The character Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr Watson have been played by numerous different actors across stage, screen and television. Many people, since the first filmed version of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories in 1916 have played Holmes and Watson. Each generation is going to have their favourite Holmes and Watson. Some prefer Peter Cushing or Jeremy Brett or Benedict Cumberbatch as their favourite Holmes but for me my favourite is Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson. Maybe this preference came from watching this pair of actors play Holmes and Watson on old films that were shown on television in the UK when I was a child. Watson is played very much as the less competent of the paring of Holmes and Watson but Conan Doyle envisaged the character as being much more intelligent than how Nigel Bruce portrays him but that doesn’t detract from Bruce’s performance which serves as a plot device to highlight Holmes’s brilliance.
In this movie, Terror By Night made in 1946, Holmes and Watson are trying to protect a large diamond, The Star of Rhodesia, from an expected theft. Holmes and Watson are engaged by the diamond’s owner to protect the diamond as she and the diamond travel to Scotland on a train.
The attempt on the theft of the diamond happens on a moving train and Holmes and Watson have the job of catching the thief and his accomplices who are killing people on the train in order to get the diamond. This is a great Sherlock Holmes movie set almost entirely on a moving old style corridor train with limited stops. The film makers have really nailed the claustrophobia of a moving train and its individual compartments where murder and skullduggery are occurring.
I’m not going to give away too much of the plot in this relatively short (59 minutes) movie and you’ll have to watch it to find out whether Holmes gets his man and more importantly the right man.
Whilst putting this piece together I perused wiki biographies of the lead actors in this movie, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce and they led impressive and very interesting lives. Rathbone served with distinction in World War One along with his brother who was killed at Arras in June 1918. The loss of his brother seemed to deeply impact Rathbone and he became a reckless fighter and was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry. Nigel Bruce also served the military with distinction joining the military in 1914. During battle he was machine gunned in the legs and invalided out of the British Army but he rejoined the military and was commissioned as a subaltern as a training officer in England. What brave men they both were.
Anyway here’s Terror By Night
Links
Basil Rathbone Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Rathbone
Nigel Bruce Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Bruce