies opinions regard this freedom as a virtue and even argue that the resulting mystery surpasses Doyle’s original tale as screen entertainment. The altered story allows the filmmakers to surround Holmes with a larger body of suspects, elaborate the whodunit structure and give Universal’s visual style far more room to operate. 

The most consistently admired feature is precisely that visual style. Neill’s direction is described as rich in noirish illumination and oblique camera angles. Thunder, lightning, rain, mist and nocturnal interiors accumulate until Drearcliff House seems less like an ordinary country residence than a surviving Universal horror set into which Sherlock Holmes has wandered by accident.  The comparison with The Old Dark House is particularly apt: corridors, shadows, concealed spaces, sinister servants and uncertain noises make the house itself an engine of suspicion.

Several Professor of Film Studies opinions emphasise that the film often looks more expensive than it was. Virgil Miller’s cinematography, the elaborate set decoration and carefully composed shadows help conceal the production’s B-picture limitations. The visual environment includes dusty rooms, candlelight, labyrinthine passages and storm-lashed exteriors. Even where the narrative logic becomes questionable, the mise-en-scène keeps insisting that something terrible is about to emerge from a doorway.

That atmosphere is enhanced by Sally Shepherd’s Mrs Monteith, the grim housekeeper who repeatedly delivers the threatening envelopes. She becomes one of the film’s most memorable supporting figures precisely because she appears to regard the announcement of another imminent murder with such terrifying routine. 

Her unsmiling manner, combined with the house itself, places The House of Fear close to Universal’s horror tradition. One Professor of Film Studies effectively treats her as a scene-stealer, with her entrances carrying as much dread as the murders themselves. 

Other supporting figures strengthen this sense of an eccentric Gothic ensemble. Aubrey Mather is repeatedly praised as the charming and dithering Alistair, while Paul Cavanagh, Holmes Herbert and Harry Cording contribute a mixture of respectability and latent suspicion. The Good Comrades vary from genial to vaguely sinister, and some opinions suggest that the unevenness or oddness of the supporting performances actually helps the film, since nobody behaves quite normally enough to be immediately trusted.

Not everyone agrees that the suspects are sufficiently developed. One recurrent criticism is that the film is simply too short. At around seventy minutes, it must introduce seven club members, establish the insurance arrangement, initiate the murders, bring in Holmes and Watson, add Lestrade, generate comic interludes and still leave time for the elaborate explanation. 

Some Professor of Film Studies opinions therefore complain of a paradoxical mixture of compression and padding. The story itself is thin, yet portions of the film can still feel stretched because the characters have not been given enough depth to sustain the middle section. 

Against this criticism stands the opposite view that the film is impressively economical. It moves through its complications rapidly, provides a succession of gruesome incidents and reaches its conclusion without overstaying its welcome. One Professor of Film Studies argues that the same material might easily have occupied ninety minutes or even two hours, but that the filmmakers drive through it at rollercoaster speed. The result is considered exciting rather than undernourished, with the implausibility almost becoming part of the entertainment. 

Basil Rathbone remains the film’s centre of gravity. Even comparatively negative Professor of Film Studies opinions concede his authority. He has by this stage so completely mastered the part that the danger is almost excessive confidence. 

One criticism is that Holmes appears to understand the broad solution extremely early, perhaps before he has even left Baker Street, which means Rathbone is sometimes forced to play the investigation as though Holmes were patiently waiting for everyone else to catch up. Yet even a partially disengaged Rathbone retains command of the screen. 

At his best, Rathbone’s Holmes combines intelligence, cunning, arrogance and physical authority. He is capable of action as well as deduction and remains one of the chief reasons the series survives its variable scripts. One Professor of Film Studies even sees something of the later Benedict Cumberbatch interpretation in Rathbone’s brisk superiority, although the comparison breaks down immediately when Watson enters the discussion.

Nigel Bruce’s Watson produces the most extreme disagreement. To admirers, Bruce provides warmth, humour and an essential human counterweight to Rathbone. He has some of his best comic material here, including the famous graveyard episode in which he responds to an owl while believing Holmes is addressing him.

Another sequence leaves Watson alone in the darkened house while the lights fail and the weather turns violent, allowing Bruce to combine comedy with genuine vulnerability. One opinion even argues that this is Watson at his best because the film allows him to be useful as well as funny. He identifies a critical clue which contributes materially to solving the case. 

At the other extreme comes the declaration that Bruce’s Watson may be “the stupidest character in the history of cinema.” He asks questions whose answers have already been supplied, mutters nonsense and behaves less like Doyle’s intelligent doctor than like a professional impediment.  Some Professor of Film Studies opinions find his foolishness more extreme here than usual, although others specifically argue the opposite and consider this one of the entries in which the writers allow Watson a greater degree of dignity.

Dennis Hoey’s Lestrade creates a similar problem. Admirers enjoy his comic ineptitude and his verbal rivalry with Watson. Critics regard his presence as almost entirely redundant. If Watson already functions as the comic fool, why introduce a second character whose primary narrative purpose is to misunderstand what Holmes understands? 

One Professor of Film Studies finds Lestrade less irritating than Watson only because he lacks Watson’s tendency to fawn over Holmes. Another considers Hoey amusing but acknowledges that substantial stretches of the picture would function perfectly well without him. 

The humour nevertheless forms an important part of the film’s peculiar tone. The House of Fear is not a straight Gothic horror mystery. It repeatedly punctures its gloom with comic business. Watson talks to an owl, Lestrade blunders, rustic supporting figures drift into broadly comic territory and Holmes occasionally treats the confusion around him with amused superiority. 

