Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Animenter There are women in the film, but none has anything you could call a personality.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

bnwfilmbuff What a brilliant combination of mystery, suspense and comedy! This movie is like a great wine - it gets better with each airing. The casting is perfection and the cast delivers flawlessly. But they have an incredible script to work with. Mary Forbes as the haughty Lady Carstairs is a snobbish delight. Heaven forbid that she say anything as common as 'What is the meaning of this?' but instead 'What does this mean?' with complete indignation. Or the dashingly refined Alan Mowbray 'Doctor would you care to join me in a glass of whiskey and a dash of soda?' Beautiful! Or Frederick Worlock as the disagreeable Professor Kilbane -'To what am I indebted for this intrusion'. But my favorite is the unflappable Vivian Vedder played marvelously by the gorgeous Renee Godfrey. Rathbone was really on top of his game for this one. 'Really Watson aren't you a little stout for this sort of thing?' he teases as he pulls the good doctor into the railroad car. Bruce's retort is priceless -'Rubbish I'm the ideal weight for a man my age". Watch Rathbone's facial expressions throughout this movie. What a great actor he was. Director Roy William Neill wrings out every bit of movie magic from a taut 1 hour. The plot is straight forward - the theft of the Star of Rhodesia by a gang led by Holmes nemesis Col. Sebastian Moran. I've been enjoying this film for over 50 years now and it has become addicting. And inexplicably more enjoyable with each viewing. Highly recommended.

Cristi_Ciopron This is the installment on a train, and it's very well directed, and eerie; it has the comic book story this kind of show could afford: suspenseful and eerie. It also has an awesomely nice actress in a supporting role, a mercenary vamp. Maybe my installment of predilection, more atmospheric than others: I liked the cast (here, a frightening henchman, plus the colonel …), the plot, the speed; its genre is action suspense, not the whodunit. The pace and the eerily looking supporting characters (also by a smart use of lighting) make it so exciting. And Rathbone is in good shape; he even has an action scene.The ideas of such a plot are speed and action: to keep Holmes wired. And for these, they had the requisite cast; Rathbone couldn't make a Holmes who was more than an action star always on the move (and, in other renderings of the character, the attempt to add depth led to adding gloom and creepiness, as in the '80s TV show, which I used once to analyze at length). The main asset is a script that keeps Holmes busy in public, it keeps Rathbone on the move, and this advantages his own understanding of Holmes as a plausible action star (not also as a recluse thinker …). (I am under the impression that Rathbone didn't make a very good indoors Holmes, a very good meditative Holmes; on this train, and with these colleagues, we are spared the conveying of an indoors Holmes.)

