La femme aux araignées

In wartime Britain, a series of well-known men commit suicide - their only connection being the fact that they are all gamblers. This happens while Holmes and Watson are holidaying in Scotland when this is happening and Holmes fakes his own death to be able to go back to London in disguise and work on the case. He finds the killer with ease but not the method or motive for the murders.

The interesting set up of graphic suicides (or at least graphic for the time) had me from the start but the film didn't manage to hold me throughout the running time although it got better towards the end. The usual `he's dead - oh, he's not' thing didn't really work for me but happily the film didn't labour this ruse too long. The plot does have certainly `different' aspects to it, they may not be supernatural as such but they are certainly different from the usual fare. There isn't anything too wrong about this but I didn't totally get won over by it.

The film does have some fine moments to it - the scene where Watson unwittingly is made to try and kill Holmes, very tense and enjoyable and ends with a Holmes line that Bond himself would have been proud of: `I was just going round and round but my heart wasn't really in it'! The confrontations between Holmes and Spedding are enjoyable - she is an extraordinary villain and she matches Holmes well.

Rathbone does good work and he does bring out a reasonable chemistry with Sondergaard that helps the fact that they are meant to be against each other. Bruce is good and seems to be growing in confidence (or at least what the film allows him to do) with some good quips of his own. Hoey is always a welcome addition to the cast and he is a good comic relief that takes the pressure off Bruce somewhat.

Overall, the plot didn't totally hang together for me and it lacked a little bit of logic as a result of the slightly unusal nature of the murders and the criminals involved but it is still very enjoyable and the conclusion in the fairground is a lot tenser than a B-movie deserves to be!