For some Professor of Film Studies opinions this blend prevents the film becoming oppressive and gives the Rathbone-Bruce series its peculiar charm. For others, the comedy damages suspense just when the atmosphere has become most effective.

The murders themselves push surprisingly far toward the macabre. The film contains explosions, poisoning, gunfire, mutilation, burning, falling boulders and vehicles plunging from cliffs. Bodies are damaged sufficiently badly to complicate identification. This grotesque accumulation helps explain why several commentators see the picture less as an ordinary detective story than as Holmes transplanted into a Universal horror film. 

The final solution produces almost as much disagreement as Watson. Enthusiasts regard it as genuinely ingenious. The clues have supposedly been visible throughout, but their significance only becomes apparent once Holmes reconstructs events. On this interpretation, the film repeatedly allows the viewer to think the mystery has narrowed to an obvious conclusion and then complicates matters again. 

The eventual explanation ties up earlier details that had seemed strange and provides a satisfying demonstration of the classic detective-story trick in which impossibility itself points toward the answer. One Professor of Film Studies regards the mystery as exceptionally well designed, with every suspect possessing a motive and every twist making eventual sense. 

Others find the climax ludicrous. The solution may be surprising, but surprise and plausibility are not identical. Some regard Holmes’s deductions as little better than luck. One response jokes that the title might more accurately have been The House of Dumb Luck, since circumstance seems to perform as much detective work as Holmes.  Another considers the denouement far-fetched enough to undermine the careful rationality that a Sherlock Holmes mystery ought to promise.

The film’s weakness, on this interpretation, is that the explanation requires the viewer to forgive too much. The succession of events may function as entertainment, but Holmes’s certainty can seem inadequately supported by what the film has actually shown. A Professor of Film Studies who generally enjoys the Rathbone films finds this entry below average because the final reasoning resembles a fortunate guess rather than the inevitable consequence of superior intelligence. 

There is also disagreement over how original the mystery really is. Some find the Christie resemblance stimulating, arguing that the filmmakers have successfully merged Doyle’s detective with the newer conventions of the ensemble whodunit. Others believe familiarity with Christie makes the structure immediately transparent, robbing the film of surprise. 

From this perspective, the Good Comrades are clearly neither as good nor as comradely as they claim, the device of eliminating members one by one is too recognisable, and the viewer can anticipate the basic deception long before Holmes announces it. 

Yet even some of the harsher responses concede that The House of Fear has value as a piece of genre history. It catches Sherlock Holmes at an unusual transitional moment. The wartime patriotic thriller is receding, the classical whodunit has become more self-conscious and elaborate, and Universal’s horror aesthetic continues to infiltrate its detective films. The result is neither pure Doyle nor pure Christie nor pure horror, but a hybrid of all three.

This helps explain the unusually strong affection the film inspires. Several Professor of Film Studies opinions distinguish between claiming that it is objectively the best Rathbone-Bruce film and simply calling it a personal favourite. The attraction is sensuous as much as intellectual: dusty rooms, a remote cliffside house, thunderstorms, hidden passages, improbable murders, elderly eccentrics, a terrifying housekeeper and Holmes arriving after virtually everybody has died to explain what has been going on. One response cheerfully embraces the whole thing as light-hearted Gothic entertainment rather than demanding perfect detective realism. 

At the highest end of the enthusiasm, The House of Fear is described as one of the defining achievements of the Universal series: a taut, beautifully photographed mystery in which Rathbone inhabits Holmes perfectly, Bruce is amusing without becoming intolerable, the supporting cast contributes memorable eccentricity and Neill transforms inexpensive production resources into a convincing world of shadows and menace. 

At the opposite extreme it is called dreck, a tedious recycling of familiar Christie devices, populated by fools and resolved through implausible deduction. Yet even that hostile position can detect something historically interesting in the way Holmes has been repositioned within a changed mystery genre.

The broad Professor of Film Studies consensus therefore sits somewhere between masterpiece and nonsense. The House of Fear may be far-fetched, uneven and structurally thin, but those qualities coexist with excellent visual design, a compelling premise, a strong suspect group, considerable humour and one of the series’ most memorable Gothic settings. 

It can be criticised for Holmes knowing too much, Watson knowing too little, Lestrade contributing virtually nothing and the plot depending upon coincidences that would embarrass a less charismatic detective. None of that entirely matters once the rain starts, the lights dim, Mrs Monteith appears with another envelope and Rathbone turns toward the latest corpse with the expression of a man who has already solved everything.

The most persuasive overall judgement is consequently that The House of Fear succeeds through an accumulation of cinematic pleasures rather than flawless detective construction. It is a dark-house thriller, a Christie-style elimination mystery, a faintly camp Universal horror picture and a Sherlock Holmes adventure at the same time. 

Its logic may wobble, but its atmosphere rarely does. That is why some Professor of Film Studies opinions rank it below The Scarlet Claw or The Pearl of Death, while others regard it as the finest Universal Holmes film of all. Either way, its combination of mystery, comedy, Gothic excess and the Rathbone-Bruce partnership makes it difficult to dismiss. 

The House of Fear (1945)

Directed by Roy William Neill

Genres - Holmesiana, Sherlocka, Sherlockian Holmescraft, Horror, Mystery-Suspense &c.  |   Release Date - Mar 16, 1945  |   Run Time - 69 min.  |