lugonian TERROR BY NIGHT (Universal, 1946), produced and directed by Roy William Neil, is not another "wolf man" thriller starring Lon Chaney Jr., nor a horror film featuring any one of the Universal monsters for that matter. It's only the eleventh installment to the studio's own "Sherlock Holmes" popular series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. With the previous effort, PURSUIT TO ALGIERS (1945), set mostly on an ocean liner, this next in line entry places the suave London detective on board a train where he encounters more than just conductors, ticket takers or another train of thought for his effort in another baffling mystery.Adapted from an untitled story by its creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the epilogue focuses on an open book on the "Star of Rhodesia" where an off-screen narrator talks about this priceless diamond: "Star of Rhodesia is one of the most famous of the earth's treasures. ... It would have been better had it not been found. To all those who possess it come to sudden and violent deaths." With all that said, the story gets underway as Vivian Wedder (Renee Godfrey - resembling that of forties actress Patricia Morison) in a carpenter shop, Mock (Harry Cording) and son (Bobby Wissler), where she arranges for the coffin of her late mother be sent to the undertakers and delivered onto the next train leaving London to Edinburgh. At the Euston Train Station, Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) awaits for his friend and associate, Doctor John H. Watson (Nigel Bruce) as he observes the passing crowd around him. He is then greeted by Ronald Carstairs (Geoffrey Steele), a young man who has engaged Holmes to watch over his mother, Lady Margaret Carstairs (Mary Forbes), who now possesses the Star of Rhodesia she's acquired by her late husband for their fifth wedding anniversary. Having already attended a reception at Buckingham Palace, and earlier met with near robbery experience, it is Holmes' job to safeguard her against possible thieves. Watson, accompanied by his scholarly friend, Major Bleek (Alan Mowbray, in excellent support), narrowly miss the train as it slowly departs the station. Also on board happens to be Holmes' friend, Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) of Scotland Yard, taking a fishing holiday for himself. During the trip, situations occur as young Carstairs is found dead inside his locked stateroom, Compartment E. With no murderous signs evident, and the priceless diamond missing, Lady Carstairs feels Holmes has failed in his duties. Regardless of a threatening note and life threatening experience, Holmes resumes with his theory, "Find the murderer, you'll find the diamond." Other members of the cast include Billy Bevan (The Train Attendant); Leyland Hodgson (The Train Conductor); and Boyd Davis (Inspector MacDonald).An improvement over PURSUIT TO ALGIERS, TERROR BY NIGHT shows at times how train mysteries are more exciting than shipboard ones. With screenplay by Frank Gruber, the film contains every ingredient necessary for a tightly-knitted 60 minute suspense thriller. Gerald Hamer, who seems to have appeared in practically all the "Sherlock Holmes" entries, is seen, once again, this time as one of the unusual assortment of passengers, Alfred Shallcross, a teapot collector, accompanied by his mother (Janet Murdoch). Skelton Knaggs, a creepy character notable for Universal's "House of Dracula" (1945), resumes his nightmarish creepiness in his Peter Lorre-type mannerism in the role of Sands. Frederick Worlock (Professor William Kilbane) has the film's brightest moment in a sort of Abbott and Costello twist and turn routine as fellow passenger who's supposed to be subject to questioning by Doctor Watson, only to have situations happening in reverse, and quite amusingly in fact. Another highlight comes as Holmes gets pushed out of the train with door slamming shut behind him, holding on to his very life as train goes in high speed, especially through the curves. Another great moment is its conclusion, almost reminiscent to how author Agatha Christie ("Murder on the Orient Express") or famed movie director Alfred Hitchcock ("The Lady Vanishes") might have handled a train mystery such as this.Being another Holmes entry to have fallen into public domain, TERROR BY NIGHT, available on video cassette and DVD formats from various distributors, presented on numerous public broadcast or cable television stations over the years, should not disappoint any devotees of the series, especially when shown from time to time on Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: March 8, 2004) or anywhere else. Next installment: DRESSED TO KILL (1946). (***)

binapiraeus This last-but-one of the Rathbone&Bruce 'Sherlock Holmes' adaptation, IMO, is neither a typical one nor one of the best entries in the series - in a whole train full of suspects, the huge diamond 'Star of Rhodesia', is being stolen, recovered and stolen again, and no less than three people are murdered for it; and, since Professor Moriarty by now seems to be 'finally' dead, there has to be a substitution for him for a battle of wits with Sherlock Holmes: the infamous jewel thief Sebastian Moran...Now, this is admittedly a REAL whodunit, because we have to guess until the last moment who is this Sebastian Moran - but how can we, with not only so many red herrings sticking out of every compartment door, but also without a really consistent story? A coffin with a secret chamber for someone to hide in, a hotel teapot 'thief', a dubious mathematician, a strange train guard... What are we to make of all that? Holmes, however, solves the case triumphantly and cunningly, as ever (and once again foreseeing ALL the traps the 'Moriarty successor' may have laid for him); but even at the end, it doesn't look really convincing to a classic whodunit fan...Anyway, there's no denying that this film, too, has got its special features that makes it worth watching, no matter how much it confuses us: there's the claustrophobic atmosphere of the train (some Agatha Christie feeling here...), there are some genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments - and there's more humor than we usually find in a 'Sherlock Holmes' movie (once again, chiefly thanks to our good friend Dr. Watson)! But then, it wasn't actually meant as a comedy...